Werewolves, Vampires and Crooks (F looking for takers)

[Maeve]

21) Respectability is a Rocky Road -

It's no secret that the Authority planets don't have any crime because they ship off anyone who commits the slightest infraction. It's no secret where they send them either, barely hospitable planets that didn't respond completely to terraforming, or were already occupied by hostile races. It works out for everyone, the overpopulated central planets have someplace to send their excess populace and the planets on the outer rim that can't attract settlers have a disposable population.

It even saves the taxpayers. If your prison is a backwater planet with no chance of escape, there is no need to spend money on guards or bars. There is fear of uprising though. Should these angry planets capture a Battleship or weapons and reek vengeance of the worlds that damned them to hell.

There are two ways that this concern is handled: 1. There is no trading between the planets. Each planet produces on good and relies on another to produce their other needs. Illegal farming, mining and manufacturing are punished by death. Thereby each planet is keep in their servile state, unable to be self relent. 2. There is only one gender per planet. They are there to increase the planets fertility, not their own. After all according to the Authority, bad fruit only produces bad seeds.

Selene was the worst of the female prison planets. The planet is split between vast deserts and dangerous labyrinthine swamps. There are stories of two beautiful Oasis's  that combine the two, but no one has ever seen them and many have died looking for them. The women of Selene are as mean as they come with a strict hierarchical system. The tough women are at the top, those that mine the salt, or hunt the giant scaled beasts that rule the swamp. The smart women are after that, those that run the tent towns and keep some semblance of order. Then there are the soft women. Those preyed on and sometimes exalted by the other two groups. The prostitutes and housewives.

Chenta was a criminal since she was born. An illegal hybrid between an alien mother and human father. Her home world became a prison for the outsiders when she was eight. When they invaded and declared her planet unfit for decent folk and left their trash. Their refuse turned her beautiful home to shit, they killed her people and ravaged the land for their own wants. Though she committed no crime, she was considered one of their number. Her reputation only grew over the years as she took down one boss of the Tough women after another. Though she refused to become a leader, she enjoyed the benefits her reputation gave her.

Like now, when she could claim this pretty thing for her own. Lira was going through the standard initiation for a troublesome soft woman. Those wishing to turn her out hammered four stakes into the ground and tied her to them spread eagle. They would then leave her for two days, allowing any and all to do what they wished to her until she gave in to their demands.

Chenta had never taken a wife, she felt no desire to have someone about her tent mucking things up. She didn't relish the concept of having to protect and care for someone. Until she saw Lira, marching down the gangplank of the prison ship like she was visiting Queen, and slapping the face of the first tough woman who grabbed her flank and whispered something perverse in her ear.

Lira's was a crime of conscience. She was shipped here because she questioned the right of the Authority to rule when all they did was create suffering. The Judge then decreed that she should know true suffering. Lira couldn't help but think he was right as she looked about this savage wasteland.



I don't know what came over me, I found myself in the mood for a sci-fi lesbian prison romance. Other than the basic premises I'm not sure where I want this to go. They could try to escape. This could just be a story about Lira settling in. This could be a story of a prison rebellion.

I did have a squeal idea for this story however. Where after they've developed the planet somewhat, it is decided that the prisoners should be allowed families. There would then be a prisoner exchange, 50 men and 50 women would switch Prison planets. The story would then become about the effect of adding a male partner (however temporarily) to Lira and Chenta's relationship.

- Perhaps this man?

[Maeve]

22) Monster - TAKEN

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

First off, there is a trigger warning for this one. I'm very much against animal abuse, however in this story it is a critical part though never described in detail. If that bothers you I hope that we can collaborate on another piece, just not this one.


It never mattered to Oliver that some people like the Alderdice's lived in grand homes on elegant estates while he lived in a simple shack in the woods. Why should it bother him? He lived on the edge of an ancient forest which contained more magnificence than their cultured lawns, with his own Chiron like he was his own hero in some epic tale. Like most great sages Hackit is short on sanity but long in wisdom and Oliver had made his hovel his university and home since he was no bigger than a tickle wren.

It never mattered to Oliver that poor boys like him could never marry rich girls like Fable Alderdice. Who spent her days in a homemade veterinary office, looking after stray creatures and poor children's pets. He never thought much of his former childhood friend. They had grown apart over the years, their stations as they were. He didn't begrudge her haughty nature or her aversion to interactions with those below her class, it was merely as things were.

It never mattered to Oliver that the townsfolk whispered about him. When he was a child they said that he was fairy touched, that he communed with demons in the woods and that he could curse you with a look. Superstitious nonsense! At least that's what the town leaders and well to do folks said. Until he grew older. Things from wealthy houses went missing, businesses were vandalized, animals were found mutilated and serving girls violated in their beds. What did matter? No charges were brought, for there was no evidence. Anyhow it wasn't him, but several boys from good families, who paid him well to let their elders go on believing that their perfect children were nothing less than angels. Since Oliver's only companion was Hackit, who would have though no less of him even if he was the devil himself, he never suffered from his monstrous reputation.

