Wikipedia Challenge - Dick Erixon

Came up with "Dick Erixon", an article about a Swedish blogger. So this isn't purely inspired by the title, but also the country mentioned in the article. As I invented the Wikipedia Challenge I deem that inspiration can come from anywhere and need only be tangentially related to the article itself.

-

Dick Erixon was a simple man. It was only natural that he worked for IKEA. After all, all of the proud citizens of Ikearike Intesverige did their part for the glory of their corpocracy.

He did not work in the stores, selling the möbler like many of his fellow countrymen; he was a businessman (affärsman, as they were called). It was a high-status job and he had it because of his high intelligence and creativity.

He, like most affärsmän, worked in a cubicle writing reports and going to meetings. His title was pinned to the entrance of the cubicle - Chef för Affärsområde Erövring.

He came into work fifteen minutes later than usual – there was a tillbud on the road he usually biked down to get to the office – and sat on his MARKUS. He took some of yesterday’s files out of EFFECTIV to quickly review them before the morning’s meeting.

He looked at Agda, who worked in the cubicle next to his, and gave her a smile. She returned his smile and gave him a quick wink.

Dick grinned to himself; he’d always thought Agda was the most gorgeous woman in the office – sitting at her MATTEUS with her legs crossed flirtatiously, showing a little bit too much thigh. She rolled her MARKUS towards Dick’s cubicle.

“You’re late. I heard there was a tillbud?” She asked, sounding more interested than you would expect.

“Yes, it’s probably those damn rebels again.”

Agda nodded in agreement. “Yes. Those lantvärn need to stop with their foolish quest for peace.”

“They are certainly going about it the wrong way. Äldesteikea is about peace; the lantvärn are about death. Or at least it seems that way.”

“I suppose it does seem that way.” She murmured. “But I can sort of see where they’re coming from. The war is causing so much loss of innocent life – “

“Loss of life that doesn’t recognise Äldesteikea!” Dick responded quickly, cutting her off. “The lantvärn - rebels, whatever you want to call them - they’re killing people who are devoted to Äldesteikea! People who have dedicated their lives to Äldesteikea. People like you and me, Agda!”

Agda frowned a little.

“I don’t know. All of us, us citizens – “

“Coworkers.” Dick corrected her immediately, giving her a slight glare.

“Sorry. Coworkers. All of us co-workers,” She continued, saying the word with a tiny but detectable dose of venom. “Don’t really have much choice. After all, what will happen to us if we were to say something blasphemous about Äldesteikea?”

Dick reeled in horror at the thought. He couldn’t even imagine what somebody could say about Äldesteikea that would be blasphemous – he tried to think of something, anything, but all he knew about Äldesteikea were good things. He struggled and managed to form the words in his mind: ‘Äldesteikea is perfect, and therefore cannot become anything better than he is’. Just thinking that prosaic sentence made him feel uncomfortable. He managed to reply to Agda:

“You mean, people are able to think of... unpositive things to say about the great Äldesteikea? He who gives us food, shelter and clothing? He who without which our lives have no purpose?”

Agda leant closer to Dick, and whispered her next words.

“Don’t you remember life, all those years ago, when Äldesteikea was just IKEA? When it was just a shop, a place to buy quality products at affordable prices? Before Sverige became Ikearike Intesverige?”

“The Dark Ages, that’s what you’re talking about?”

“They were not even ten years ago! You really mean to tell me you can’t remember? I was only a girl, but I remember it well.”

“How old do you think I am?!” Dick replied, automatically.

“Can’t you remember?”

Dick struggled, and thought back to ten or fifteen years ago – back to when he was a teenager. To a world without Äldesteikea. To Sverige, as it was known then. To his school, his computer games. It was hard to think about – not having Äldesteikea in these memories made them almost painful – but he knew that the world was okay then. But he remembered something else, too.

“But Sverige was only tiny! It was less than ten percent the size of Europe! Now Ikearike Intesverige is far larger and grander! No more are Norge, Finland, Estland, Polen, Ukraina and the rest of them seperate countries! We are all a part of Ikearike Intesverige and with it, proper children of Äldesteikea. We have given them an opportunity they didn’t have before. To become a part of something greater.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” She said bitterly.

