Anne's Fiction Corner

It's time for new fiction! The long-awaited return of our Celtic Scions to the story stream commences with Wild Rovers, starring Seamus McMann with guest appearances by Alaina Bertrand, Auggie MacDonough, Ignatius Rex, Jude Shriver and Luke Honre. It is a tale of dogged determination, gods made flesh and the nagging feeling that something, somewhere, is not quite right about this situation.

There was no contest for the next story this time; Sangria won by a massive landslide, so next up will be some trials and very violent tribulations in Mexico. In the meantime, a new poll will go up momentarily to start the voting over, and, as promised, here are your reminders about what new stories you're voting for!

• If you vote for Darcy Jolie-Pitt, you'll be getting a story about two sisters trapped in a foreign underworld, trying to find their way back to the light.
• If you vote for Faruza Alinejad, you'll be getting a story about unlikely friendships and the sacrifices bandmates sometimes make for one another, physical or spiritual.
• If you vote for Geoff Matheson, you'll be getting a story about the violent clash between two pantheons, the harsh betrayal of family and the consequences of taking sides.
• If you vote for Mohini Misra, you'll be getting a story about her band undermining a corrupt raja and making difficult decisions about whether or not love can overcome evil.
• If you vote for Sophia Archimedes, you'll be getting a story about her stormy non-relationship with a certain notorious Scion.
• If you vote for Valentina Radic, you'll be getting a story about an international crime syndicate's most crafty member seeking her place in the world.
• If you vote for Vivian Landry, you'll be getting a story about her first meeting with the Titan Erebus and the unexpected results of a political alliance.
• If you vote for Will Nordstrom, you'll be getting a story about his childhood and growth into one of the last Vanir Scions in the world.
• If you vote for Winona Nelson, you'll be getting a story about the struggle of povery, the entropy of the universe and all the ways a normal woman can end up at the very bottom.
• If you vote for Yadi, you'll be getting a story about her origins as a street rat in the back alleys of Tehran and her hopes for a better life as a child of the righteous gods.

In Flanders' Fields

Question: So I noticed reading your Characters section that a lot of Scions got killed/captured then killed by the USA government. How were they able to do this? Were all the Scions Hero-level?

Alas... the unfortunate Strawberry Fields game. Its character roster is a military graveyard.

The game started with Ian Jupiter, Seamus McMann, Dierdre O'Riordan and Samuel Striker, a motley group of misfits who managed to clean up a few dangerous Titanspawn problems but were brought low by human military might. They were indeed Hero-level when they first ran into trouble with the law of the land, when their obviously augmented abilities and strange powers caught the attention of the United States government. In the first conflict between them, Sam was captured by overwhelming force and taken to a military hospital, where he was experimented upon in an attempt to figure out where his powers were coming from. The group then gained Amunet Ipi, Miles Laurent and Najarat Sekhar as they tried to heroically prevent the Titanspawn-fueled destruction of Las Vegas, but by then the government knew who half of them were and was mobilized in their direction. After a particularly spectacular battle in which Miles accidentally grew angel wings on live national newsfeeds, Najarat was killed in a tank-fight when he refused to submit to governmental authority, and Dierdre and Amunet were both captured and shipped off to the newly-created division at Langley Army Base dedicated to studying and containing magical phenomena.

Amunet died in captivity, having been thoroughly experimented on at the same time that her prophetic powers were exhausting and depleting her. Dierdre remained a prisoner for a long time; while she went up in Legend and became a Demigod in her own right, the government also had supernatural powers working for it, including Scions of equal power and carefully-placed Titanspawn agents, and she was unable to free herself alone.

Miles went underground to hide from the stir he'd accidentally caused, but Seamus, determined to rescue his cousin, rebuilt a new band of like-minded Celtic Scions to aid him after being instructed to do so in a prophecy from the Morrigan. He started with Alaina Bertrand, Jude Shriver, Luke Honre, Auggie MacDonough and Ignatius Rex, all of them now low-Legend Demigods, and they blazed a trail across the Americas looking for clues to where the captured Scions might have been taken. Luke was killed in the process, though by supernatural enemies instead of mortal ones, and was replaced by Killian Corvinus. They eventually figured out where she was being held and stormed the base in an attempt to free her.

As Legend 5 and 6 Demigods, the group of them could have succeeded fairly easily at storming a military base staffed only by mortals, but that wasn't what they were doing. There were at least four other opposing Scions in the base when they attacked it, not to mention several Titanspawn both inside and outside the containment areas. The attempt was a failure.

And future stories will talk about what exactly happened during that attempt and the events leading up to it, but so far nobody loves Seamus enough to vote him into the lead, so we'll all just have to wait. If you'd like to see a more detailed story about the problems of the Strawberry Fields gang, there are already a few fiction pieces up for them: start with All Good Things and then continue on through Troubled Waters, To Catch a Fallen Star, Angelfish and Man and Monster.

Shameless spoiler tease: the Strawberry Fields team, Seamus and Dierdre in particular, also have a future connection to the Skeins of Fate team, particularly Folkwardr, and being gone doesn't always mean you can't return. But that's a story for later!