Until one day he brought a litter of puppies to Fable Alderdice's door. The Branson boys had used their mother for hunting even though she was still nursing and it had resulted in the poor hounds death. Oliver had been working as an extra hand to bring in the harvest that day and they had paid him a few bob to drown her puppies. Thinking it unfair that dogs from such good stock should be done away with he took them instead to Fable, hoping she would be able to raise them and eventually give him the biggest of the litter as a guard dog.

She had been turned away from him when he entered, back lit by the afternoon sun which spilled over her like an ethereal glow. She had a large bird on her shoulder, it's colors so bright they almost blinded. It was a gift from her brother who was currently stationed in South America. Awestruck as he was and with his arms full of squirming dogs he slammed the door harder than he intended to and the bird flew off her shoulder with an indignant squawk onto his head. He looked up at it in wonder, at this beautiful, exotic creature.

None of it had ever mattered: the poverty, the exclusion, his reputation as a black heart. That was until he saw the look in her eyes. The fear the swam at the corners and pinched her beautiful expression. Then it all mattered. He dropped off the puppies and ran.

Hackit had said that he knew this day was coming since he took the boy in. That he would leave him to find his fortune and bore him no ill will for it. Oliver promised that if he didn't die in his quest for a new life he would provide well for the old man. Hackit told he would do him proud if he didn't die from the pox in the arms of a whore.

Oliver certainly didn't do that. A few twists of luck and some wily decisions not only did he end up wealthy, but the darling of nouveau riche society and one of it's most eligible bachelors. With his new life he did everything he could to forget his old one, with two exceptions: he sent the money he promised to Hackit and every night before he laid his head down to sleep he remembered the look on Fable Alderdice's face.

He never intended to return to his home village. Except by some strange twist of fate, the same star that exulted him lead to the ruin of the Alderdices. Some men simply shouldn't invest. Oliver had returned to collect the old man's debt. He never thought that he would return to his fashionable city home with a wife.

It started in the pub where some local boys were talking about Fable and how she shouldn't be so uppity now that she was no longer rich and thusly her suitors had deserted her. After all, what man would marry her now? Before he could stop himself, Oliver responded that he would. News spread quicker than an outbreak of cholera. Rather proposing repayment of his debts, old man Alderdice was proposing marriage as a way to get out of debt.

Fable on the other hand, could think of no worse fate. She refused and loudly. Saying she would rather see her beloved Veterinary clinic burned to the ground than marry him. Her brothers obliged.

That was how Oliver found her, sobbing among the ashes. Without a thought he ushered her into his carriage and commanded that they make their way home post haste.

He couldn't help by think of that bird, and how his new wife dressed in the best of urbane finery looked liked she was walking not into her new home, but a gilded cage.



I'm thinking a Gothic romance/comedy of errors mash up, with a touch of Eros and Psyche.

[Maeve]

Not A Subtle Sleuth

 

The thing is he needs the money. Really needs the money. For the sake of his balls needs the money. Otherwise he never would have taken another catch 'em in the pink with mismatching rings gigs. They're messy, they're boorish and frankly they're beneath him. On the other hand they pay, a ridiculous amount. All it takes is one supposed self made man who inherited not only money, but ego and insecurity from the sperm bank that thinks his trophy wife might be tired of her pedestal to fill his account and extend his credit at the liquor store.

With that warm thought in mind he tries to fight off the cold that is slowly encasing the car with icy tendrils, his camera in shaking hands. It was suppose to be easy, he's done it a thousand times when the rent is due. Just take a couple of snaps in the buff, make sure you get both of their faces and he'd let the ashes of their marriage line his checks.

That was the plan. It was a good plan. It was a simple plan. Adultery was a play that was acted out every night and twice on Sundays and always filled the house, comforting in its cliches and well worn plot.  Except this leading lady was reading from a different script and hers read enter stage right with a gun.

"Why are you watching me?" She asked, cocking her pistol.

Whatever this broad was up to, it was far more expensive than an affair.

[Maeve]

An Unlikely Fairytale

Love is a many splendid thing. Love is the most blessed of all emotions. Love makes many under it's sway act the hero or the fool or...the villain.

Jeremy and Gertrude are a young couple in love. Blinding, passionate, blissful love. All should be right in the heavens, for cupid has struck his bow and two souls have found their mate. Except Jeremy is the bus boy at a local resort and Gertrude is a young lady of society, her family members of the recent rich merchant class. New money looking to hook itself onto old. They've sunk their talons into someone too. Lord William is younger than most of her suitors but no insipid youth. A man of class, distinction and wealth. The world however has made him weary about the eyes. He thinks that Gertrude with her newfangled ways and even newer money will be just the shot of energy that his old estate needs.

Jeremy has other ideas. You'll be a soggy Cinderella, he tells his sister. She's a local actress and well known beauty in their neck of the woods. All she needs to do is seduce him away from Gertrude, or at least cause such a scandal that her puritan family will not even consider the debauched aristocrat. It's easy enough and a game she has played before. She just never expected to fall for him.

[Maeve]

23) Tug of War - CRAVING



She's not sure how the affair started. All she knows is that four times a week she wakes up in a five-star hotel, a breakfast tray with a single rose, a few hundred pounds and note that says: Till next time. Best, Jae. She had met Jae 'Just call me Jay' Cho at a charity event. She had been serving and he had been drinking champagne, their eyes had met, something sparked and she had received an invitation to join him for a drink. She turned it down of course. Good girls like her didn't get mixed up with gangsters like him and make no mistake, despite his well-tailored suits and impeccable manners, Jae Cho is a ruthless gangster. A second generation Londoner, born to Korean parents, he did not make the mistake his father did working his fingers to the bone to barely scrap by. Jae went out and made a name for himself, even if it meant he needed to erase a few others.

