SPOOKTOBER DAY 10 – UNDEAD
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES: ROYALTY, DANSE MACABRE, OBSESSION
TAROT INFLUENCE: ACE OF PENTACLES, UPRIGHT
TITLE: THE MERRY REVEL
Premise: A rustic patch of marshy woods in Wales have been subject to killing sprees once every one hundred and six years. It’s almost too rare to be noticed as a pattern, but the communities interested in murder and the occult respectively had increased in number lately to where the pieces all fell in place. Now the truly dedicated creeps can go there in anticipation.
Several intrepid (ACE OF PENTACLES, UPRIGHT) documentarians have descended, ranging from vloggers to influencers to tabloid journalists, and their respective entourages bring numbers into the dozens. They mingle with each other and with locals, figuring out who’s who and what they’re about. Some are mildly morbid gloryhounds, some are casual pervs for death, fewer are actual wannabe murderers, and fewer still are true scholars, with their own dark motives.
Very few are truly expecting anything to happen, the vloggers ready to make themselves scared about night animals and imagined shadows. Of course, they don’t have to play that game for long.
The Villain: The killers are possibly vampires, some kind of aeternal undead (UNDEAD). They’ve added to their band over the years, drawing mainly from those who would be out late at night – mummers (DANSE MACABRE), drunkards, itinerant peoples, and more. Still, there aren’t many. Let’s say they’re the size of a shitty 2010s hipster band like Arcade Fire, when they let the tambourine dude out of his cage. And of course, they have a super spooky and powerful lead ghoul who is rarely seen (ROYALTY).
Horror Element: One of the scholars is convinced they are vampires and wants to join up (OBSESSION), her version of beating the reaper. No dice, kid. They only pick one special loser per one-oh-six. Who will it be? There is a deeper darkness to the crew, an evil so ancient and powerful that the modern revelers look like mayflies in comparison.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers. The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it. Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, which helps results look less generic. That said, this one turned out pretty ok. Used gemini to make the initial composition, openai to put some breughel stank on it, and shifted some stuff around a little in photopea.
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I know this would be a different story, but it reminds me of the classic Roger Zelazny novel A Night in the Lonesome October. I read in wiki that it was his last novel, in 1993. I miss him. His works were never scintillating with ideas, like Farmer or DeCamp. But he was a solid writer, excellent with descriptive prose, and could adapt to a number of styles as it suited the text. His best book, in my opinion, was Lord of Light which mixed science-fiction with Hindi mythology. The writing allowed the history of the world to unfold without needing an explanatory note at the beginning, heightening the tension throughout. But, fan rumor is that he was inspired to write it because of a throw-away line by Philip Jose Farmer: “That’s when the fit hit the Shan”. If Zelazny was a meal of steak and potatoes, Farmer was a Thai seafood soup. Both excellent, but quite different.
Everyone remembers Zelazny for his Amber series. Which are good, solid, explorations of infinite dimensions. But the books are somewhat hampered by being firmly in the sword-and-sorcery dynastic genre. The second series with Corwin’s son Merlin are not nearly as genre-hampered as the first series. The only character I really sympathized with in the first series was the lighthouse keeper Jopin. I suspect Jopin was an author surrogate.
I used to read A Night in the Lonesome October every October without fail. I should pull it off the shelf again this year. It’s due.
that’s a high recommendation there, thx.