“Yes, I do.” He nodded, and cleared his throat. “Anyway, let me look through this file. I have to present a report shortly giving a plan for the invasion of the remaining countries in Western Europe that haven’t agreed to become a part of glorious Äldesteikea’s empire.”

Wikipedia Series: 1968-69 WIHL Season

Necessary Context: Werewolf: The Forsaken

The Apollo program captured the imaginations of millions of people the world over. The months leading up to the first moon landing had a great significance for a certain, small subsection of the population – the werewolves.

After all, the Uratha always revered the moon as a goddess – something intangible, something that had a spirit. Not a lifeless lump of rock, slowly, imperceptibly falling towards the earth.

However, some of them – the Iron Masters in particular – some of them wanted to find out what she was like, to see how they would feel with their paws on her soil. They wanted to see if they could commune with their Mother on a deeper level, to achieve that spiritual connection.

Luckily for them, a man named Edwin who was one of those selected to visit Luna was Wolf-Blooded. He was almost forty, however, so his First Change was probably never going to happen.

Never, that is, unless they could force it.

Dozens of tribes throughout the United States worked on the issue; those with vampire connections – or with the ability to barter with them – managed to get a good contingent of the Ordo Dracul working on the problem.

There were sacrifices to be made, of course – some of the more dedicated packs let their spirit domains go to a rather unkempt state. Some of them – the ones whose totems did not support their perhaps rather foolish errand – abandoned their totems. One or two packs even had an all-out fight with their totems, killing them. They didn’t fear the loss of their totem; any totem that didn’t help them with what they viewed as a righteous mission was not worth it, anyway.

In fact, so strong was the desire of the werewolves to work together that it saw for the first – and perhaps only – time in history the forsaken and the pure were united for a common purpose.

In the end, the oldest, most knowledgeable vampire scientists announced the breakthrough with heavy hearts. They had found out the ingredients they would need to concoct a potion that would force any Wolf-Blooded human to have their first change.

The problem was, it called for some very rare and hard to acquire ingredients. The first was the blood created from the birth of three separate ghost pups – one born to pure parents, one to forsaken parents, and one to one of each.

In addition, all six parents needed to be ritually sacrificed and drained of blood by their own pack alphas, and this blood would be part of the potion as well.

Once all the blood is reduced into a fine, thick paste (by evaporation) it is to be combined with crushed samples of dozens of rare herbs and animals.

The Ordo Dracul announced the cure to the werewolf community, knowing that their new allies would not take the news all that well.

They were not disappointed. The werewolves murmured amongst themselves, trying to work out what the most ethical course of action was. To get a Uratha to the moon, were they going to have to disobey many of her most important teachings?

Some of the werewolves took it upon themselves to try and conceive this ghost wolf. They performed the rituals that were meant to reduce the severity of their Mother’s wrath, and then dozens of male werewolves and dozens of female werewolves would spend the night together, the females taking care to only pair themselves with a single man, to make identification of the father easier.

Many of them hadn’t gotten approval from their pack alphas, yet: but they would worry about that later on.

As the months wore on, about twenty pregnancies were recorded, all in all. And, out of these twenty, they did manage to find werewolves whose pack alphas would consent to their ritual sacrifice, even if they did not necessarily approve.

And so, in May – after all the ‘births’ had occurred - the fateful ceremony was performed, amid much wailing and regret at not being able to follow Mother Luna’s doctrine. However, after performing the ceremony, one of the pack alphas went mad; he had not adequately prepared himself for the horror of the deed.

The scientists got the blood, and boiled it and boiled it and boiled it, until nothing was left but a paste. They then tirelessly – over the course of two weeks, keeping careful account of the moon phases – created the compound.

After more than a year and the deaths of so many, it was now complete!

All that remained was to administer it to Eugine Aldrin. And how hard could that be?

Donne senza nome

My latest strategy for getting inspiration on days I don't have it is to go to the random wikipedia article and get inspiration from the title (and nothing else).

I managed to go to Donne_senza_nome - almost skipped it, but then I got an idea and ran with it.
----
"Donne Senza Nome"

The priest stood quietly in front of his congregation, his eyes to the ground, his hands raised in prayer as he spoke the words - quietly, but with purpose.

"Donne Senza Nome"

The tiny chapel was filled with people dressed in black and clinging to rosaries as they joined his chants, or voiced their own silent prayes.