Still nice, sensible girls who were training to be art restorers like her, don't get involved with such men. It simply isn't done. Even if she does like the way his eyes sparkle and the suit hugs his lines. She intended to never think of him again, but it's pouring rain on the way home and there's simply no cabs to be had. She's walking along a back ally, her coat over her head and her heels rapidly filling with water.

A black limousine stops and the door opens. They don't talk as he ushers her in, nor do they speak as he checks them into the most expensive hotel she has ever seen. The first thing he asks her isn't her name but if she prefers red or white.

Their unorthodox relationship hasn't always been smooth. The first time he gave her money she threw it back in his face. His embraces border on the possessive and she can only imagine what would happen if she refused to get into that black car, which comes to pick her up with increasing frequency. Overall though, it's the most pleasant relationship she's ever been in. He's witty and always happy to see her, he lavishes gifts on her and seems to be relieved in her presence. They talk art, play chess and make love long into the night.

Still something is wrong. He holds all the cards and she can't help but suspect that part of her appeal for him is his unquestioned power over her. It can't last, it's not sustainable. She'll either get out or be consumed by him. It all comes to a head one night when he tells her that he's buying her an apartment. The dream shatters and she's faced with a reality as cold as the keys she holds. She waits for his breathing to slow before she sneaks out of the hotel room, the keys laying on a note saying simply that she couldn't do this anymore.

She then begins the long walk back to her family home. She needs to clear her head and the predawn air is helping calm her mind. When she stops at a local market to stall to pick up black coffee and bagel a black car stops and the door opens. Biting her lip she gets in, figuring the only right thing to do is to give him an explanation.

The man who waits for her isn't Jae, but a powerful rival.

"Right then lovie," he greets, "Don't scream. You keep your wits about ya and you'll leave my company without a hair on your head mussed. Your man and I made a deal and I'm going to keep a hold on you until he comes through with his end of it."

She sinks back into the fine leather, her breakfast forgotten and wonders whether the man she rejected will come for her at all.

[Maeve]

24) The Cardinal's Witch -

In the beginning light and dark was entwined. The light was for truth and piety and virtue. The dark was magic, love and song. The light protected those from the dark preyed and the dark comforted those who had been burned by the light.

So it was for many seasons, each inter playing and executing their roles. Until the light decide that the dark no longer had a place. The dark was vile and rank. The dark was evil.

The priests and priestess's of the dark went underground as the light ruled above with new temples dedicated to order.

Victory wasn’t enough. There were still followers of the dark, reminded each night of its temptations. They hunted down the followers of the night and reduced their numbers to a presence so small that everyday people wondered whether they ever existed at all.

They had, and they did still. A group of only 7,000 strong and their numbers rapidly depleting as the followers of the light send one exterminator after another. Death was not the only threat, they burned their books and raised their temples. It was these actions that would lead to their extinction. So the members who remained took the remaining sacred texts and put them in a great computer and then downloaded them into their personages at great personal cost.

They were forever branded with injection sites, the words etched on their bones and a variety of other markings depending on the tome. They could never walk among society again. What the faith takes away, it gives in turn. So then had the power to heal, the power of the elements, the power of the night itself. The followers of the light started calling them witches and they began to fight back.

“She is too young!” Silas protested. Ursa was only 22, but raised in the faith and she wanted to take the marks. Silas knew it would be a life sentence and she could never have a normal life, but one of exile in a land of fear.

“It’s what I want,” Ursa told him firmly, but not unkindly. She knew the elder priest merely wanted what was best for her and she wanted what was best for her family.

“My child, my child,” he repeated, cupping her face in his old weathered hands, “You are condemning yourself to a life ever entombed.”

“I want us to live, holy father, I want us to live,” she told him, clasping her own hands around his. He then kissed her on the forehead and said no more.



The marks affected everyone differently.  Those that were given the gift of fire often looked as those they had been struck by lightning. Those that could heal generally had some limb withered. Those that could kill with a look had the appearance of reptiles.

Ursa knew this as she lay on the table and waited for the holy rite to begin. The soft spoken women of the night attacked the probes to her hands, to her temples, along her collar bone, her navel, her hips, and her feet. It didn’t hurt yet.

That was yet to come.

No pain killers were given. Pain was purity, one needed to feel everything otherwise it was surgery and not ritual.

Ursa screamed her prayers as word by word was downloaded into her very being. Her body was on fire, her mind was overflowed with knowledge and her voice was giving out. But she held on, to give in to the pain would be wavering of her faith, so even when her voice gave out she continued to mouth the words. She held on until she could no longer hold out and her world become comforting blackness.

It would be that forever more.

With what voice she had left she screamed when she opened her eyes and saw nothing.



Ursa woke as though downing, gasping for every breath. She staggered from her simple cell and into the outer corridor, looking for fresh air and open spaces.

