Moe Lane

The Iquique Mount

Description: A fairly gruesome-looking taxidermy full body mount.  The mount itself is humanoid (not even remotely coincidentally resembling a ‘Grey Alien’) in form, with well-preserved skin and glass eyes; the manikin is polyurethane foam over a not-particularly-accurate internal armature.  The Iquique Mount is affixed to a wooden base, with the date “July 18th, 1980” inscribed on it. There is no obvious sign of any sort of fatal wound.

Hearthfire Agricultural Genetic Solutions

Background: Hearthfire Agricultural Genetic Solutions is a biotech corporation operating primarily in the United States and Canada, with offices in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Chile.  It specializes in practical, low-level applications of past biological discoveries after the patents run out (or become available). To give one example: Hearthfire would not have been involved in the creation of something like Golden Rice, but the company would be actively trying to make a variant of the finished product that would be available to as many people as possible, and as widely as possible.  

Gravesdigger

Description: varies.  Gravesdigger usually appears as a pistol, revolver, or submachine gun, chambered to fit whatever ammunition is reasonably available in the area.  Like most esoteric firearms, Gravesdigger doesn’t jam, corrode, or misfire; on the other hand, the artifact radiates evil strongly enough that prolonged exposure to it can curdle milk.

Department of Destandardization

Purpose: the neutralization of dangerous metaphysical concepts, procedures, and paradigms via the process of imposing collective cognitive decoherence.

Scope: possibly worldwide.  No permanent offices.

Personnel: unclear, but probably less than 500 total.  It is unclear how many members of the Department of Destandardization are fully human, in more than the strictest legal sense.

The great secret of our world is that there is no actual unified, universal system of rules and physical laws that define ‘reality.’  It’s ad hoc consensus all the way down; and pretty much anything can be added to the mix, given enough willpower and force. Unfortunately, just because something can be jammed into reality’s operating system doesn’t mean it’s going to stay there.  Most of the really esoteric stuff can’t, in fact.  That’s why magic and psionics and super-powers and Mad Science and the rest of it aren’t universally practiced; it just takes too much energy to make all of those things work everywhere, so Those Who Handle These Sorts Of Situations keep the usefully weird stuff bubbled off away from the rest of ‘reality’ so as to still get what benefits can be gotten.

Soul-Seeds

Description: a oblong metal hollow tube with a large wooden button at one end.  When pushed, a sharp needle is extended from the other end via a small spring (the process is neither blindingly fast nor painfully slow).  The needle is enchanted with a minor preservation spell; any blood smeared on its surface (from, say, being jabbed into somebody’s flesh) will remain fresh and viable indefinitely.

“The Muppets Sing The Blues”

Description: DVD, circa 1990 – 1993, with matching black plastic case.  Printed on the case’s front are the words “The Muppets Sing The Blues.” The DVD, when plays, will show a movie 124 minutes long; there are no opening or closing credits, or even a title.  Looking at the coding on the DVD provides no hints as to the origin of the film.

Plot: When Fozzie visits his cousin Jake Bearloopy in Joliet Prison, a crazy set of circumstances forces Fozzie and Jake to go on the lam.  Kermit and the gang — very much including Dr Teeth, The Electric Mayhem, and Rowlf — have to go rescue them, then rescue everybody else from the madness that follows Jake in his wake.  Guest stars: Roddie McDowell (Eldritch Haddock, Mad Scientist); Chris Farley (Jethro Jones, aspiring bluesman); Elizabeth Brooks (Sister Perpetua, nun with a heart of steel); and a remarkable number of blues singers and performers, either as themselves or as Muppets.

Weath Turcocl

Description: it looks kind of like a feathery winged turtle, or possibly a feathery winged coconut with a wild-eyed turtle head attached to it.  Weath Turcocl can fly; it’s by definition the fastest winged turtle in existence, able to outspeed a running man. Unfortunately, once it gets going the Weath Turcocl can’t turn worth a damn.

Yes, that’s the name.  A particular reality dreamer read this book at the exact worst, or best time; and so, here we are.  Dealing with the damnable Weath Turcocl. And people wonder why the relevant authorities are so careful with reality dreamers!  This is even worse than when one of the dreamers decided sunsets would be much improved with the addition of the color Surgical Pink.  The fact that she was right is irrelevant; it was still a chore and a half to get everything else in reality smoothed down afterward.

A Judgment of Ravens

350 pages. Publication date: 1973, Ballantine Books.  Author Karen Nightingale. Genre: supernatural romance, with a strong science fictional flavor.

Plot: Clarissa Templeton is a hard-hitting ‘electronic journalist’ who works the DC beat.  She’s just uncovered the biggest scoop of her career, involving a shadowy conspiracy at the heart of Capitol Hill; soon, she’s drawn into a epic battle between forces Clarissa barely comprehends.  She knows that she needs allies, but she also knows that betrayal can come from anyone. So when she meets Connor Mackenzie, CIA officer (who might be an immortal werewolf, or wizard, or something), does she listen to her head, or her heart?

Thacos

[I refuse to believe that nobody has ever thought to make this joke before.  It seems so amazingly obvious, really. – ML]

Description: a small collection of shredded meat mixed with chopped vegetables, well-spiced, well-cooked, and wrapped in a baked flour shell.  Thacos glow with Divine power, Good-aligned: once created, they remain hot and fresh indefinitely; the ingredients will also not fall out of the shell until the Thaco is consumed.  The taste is best described as being, well, extremely tasty spiced meat and vegetables, wrapped in a baked flour shell.

US Space Defense Command

(Grissom Air Reserve Base, Indiana)

Staffing: 6 US Army personnel. 2 officer (Captain and 1st Lt), 1 NCO, 3 enlisted.

US Space Defense Command did not have enough staffers to justify a contraction of the title on its own; it’s usually now shortened to USD-COM, now that there’s departmental oversight and so forth.  Internal records show that USD-COM has occupied the same small, nondescript office building at Grissom Air Reserve Base in Indiana (just north of Kokomo) since some time in 1948. This is impressive, because at the time the base was Naval Air Station Bunker Hill, and decommissioned to boot.