A much loved man had died in this small fourteenth century Italian village, and this congregation was mourning him. The mysterious Plague had struck another victim.

This was not the black plague, it was something different.

"Donne Senza Nome"

The priest repeated. The congregation all said the words, too, praying that the man would pass into heaven and join their god in paradise.

Then, a woman stood up and began to speak. This elicited dissaproving murmurs from the shocked congregation.

"This monster should not have a christian burial!" She cried out in rage.

The crowd looked at her in silence.

"Don't you see? God is sending this plague as a punishment! It is only those of us who are the most wicked that he strikes down!"

The dead man's son stood up. "You mean to say my honourable father was wicked?"

"Yes! Otherwise, why would the lord have taken him? Think! None of the best people in the town are being struck down; the ones who died before him, they were the men who gambled away the bread they needed to feed their children, the women who disobeyed their husbands, the children who threw rocks at the dogs!"

"Where is your husband?" The man's son asked, glaring at the woman.

"He succumed to the plague; he was a gambler."

"And you survived because you are a good woman, I suppose?"

"Yes. I survived because there is justice in this world!" She cried, her eyes wild.

"Leave us." The priest spoke up, finally. "We need to pray in peace."

The woman left without saying another word.

"He was a wicked man."

She murmured to herself, casting a bitter look at the almost undetectable bump in her stomach. At the child she had named Romeo, the child the dead man had put there despite her screams.

She took a scrap of lined paper out of her coat, and, underneath the dead man's name, wrote the following:

"Romeo. Miscarriage."

She pictured the dead man's face, and hoped it would be good enough.
------
If you didn't understand the ending, it's because this is technically DeathNote prequel fanfic.

Death_note

Why Brynn Tix is scared of Tigers

Stats @ http://750words.com/entries/share/417808

Brynn Tix, at the age of forty years, centaur on the brink of adolescence. His life up until this point consisted mostly of playing with his brothers, and learning the basic life skills that any productive tribe member needs.

He didn't get to see much of his sister; centaur boys didn't see much of females in general. The women were highly prized and were given intensive lessons in the arts, calling on the spirits of nature, and leadership from a young age. Some of the girls will end up moving to other tribes to attain positions of power that opened up; with the rarity of female births, it was not unusual for a tribe to see no female births in decades. Fortunately, Tix's tribe was one of the largest tribes, and had some very fertile lines in it, so his sister Shara had two companions in her lessons.

Tix was playing with his brother Voq at the edge of the woods. Voq had always had a fertile imagination, and so came up with the best games to play. Right now, they were pretending that a particularly large rock was a foaling mother, and they had to defend it from the advancing wolves. They would throw pebbles into the undergrowth and kick at the plants, then run back to the rock giggling to themselves.

Normally, their proximity to the tribe and the amount of noise they were making scared all the nearby animals away - or, at the very least, they gave the annoying centaurs a wide berth. But this time, the noise had served to attract an animal. And it wasn't just any animal, either.

It was a tiger.

***

"Voq! Look out! There's a giant spider!" Tix yelled, grinning as he gave a mighty kick to a leaf that was slowly falling to the ground.

"Thanks, Tix!" Voq said, grinning as he threw a rock at a target that had been painted onto a tree for use in archery practise.

The boys giggled as they played, oblivious to the tiger that was stalking them.

The tiger was a large and powerful one that had just had the misfortune of being kicked out of his territory by an even larger, more powerful tiger. As a result, he was forced to hunt closer to the centaurs than usual. But it seemed that it wasn't exactly a misfortune for him; after all, his new hunting ground was already bearing fruit.

Like a coiled spring, the tiger pounced on the unaware centaurs, scarcely making a sound.

He caught the quivering young centaur in his claws, and scratched at his rump. Tix looked on in horror as he saw his brother's haunches begin to bleed beneath the monstrous creature's grasp.

Tix, pale at the sight of blood, bolted as quickly as he could, in the direction of his home. He could hear Voq screaming and stamping as the tiger clawed at him, but as he got further away these sounds faded.

Fortunately, their mother, Brynn Nersha, had been performing a ritual not far away, and she heard Voq's cries for help.

She galloped towards the tiger, and gave it a decisive kick in the head. It hissed at her, baring its fangs. She held onto her totem - an orc's tooth on a leather cord around her neck - and focused on communicating with the tiger, telling it to leave them alone.