“My child,” Silas greeted, taking her shaking form into his arms, “Another vision?”

“No, just a dream,” She told him, cradling herself in his arms.

“Ah, I must say that I am relieved. Though your visions have kept us safe for three long years.”

Had it been? Three years without them attacked, with being able to outrun the warriors of the light and all because Ursa could see the future.

“I hope, Holy father that I may do so for many years to come.”



This story concerns Ursa, the witch who traded her eyes for sight. The Cardinal (Face model and personality your choice) has spent years hunting her, believing that with her captured they can finally be rid of the competing cult. He also believes that he can use her to predict his own future and heighten his career.

[Maeve]

Reluctant Wishes

 

It was truly unfortunate her Uncle had decided to push matters this far. For all his sophistication, the man really could be a bull headed plug, do excuse her language.

He was insisting that she marry her dippy cousin. Combine the lands, secure the bloodline, c'mon maid do it for the good of the family was the way the arrangement had been presented to her, over a course of some rather sub par grouse.

She had flatly refused. She was young, blonde, the pearl of the court...why would she waste her youth on a man who couldn't even hunt and whose calves looked less substantial than a table leg in tights? No, she had her sights set on Lord Conall. He was Scottish true, but she could over look that in favor of his families wealth and just how nicely he presents in a kilt.

Her Uncle was very disagreeable about the whole thing and decided to lock her up in one of the more ancient estates. Nestled deeply on a craggy outcrop with the sea on one side and the moors, the estate looks pagan and primal. The servants are no different. All she can do is write pleadingly to her lover and try to protect her best dresses from the sea air and her delicate skin from the sharp winds off the moors, so she will be as lovely as the day they met.

Their is a dame that lives on the estate, so old she probably knew King Arthur personally, who entertains her at night. They sit in the kitchen, the only warm place in the house, where she ruins her hand holding greasy yarn as the crone told her weird and wild tales: Black Dogs, Headless Carriage Drives, The Good People and of the evil Sorcerer who will grant one wish at midnight for anyone brave enough to pray for him on Christmas Eve. Just something to think about deary, the crone told her. She shook her head, there was no possibility that she would still be here at Christmas. Her Uncle would relent, her lover would rescue her.

Then the snow falls. There is no word from Conall. Her Uncle visits and tells her that she will either leave wed to his son or in a coffin. On Christmas Eve she dons a red cloak and with only a single candle makes her way to the Sorcerer's grave.

[Maeve]

25) Could Be Worse


There was a lot of things that Meg did when the rent was due. Credit card fraud was her favorite, but she wouldn't consider it stooping to dabble in some hacking, maybe a couple of melon drops on Sunday if the crowds were good, providing party favors to a few sorority houses and yes, if you had Ben Franklin and some friends ask, she did more than dance.

This however, this was giving her more heartburn than the burgers down at Franklin's. It was a fairly easy gig. All she had to do was have him meet her and then the Squire's boys would do the rest. She wasn't sure what Kirk had done to upset one of the most powerful men in the city, but she wasn't too happy that he had inadvertently given them her scent. They knew that she would do it cause she was perpetually broke. They knew that he would come out of hiding to come see her because...well because he always came to her distress calls. He was the one man, the only person, who never let her down. Not since the first time he had arrested her for shoplifting and given her a long lecture on the social contract. Not since he found her on a street corner, bought her coffee and hung around all night to make sure she broke up with her pimp that she thought was her boyfriend. Not since he called her drunk on New Years Eve because his partner had been gunned down and she had rushed down 16 blocks to make sure she was his midnight kiss...

He was the one good cop left in a city so corrupt that the Squire could crush anyone he liked and expected everyone, from the mayor to a humble bum to kiss his ring. Which wouldn't be so bad, but he kept it in his back pocket. Apparently Kirk hadn't puckered up, hadn't bent to the psychopaths will. It was one of her favorite things about him.

By the time he showed up, uniform long abandoned and replaced by sunglasses and a ball cap, she had shredded three napkins.

"What's the matter Buttercup?"

Meg bit the inside of her lip. Fuck it she didn't feel like smooching the Squire either. "We need to leave. Now."



So action, danger, justice and romance! All the good things in life. PM me so we can cement a plot.

[Maeve]

26) One Sees Mud & the Other Stars

He skimmed his hand from one handle a cell door to another. The hallway he was meandering down was depressingly white: white tile floors, white drop ceiling, white walls and white doors that lead to white padded rooms. It might make all of this look clean, not exactly comfortable but sterile and serious. Like a hospital. Except there's not patients here, there's prisoners. Each cell holds another pathetic soul, molted with bruises and crusted blood on their necks. Their injuries the only source of color. With every drip of their blood goes another drop of humanity, until they're released as something far different than what they went in as.

Until recently he was in a cell. Him and the rest of his crew. Runaways, hustlers, dealers and addicts made up his clan and he their proud warlord protected them in their warehouse kingdom. Till the monster came and picked them off one by one, dragged them back to his lair and...changed them forever. Or as he liked to put it, he gave them a gift...

It didn't feel like a gift. It felt like the jail sentence truly began when they were let out of their cells. The hunger overpowering and only quenched at his command.

