Moe Lane

The Academy of Saint Philomena

Location: Poughkeepsie, New York

Founded: 1791

Faculty: 400

Students: 1200, grades 9 to 12

Student to Teacher Ratio: 3:1

Colors: Purple and Green

Motto: Rectam aculeos 

This private boarding school is not where They train the nation’s mundane elite; nor is where they train the next generation of Illuminati wonder-workers.  To the dismay of new students, there are no mystic portals or labs full of ultra-tech gadgetry at the Academy of Saint Philomena (a resolutely secular institution, despite the name).  The students there take no classes on wizardry or theurgy or Mad Science or any of the rest of the dangerous, but often useful, incongruities currently being kept from the Masses. No, St. Phillie is where students learn how to keep the people with those incongruities firmly in check.

Blood Eggs

Yes, they’re eggs full of blood.  Well, not precisely blood; the xeno-species that lays Blood Eggs is compatible with our ecosystem, but it only vaguely has the same kind of DNA as do terrestrial species.  Left alone, a fertilized Blood Egg will produce a ‘chick’ as usual; but unfertilized Blood Eggs produce instead a gloopy red fluid that smells and tastes like human blood, but can be cooked the same way that chicken eggs can.  It’s absolutely unsuitable for transfusions, though.

On the other hand, it’s a perfectly good nutritional substitute for anything that lives on human blood, for everything from atomic mutant giant ticks to straight-up vampires (and the vampire thing, honestly, is what most people will care about).  About three Blood Eggs will serve as a ‘meal’ for your standard vampire, whether fresh or cooked, and eating them will keep any cravings at bay for all but the most literally diabolic sort of nosferatu.  Vampires also find that dishes made with Blood Eggs in them are much easier to ‘digest.’

Staff of the Wudwo

Description: An incredibly ancient staff made from black oakwood.  Carbon dating indicates that the Staff of the Wudwo has to be at least six thousand years old.  If there were any decorations on it, they’ve long since been scoured away by time. The same is true for any kind of organized occult or mystical powers; something was done to the Staff of the Wudwo, but by now it’s all just a warm field of general magic.

Powers: somewhere between eight to fifteen thousand people have carried the Staff of the Wudwo throughout history; whoever currently holds the staff can talk to the — spirits? Shades? Ghosts? — of any of them.  The spirits are friendly and helpful, but limited to what they personally know. They also cheerfully but not maliciously refuse to answer any questions about the afterlife.

I was originally gonna do something else but then I got distracted.

Fleet Fluoride and the Corsairs of the Carbonated Sea

So.  Candyland is real.  And terrifying.  The people who know don’t talk about it much, and they definitely don’t talk at all about how to get there, because then some idiot might actually decide to go; and you don’t visit Candyland without an understanding in place with the local warlords, and armed guards at your back.  Candylander species like meat as much as we like sweets, you see. Worse, far too many of the creatures there have not yet learned to forswear human flesh (some of those creatures wear clothes and have the power of speech).

Lyre-shoes

Appearance: a pair of expensive black leather men’s dress shoes with laces. Lyre-shoes register as magical on a deep scan, but not a superficial one.

Gelumaqa

Description: minor prehistoric water deity, Caspian region

Area of Influence: water, fishing, waterfowl, outdoor survival

Gelumaqa is a very old, and formerly very forgotten, Indo-European deity that apotheosized, thrived, and dwindled about six thousand or so years ago around the Black Sea.  What was she like, in her first incarnation as a goddess? It’s hard to say. Even this incarnation of Gelumaqa finds her memories of that period extremely hazy. Mud was everywhere, it was cold all the time, far too many of the most vivid memories involve bright sprays of blood; the goddess is fairly certain that mortals probably weren’t too happy to see her manifestation.

Gorilla-Crow

Corvis gorilla celeri

(Blame this, of course)

Description: Gorilla-crows range about three feet in length and weigh about 35 pounds.  They resemble miniature gorillas with, well, the head of a large-billed crow. Gorilla-crows typically eat insects, small lizards, some plant foods, and every form of junk food ever devised by man.  Lifespan is unknown, but studies suggest that Gorilla-crows reach sexual maturity somewhere in the twelfth year; the oldest individual found appears to be somewhere in her thirties. The cheeky question of how science managed to somehow miss the existence of miniature crow-headed gorillas for the last few decades has not yet been dignified with an answer.

Well.  They’re not really a danger to humanity, yes?  There aren’t packs of Gorilla-crows (or, as the locals mostly call them,  gokarasu) rampaging through the streets of Tokyo, mobbing and eating passerby.  For one thing, the animals are too small, and even in a group they’re not really aggressive, or violent.  But a pack of Gorilla-crows will distract somebody having lunch for long enough for one of them to barrel in, grab and run off with that person’s box of wagashi, and then retreat to share out the pastries in a safe location.  Which they’ll do: Gorilla-crows love sweets.

On the other hand; they’re smart.  Smart enough to get bribed and stay bribed with a bag of snack foods.  Smart enough to reliably recognize people who are nice (or mean!) to them.  Smart enough to not go after anybody who is obviously poor. And, in one documented case, even smart enough to go get a cop when somebody was having a heart attack.  Which means that they are definitely smart enough that the Japanese now get very, very intense when anybody looks like they want to test gokarasu to anything resembling destruction.  There’s just something about the critters that appeals.

Which is nice, of course, but it’d still be great if it could be worked out where Gorilla-crows come from. Aliens are right out, time travel is fantasy, interdimensional portals are nonsense, and surely people would have noticed the existence of crow-headed miniature gorillas before now.  So it’s probably just good old-fashioned bleeding-edge genetic engineering with the safety interlocks removed. Time to track down the lab!

…Well, I don’t know.  This is more your team’s skill set, surely?  Start by tracking the Gorilla-crows themselves.  Ask around the neighborhoods, see if there are any commonalities to how the animals got there.  Remember: however they got to Tokyo, it was probably by walking. Well, at least padding. Although if a pack of Gorilla-crows simply took the trains, surely somebody would have noticed that.

This came to me in a dream while I was napping after a combination hot tub / wet sauna / tropical shower at the spa (and damned if I didn’t need all of that, too). I then came back home, wrote it all down, and then hit Publish before I came to my senses. Because, really, this is awful. Too awful not to share.

Time Intervention File #1599-SHA-COMM

Good morning, team.  The text that you are about to read showed up this morning in an authenticated, pre-First Folio 1602 AD copy of The Merry Wives of Windsor.  Before anybody asks: yes, it absolutely is real.  Well, real now.

Zombie Cicadas

Magicicada septendecim mumia

(Blame this)

Description: imagine a seventeen year locust.  Now give it a half-eaten undead appearance, apparent mummy wrappings (actually, flaking chitin), and eyes that glow red in the dark.  And they can fly, too! …Of course they can, because that’s all the situation needed, really.

Reflective Onion

Allium cepa speculum

Description: the bulb of the Reflective Onion greatly resembles a common onion when unpeeled.  The primary difference is that the inner layers of the Reflective Onion are transparent, and indeed catch the light in a way that both sparkles, and dazzles.  Reflective Onions are both nutritious and palatable to most human-variant species.

“Build an organic hand laser,” they said.  “Make it so that people can grow it,” they said.  “Make the four or five crops you need part of the standard planetary colonization package,” they said.  And, wouldn’t you know it? They were right! It worked out fine: corn for the stock; carrot for the focusing barrel; potato for the battery; beet for the laser emitter; and a Reflective Onion as the organic focusing chamber.