The pair stared one another down for a good long while, until the tiger begrudgingly made its way off. Nersha immediately applied a healing salve to her unfortunate son's bloodied body, and lifted his quivering, sobbing equine body onto her back.

"Shh, Voq. You're going to be alright."

And so the mother carried her child into the tribe land, taking him to a soft pile of moss and leaves that served as a sort of sylvan infirmary. Immediately, the entire tribe was abuzz with centaurs wanting to help their matriarch's son.

And from the edge of the concerned crowd, Tix was watching it, left only with the memory of his brother being savaged by a vicious beast and, worse still, of how his cowardice prevented him from helping.

Juliet and Sophie

Trying to expand on Juliet some more, give her some more backstory, etc.

I refer to her having Obfuscate 3 in this story; rest assured, this is not something she has now, but just one of the many abilities that she had once but has since been lost in her torpor. She doesn't even remember that she once had the ability to obfuscate.

Stats @ http://750words.com/entries/share/413277
------
Juliet had had a productive couple of years.

It was the late 1800s, and she was enjoying herself immensely. Things were finally looking up for her. She had learned from a Mehket friend one of their most closely guarded secrets; the secret of making yourself invisible, a silent witness to the events that unfolded around you.

Juliet's girlfriend of the time was a perfect subject for her suriveillance, too; her name was Sophie, and she was a werewolf, as had become the norm for Juliet. Werewolves were out of control and tended to kill things that they loved. As long as Juliet avoided the werewolf's claws, she could be a witness of the aftermath of this destruction - and with her newfound ability, that was a piece of cake.

Sophie had five children and a husband - a husband she wasn't in love with, of course, but a husband who made a suitable father for the children and who was able to provide for them. Sophie had never dreamt of love, just of stability. But with both Juliet and her husband, she had both.

Of course, her husband had begun to suspect. How could he not, with Sophie spending nearly every night off with either Juliet or her pack. And Juliet, for her part, had done nothing to lesson his suspicions, even sometimes planting items of men's clothing around the house for the husband to find and fret about.

This night, as Juliet stood silently in a corner, completely invisible, she watched the final confrontation.

It started out as an argument; an argument that got more and more heated as time wore on. Juliet could see Sophie struggle to maintain control of herself, trying to suppress her rage.

But Sophie was a Rahu, and that was not in the nature of these beasts. When her husband accused her of being involved with one of her packmates, it was the last straw. This small, mild-mannered woman all of a sudden became a giant, furry killing machine. She roared at her husband, and, with a quick swipe of her monstrous paw struck three clean gashes into his chest.

The look of horror and disgust on the man's face before the life left his eyes made Juliet's heart leap as she felt, for one fleeting moment, the strength of his grief and confusion.

Sophie roared again, and that gargantuan head began tearing at the man's flesh, and swallowing it, crunching the bones as though they were nothing.

Juliet went up the stairs, and ceased her appearance of invisibility; one by one, she went to each of the children and with the power of her majestic charisma, convinced them to go into the lounge room.

Five children came running down the stairs; children who had no idea what was about to happen. When they entered the room, the beast saw them, attracted to the movement, and dispatched with them, too.

Eventually, Sophie recovered from the rage, but it was too late. She sat there, in the middle of the piles of flesh and the pools of blood, sobbing.

Juliet made her entrance here.

"Sophie? What's happened?" She asked, her face contorted into a very convincing mask of concern.

Sophie said nothing, as Juliet sat beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

"Don't worry, honey. These things happen." She said, smiling despite herself.

~~~

Ten days later, under the light of the full moon, Sophie and Juliet stood, hand in hand.

Sophie was not over her actions by any stretch of the imagination. But she had become determined, under Juliet's schooling, to go to a place where the pain would leave her, where she could be in peace.

And so, the pair of them made a toast to the full moon, Sophie muttering a prayer in first tongue, as they drank the poison together.

Sophie fell asleep for one final time.

Juliet, as a vampire, was unaffected by the poison. She watched Sophie die with a smile.

The grief that they'd shared, the grief that Juliet had caused, it made her feel something that she felt so rarely these days.

It made her feel alive.

~~~

Juliet, today, remembers only the werewolf killing her own children, and the suicide that resulted.