His hand went from one handle to another, another cell, another future mouth to feed with an ever shrinking food source. He started sliding the windows open to, looking at one poor soul to another, his mouth watering with the view of each new victim. It was rhythmic, a zen like mediation that clawed him deeper into the pit of his pain. Sliding his fingers over the cold metal of one handle to another, opened the window to look at another poor bastard, feel the twin pangs of sympathy and hunger. Rinse and repeat.

Until he came to a door without a handle. He wondered if their creator was building more cells, creating more monsters, but the next door had a handle. He pushed at it experimentally. It didn't give. It was locked from the inside. He reached to open the widow, to see what treasure could be inside. Only to find that too opens from the inside.

Maybe the creature could feel his presence or just see his shadow on the other side of the door, but that window did open and a large pair of bright blue eyes stared back at him.




I've decided that all of my werewolf/vampire fics take place in the same universe. Perhaps with the exception of Redefining Sacrifice and The Airs Fine Once You Grow Gills, maybe but maybe not. I'll have to see how their stories progress. Anyway like Only Politics this would work best as either a small group or us sharing characters. I'm also leaning towards this being as much of a relationship (romantic or otherwise) between the two male roles as it is with her. Also I am seeing her less of a prisoner and more of a political captive in the traditional sense. PM me if interested.

[Maeve]

27) Statute of Limitations



Christ, he was a prick. Always had been. Since he found her in that brothel in Kiev. As she angrily stripped herself of her jewelry, her dress, her fake eye lashes she wondered how she was going to survive another day with him, let alone another decade, let alone another century.

Wasn't like she had a lot of options. She didn't have any money of her own, didn't have huge skill set and she had one hell of a temper. She knew if she left she'd just end up on her back again... which was still better than being with another vampire. Who really wanted to live out their eternity as a nameless 'bride? Another hag in white and too much make up left with scraps while whatever Dracula impersonator managed to rent a cheap castle.

At least this one needed her. He wanted to live forever. To find out the truth about everything. Once upon a time he had been alchemist. Now he was Vegas magician. Least it paid for his experiments.

What was she? When anyone asked, he told them that she was his muse. Which was true in a way, the only way he stayed alive was by making that damn elixir from her blood.

She collapsed on the toilet and cried into her Jimmy Choos, nothing would change. Things would go on this way forever and it was best it was ever going to get.

At least that's what she thought until she met him.

[Maeve]

28) A Different Sort of Ending



Everyone knows how the fairy tale ends. The Prince marries his poor but virtuous love and they live happily ever after. Tatiana was that maid from the scullery, abused by her step family whom through many trails and tribulations won the heart of her handsome prince. All she knew was that she was overflowing with love and adoration every time she looks at him. She just assumes that this love will conquer any obstacle and they will live out their days in peace and harmony.

The court, not quite so blinded by love, will not allow the Prince to marry a penniless nobody. There are things to consider, treaties to be made and heirs to produce. He almost abdicates in protest. He loves her and if he can't have her, there is no point in sitting on the throne. His father in a fit of wild rage almost exiles him and brings in his cousin to rule. Something the Prince agrees would be grievous injustice to his people.

His grandmother, ever practical has a better idea. Keep the little hussy, she tells him, make her a royal mistress. She says love is one of the greatest forces on the planet and thus must be kept in check. She may be a royal mistress, the one closest to his heart, the one he loves but she may not be the royal mistress. That honor will go to a noblewoman, a star of the court to honor her house. As for a wife, his wife will be of noble blood and from a great house across the sea.

He puts duty before love and agrees. Though she is deeply wounded, Tatiana refuses to give up on her Prince and would have no where to go if she didn't. However what he tells her next almost has her running to a nunnery, or even her awful kin. They can't have an unmarried women about the place. It's just not proper. She must be married, and due to the love the Prince has for her, she will be married well.

Sir Darius is a well connected man, ambitious and cold and when a opportunity to have the princes favor emerges he jumps at the chance. He has no need of a wife, so why not marry this pretty empty headed thing and wave his wedding ring whenever he needs a royal favor. They wed on a cold November morning in a private ceremony. She spends her wedding night with her Prince and her husband sails for an extended trading mission.

Everything is right with the heavens for two years. There is no couple as must in love as Tatiana and her Prince. Her love for him shields her from the harsh whispers of the court and the cold shoulder people of quality give her. She doesn't realize how alone she really is until news comes that the Princes Princess will finally be arriving at court and she is slated to be sent away.

As soon as everything settles, her Prince whispers into her hair as lie in bed together, I will bring you back.

In the meantime she is sent to live at her husbands estate in the country. A haunting structure of rude rock and imposing battlements. Still she intends to make the most of it. It will only be for a few weeks.

But the weeks turn into months. The winter celebrations are rapidly approaching, as is the husband that she hasn't seen in two years.



I don't what's gotten into me, I'm having an urge for arranged marriages and love triangles. Must be spring.

[Maeve]

29) Honorable Discharge -



There were cheery propaganda posters on the wall in some misguided venture to make this putty colored office bearable. One that read 'The Most Heartfelt Gratitude' showing a woman, beautifully dressed, rushing out the door to throw her arms about a man in uniform. They were a peaceful planet. Home to many universities think tanks and research centers. They did not, however, have space for a standing army and when the barbarians were at their gate, rather than fall like Athens to Rome, they hired their own.

They should have studied their Machiavelli. The mercenaries, when the battle was won, declared that they wanted women not credit. They promised their retiring soldiers a homestead and a wife.

Another poster showed a young woman, tired and bedraggled in her business casual suit in a cramped office longing looking through dating databanks. The next panel was the same woman well-coiffed playing with her children in a large vibrant garden. The caption read 'All This and a Husband Too!'.

"So what are you looking for in a partner?" The interminably perky caseworker asked her.

"Hmm?" Regan started, tearing herself away from the posters. She thought this was the cruelest part of the process. Not being plucked from her life and everything she held dear, it was this. This illusion of choice. She was pretty sure they used these surveys for toilet paper when they were through with them.

"Must love dogs," she said flatly,"I have pets...I will be able to bring them with me right?"

"Oh of course," the woman said again, too happily for it to be true, "I see you have two technical degrees. Nurse and Vet Tech! That's awesome! That'll put you near a town for sure, rather than sticking you off in the boonies like..."

She didn't have to finish the sentence. Regan knew. If the lottery wasn't bad enough, there was literally a bounty on women between the ages of 18 to 30. The government called it a 'reference'.

"Well I think that's about everything, just need you to sign here," She held out Regan's death warrant and a pen with an unending smile.



"Come on man, it's free pussy," Blake laughed, beating him to the showers and turning them on as hot as they went.

Nathel shrugged. He wasn't a man of many words. What he was was a good soldier. He had joined this band when he was a child. An orphan that faced starvation or life in service. He had just been grateful for three square meals a day and bed and had been for 25 years. Now his service was up and they were handing him his reward on a silver platter. He just wasn't sure whether he liked the smell.

"Even if they're just hookers and begger girls," Blake continued, "Still have it on demand."

Nathel shrugged again and stepped under the shower head.



Still on an arranged marriage kick. I'm thinking this story takes place in the same universe as Respectability is a Rocky Road.

[Maeve]

Challenged

 

The judge was crooked. No surprise there. Most of them were and most of them liked seeing men like him suffer in the gutter, just so they could punish them for being poor, punish them for trying for something better. None of this was new, almost comic, like a pantomime were everyone knew the plot and lines and say the punchline before the actor. He also saved the Judge the trouble, just send me to the colonies, he wanted to say but kept his mouth shut.

He got hard labor for sure, but it wasn't in the colonies. This judge more crooked than the rest of his ilk. He's got his own island, where he has them sort the goods he's smuggled and has them digging for...something. His own private hell where he plays the devil.

Turns out the devils got a pretty daughter.

[Maeve]

30) The Robber Brides









"He's one of them Mormons," Cursed Cox informed his compatriots as they rode, their saddlebags filled to the brim with stolen loot.

"He ain't no damn Mormon, that man would spit on God himself if he rode up to his place." Steel Watson laughed, "He's just greedy. He finds a new woman he likes, he just waits for a blizzard, locks her up at his place and lets her spend the winter getting used to the idea."

They all had stories. They were orphans of of trappers, retired working girls, half breeds, on the run from the law or girls from out east who...got lost. Somehow they all found their way into his arms, whether they were leaping into them or being dragged. They were all happy enough. They were just on the outskirts of the law. Him running his gang and them raising his cattle and growing vegetables for his table.

Until one day Wildfire nearly got him hung. Not on purpose but he doesn't quite trust her anymore. She knows the way back to his heart and it seems the heavens are on her side, when a caravan of greenhorns from out east are attacked. The only survivor their pretty young daughter.

Good thing it's starting to snow.


I'm planning on this story mostly concentrating on the women themselves and their relationships to each other, over their relationship with him. I think I would prefer this to be a group game. Maybe with four or more of us taking on several roles. If you are interested, pm me.

[Maeve]

A Town Run By Vultures

They escaped to a new world for a chance at a peaceful life. Over the years they had to keep escaping. From New England, to New Orleans to this new uncharted land. All they want to do is learn the local flora and fauna, take care of their own and live as best they can.

Then cattlemen come, letting their beasts trample their farms, and their men molest their women.

Their tired of running and they're about to teach these Cattle Barons that it's unwise to attack a Coven.

"I Couldn't Get Away ..."

Musical Inspiration

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isBPQ1GGxck

They didn't believe their hired guns at first. That the people they had sent them to 'clear out' weren't human, that they had powers. They laughed when they said the crazy bitches that lived out in the woods were witches.

Until the men refused to go into the woods. Until their cattle started dying. Until they began to curse their families.

Then they sent out a man with special talents.

Too bad the witches found him first.

[Maeve]

31) Werewolves of the Wastes



What a glorious day of revolution!

They had finally overthrown their male overlords, killed them and their human concubines to a man and taken whatever they wanted.

When the world ended, male and female werewolves had taken separate paths. They were in a stalemate with the vampires, in their impenetrable strongholds while they wandered the wastes. A harsh, hot desert that stretched for miles in which there was little water and even less to eat.

Originally they had agreed that whatever humans they found were food, what was left after vampire sweeps anyway. Until they found a group of humans who had found a way to farm in this hell. The women wanted to kill them all, and run the farm themselves. The men were swayed by the farmers offering their daughters, after all this pointed out another generation of pure born pups would lead to them losing all semblance of human features.