She does not even remember Sophie's name.

She is no even certain whether or not she embraced Sophie. Can a werewolf be embraced?

Perhaps Sophie is out there, somewhere, and has found out exactly how much of a hand Juliet had in the events of that fateful night.

Perhaps Sophie is a powerful vampire seeking her revenge.

Or perhaps Sophie just died by her own hand, and that was that.

Juliet's Origin Story

Story for my character in Luke's upcoming campaign.

Stats @ http://750words.com/entries/share/409816
-----
Juliet's memory was fuzzy. It always had been, as far as she could tell; her life was a highlights reel of moments of grief, sadness, and emotional torment, and, honestly, that's the way she liked it.

She knew her name wasn't always Juliet - well, perhaps it was, but she had no way of knowing one way or another and it didn't matter. Someone must have compared her to the Shakespearean Juliet in a Via Dolorosa or something, and the name stuck.

She always wore a bracelet with the word "Juliet" written on it in what were now antique pewter beads, so she could remember it was her name when she awoke.

She wasn't even entirely sure how old she was; that is to say, what century she was born in. She remembered putting corsets on. She remembered having servants help her with all the dressing, but only because it embarrassed her when her body started developing.

Her human life was, too, barely remembered. How much of it she had figured out from sparse notes she left with her torpid body versus how much was actually there in her mind she couldn't really say. But she did have a few vivid memories.

She remembered a strong feeling of love. Oh, how she pined for the memory of that feeling; tiny and fleeting though it was, the memory was all she had. The vampire psyche, over time, almost completely loses the capacity to feel emotions, yet her memories can bring those shadows to the forefront of her mind and make her happy again.

But what she remembered with perhaps even more vigor was the sadness. The feelings of loss and hopelessness. Because, after all, love is very rarely found without such feelings.

So Juliet knew that she was a very well-off child during her life. She had described her family, the architecture, the little memories that she would sometimes hold onto after torpor. People had told her everything; mostly, they seemed to converge on eastern Europe.

She died when she was about nineteen; perhaps she was older and looked young for her age, though. Equally, she may have been only fourteen and matured quickly.

Unlike most vampires, her embrace was not the cause of her death; rather, the death was the cause of her embrace.

Back to the love. The young woman that she had fallen for. She couldn't remember anything about her lover - not her name, her face, the way she looked. She wasn't sure whether their love was doomed solely because of their genders, or if she was from the lower classes, or even - like in the great story she named herself after - from a rival family.

She remembered the torment, though. The anguish that their parents, their families would never approve of their love. That sort of feeling is all-encompassing; she could think of nothing else for as long as she lived. Their visits were few and hurried; their letters were frequent and mournful.

From the torture of their forbidden love, it became clear that they would be unable to achieve happiness in their lives. Their letters frequently spoke of suicide; of ending it all. And with each passing week, it looked more and more appealing.

And so, one day, Juliet sent a letter that proclaimed her undying love, and proposed a suicide pact. In those days, at least, they had access to all sorts of poisons.

On the pre-determined night, under the full moon, Juliet and her nameless love made a toast to the stars, said a prayer, and drank the poison. Her death was like falling asleep, and with it came a feeling of ecstasy she had not felt before or since.

Unfortunately, her death was interrupted by a pale man with wild, dark hair and dark eyes. Juliet awoke to him, gnawing away at her neck, drinking her blood - or perhaps putting blood into her?

Her memories of the next few nights were vivid - physical torture, something she had not felt before, but something that seemed to fit well with the mental anguish she had been put through the past few months. On several occasions she almost laughed from the glee of it all, the release that this pain gave her.

The pale man would leave her, tied up in the wildnerness, only able to scream impotently at the wilds. She wondered whether he hid behind a tree and listened to her, or if he had business to conduct elsewhere.

Perhaps he had also woken her lover, and had her imprisoned in the next valley.

But if he did, Juliet didn't remember. Not now.

Not after the fog of dozens of ages clouded all but her most cherished memories.

If the star-crossed lovers had been reunited, Juliet wasn't sure that the memories of such a reunion would have made the cut.

December Challenge, Day 1

It's sort of a diary entry so I'm not posting the content here, sorry!

Stats if you want to see, though:

http://750words.com/entries/share/407721