They turned on their own women, forcing them out of this oasis back into the desert, throwing them the occasional scraps of meat in return for what they found on raids.

Enough was enough, and as they stood in the chaos their leader couldn't help but howl in victory as her comrades gnawed on the bones of their enemies, werewolf and human alike. Once the fires have died and they have stood long enough in the ashes, they then realize that they don't know exactly how the humans ran the farm and that without men they will be the last of their kind.

That is until they find an unlikely survivor. A young human girl and her brother, both out tending sheep while they ambushed their family. Though there are many calls to turn them into dinner, their leader spares them. They need someone to grow their wheat and can hope the pup growing in the girls belly will be male.



Originally the female werewolves were supposed to be far more heroic. I'm not sure what happened. If you would like to flesh this one out a bit more with me, just shoot me a pm.

[Maeve]

Can't Wait Till Morning

 

"Sir!," she rapped quickly on the door. Hard enough for it be insistent but soft enough that it wouldn't be heard down the hall. Rat, at, rat, at, rat, at, until he finally sprang the door open with all the finality of a mouse trap. Even now she was stunned at how beautiful he always appears.

"Has it happened?" he asked, his voice rough with sleep and demonic excitement.

"Yes," she told him, unconsciously leaning forward to drink in his warmth, she had been so cold for so long, "He's dead."

"Well done my girl," he blessed her with a smile, "Quick there is much to do before the house awakes."

[Maeve]

Kissed By Fire, Shackled By Ink

 

He's always had demons about him. Not possessed exactly, but oppressed as some slick preacher in a white suit once told him. He couldn't have agreed more, as one whispered devilish thoughts in his ear about easier ways of escaping this prison. Blood is always an option the imp told him.

He just needed to get back to her.

She was demonic too, in her own way. The daughter of a demon, wrapped in very tempting mortal flesh, her hair kissed by hellfire.

He would dead or insane if not for her. It had been her talent that had not only trapped, but controlled his demon helpers. Lashing them to his flesh with her tattoo gun. He had had six when she had first met her, now they were all silent images on his skin until he needed them. Until he needed to unleash the beast. It might not have been freedom, but it kept them out of hell. The word got around. He was overcome, no matter how many tattoos he got there was always another waiting in the wings.

One night he slipped, he gave in to one of the free ones whispering in his ear. That's how he got a 18 month stretch at Sing Sing. He thought he could hold out, good behavior and then he would trap this one too.

Didn't work out, he kept piling up on his rap sheet. Fighting, fucking, contraband turned 18 months into 18 years and he can't have this voice in his head anymore.

It's why he finds himself in a stinking hoodie traded from a homeless man, whimpering like a kicked puppy at her back door.

Just one more and he can go back to being the hero of his tale.

[Maeve]

32) The Brothers



There were two goals to her mission: glean what information she could and find the traitor hidden in their midst. Not to punish them, but to recruit them. Anebella was perfect for the role. She was young, pretty and her record was clean, not even a hint that she had anything against the Authority.

The Brothers Hawthrone are perfect too. The poster boys for this new ordered society. So dedicated to their respective fields: banking, politics and the military, that they have shunned the prospect of a family. They still live together in an apartment that is more a glorified office with a three beds.

"You'll see to their needs," Her handler tells her, "You'll listen to their conversations, record their phone calls and make note of who comes over."

"Will I have to..." she trails off, a violent blush over her cheeks and bridge of her nose.

"Not unless you put it in your contract," her handler responds kindly, squeezing her shoulder, "Find out which of them would come to our side and then let me do the rest."

All goes well for three months. No one suspects that she's funneling secrets but she's still no closer to finding out which of them will flip. Then her handler goes dark and she finds her latest report in the living room with a note that reads 'Change your contract or I'll everyone what you are'.

She needs to find an ally soon.



Spies! Intrigue! Suspense! I'm cool playing any role or taking on multiple. PM me if you're interested.

[Maeve]

Assassins On The Battlefield: Captured

 

They came from different schools of thought. He was a rude barbarian, perhaps a noble savage in his own way but to his employers nothing but a creature a step above a feral dog. She on the other hand was something much darker. In life she had been beautiful, all her customers had said so. Even the last one who slit her throat rather than pay her. Still there were ways to make coin from her rapidly cooling flesh. A particularly loathsome necromancer offered them the revenge in death that they could not have in life. Perhaps not on the one who hurt you but weren't all men the same? All the better if it was taken out on troops he was paid to shuffle off their mortal coil.

They have arrived on different paths but the destination was the same, death and destruction to their enemies. Well the enemies of the men who paid for their services.

In the past the outcomes had always been the same. The battle won, he would scour the bodies for booty and she would be returned to her box to wait. This time though, this time they lost. For first time since her death she has been left to think of something other than blood and rage, and for the first time since he was a young child, he knew fear at the sight of this unnatural creature.

[Maeve]

33) May I Outlive the Revolution



I have characters for this idea and sort of a half baked idea. Anyway I love the French Revolution and I would thoroughly enjoy a story taking place during it.

The two lovely ladies are sisters, one a high class courtesan dreaming of a life of recognition of a lady at Versailles. All is going well, she has a rich and titled lover whose wife is on her death bed until she meets a young lawyer with a brain infected by Robespierre, and finds herself hopelessly in love.  Her sister has suffered these humanitarian ideas for years and plys her trade at one of Paris's lower class operas. She and the troupe have been arrested on more than one occasion for their risque and borderline treasonous plots. It was how she met him, sitting in a cell with a shocked expression that a young aristocrat would use his connections to help her avoid punishment. He had opened her cell door with one hand and offered her a bouquet of roses with the other.

The story would mostly be about how these two star crossed lovers survive the Terror and end up happily ever after. Action? Adventure? Murder Mystery? Political Drama? Straight Romance? PM me and we'll hash it out.

[Maeve]

Jinx & Fortune

**The Lady's image was a gift from, Damien


* This match inspired story that would fit neatly inside one of my other stories. At least in the same universe. Obviously this paragraph can be read as a stand alone, however should you like more background, check out my thread and look for 'The Cardinals Witch'.



"These are most grievous charges," the cleric told him over those ten cent spectacles.

"Listen," he began to defend himself, adjusting his snake adorned hat, "I ain't really a dark priest..."

"No," the cleric glared, "You're worse, you're a con man. Telling these honest souls trying to carve out a living from forsaken land that you can bring them salvation in the form of a sacred spring."

It had been a lucrative scam until he was caught. He rolled along the dusty highways until he found some small town suffering from the never ending drought that he was a dark priest, outrunning the law and in return for their hospitality he would grant them water. He had been living like a King for a few years now. He would tell them he could only cast the spell that would create their oasis at the full moon. Until then he ate the best food, sleep in the finest houses and fucked the prettiest girls they had to offer. Course he would be long gone before that sun set on the promised day.

Till the last town. Turns out these folks were a little more god fearing than the rest and they turned him into the authorities before he had a chance to lay down his pitch. Which is how he found himself shackled in a great citadel awaiting his fate.

"The sentence is death."

"Unless?" That got the clerics attention, it seemed that he did not like being a man who was second guessed.

"Yes..." He scowled once more at the convict like he wasn't worth the spit in his mouth, "Unless you can actually bring water to these good people."

"How the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

"How indeed."

Turned out the how was a young witch, a true dark priestess, caught several months back and despite months of torture refused to break. Her gift had been the ability to find water and bring about storms. A handy trick in these parched lands, but one she refused to use while her brothers and sisters were kept in bondage.

"Find a way to convince her, right your wrongs and we shall not pursue your charges."

[Maeve]

34) Snap! Snap! A piece of your soul. 


There is a witch that prowls Port Authority, that lurks about the Penn Station and hunts the Village. She's looking for the tenderest lambs she can find, before the city has it's fill of them. Normally the scraps she can find are enough for one meal but hardly satisfy, their youthful innocence long since devoured by other more mundane predators.

It's not like the old days, there are so few bright young things that she can feast one. The internet age having already scavenged their tastiest bits. Still she finds a few. Fresh off the bus, just starting semester or thinking that a career in the theater was just one knock away on the right door. Those she lures back to her gingerbread house, an artist loft in the trendiest part of town.

"May I take your picture?" She asks and they all heartily agree. With each click of her camera she takes another mouthful of their soul. Their youth maintains her. When they leave they are shells of what they once were. Hollow but perhaps better able to handle Gotham.

When Gale turns eighteen her mother gives her a bus ticket and twenty dollars, happy to have her out of the house. She's been to NY and decides on a whim to start a new life there. She thinks everything she's heard about the city must be wrong when as soon as she's off the bus a beautiful woman offers her a meal and a safe place to sleep...



I'm seeing modern day Hansel and Gretel. 

[Maeve]

The Darker Side Of The Mountain

 

The good guys won, in a fashion. Their victory looked like a gleaming city on a hill, where the other 'good guys' could live in peace and the rest lived in the shadow of a new era.

There were lots that didn't make it past the gates. Some with good cause, the one trick predators that terrorized the city, the beasts of a different color that cut deeper and the truly diabolical monsters. But there were others. Those that weren't that bad and those that were too young to have ever done bad.

"C'mon, we could be heroes," he told her with a lazy smile, his tattoos rippling to life.

"Heroes?" She scoffed, before blowing off the kneecap of a local petty warlord, "The best we could be is enforcers."

"Whatever works," he told her with a shrug.

[Maeve]

35) An Unexpected Clause -



It had been 200 years since she had sold her soul to the Sorcerer Zul Duradel. She knows because even after all this time she makes a line with chalk every morning on her cell wall. He moved her to a new one everytime she ran out of wall space.

It's the only way she can tell time here, but counting those rooms of tally marks. Endless blank days of cleaning the keep, cooking his meals, seeing the same dead or desperate eyes of all of those who came to do deals with him. Endless nights of satisfying him.

She thought this would be her eternity. Until one morning, just after she marked another line on the wall, he pulled her into a forbidden room and held out a glowing glass jar. She knows what it is even before she laid her eyes on it. It was her soul, something she thought lost forever.

"I'll give it back to you," he told her, tossing the precious jar from one paw to the other, "but I need a favor."