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Our Story So Far, or WTF is going on here

Original post as created by by GJ and kiyakotari


My name is Simon Berendt, and I’m here to explain.

For those of you who are a little bit familiar with ‘s storytelling, the “snake crossover” (see the tag) takes place chronologically some time after the main action of the Strangeways photostories. We are also just a little style-shifted to the cybergothic side, which is only natural when it comes to crossover adventure stories. (Just as when Kiya’s guys appear in the Strangeways arc, they tone-shift out of Kiya’s decidedly more advanced tech environment and reshuffled political future.)
Nagasvoice is the principal storyteller here; Dance, Drin and Emma are her people. What GJ is writing is tangential to this extraordinary sequence, but hopefully keeps the beat and adds a little amusing interplay here and there.
People You are Meeting
I won’t dare introduce Dance, Emma, or Drin, but if you are reading this, I will assume you have met these three already.

Auren Han once worked for Zelin Industries. His rescue of Ira Zelin, their subsequent life on the run, and the collapse of their temporary haven make up the Strangeways story arc. Auren is desperately in love with Greenlaw Tewkes Barret, whose sudden reappearance in his life was the catalyst for much of the ensuing chaos and destruction he experiences.
In the Snake Crossover, Auren controls a small consulting firm that takes advantage of his previous contacts in the criminal underworld and his extensive experience with shadow operations.


Greenlaw Tewkes Barret is a well-regarded young composer who was trained by Easley Blackwood. When they were in college together, Barret and Auren were lovers. As he became more and more complicit in Zelin’s criminal designs, Auren severed the relationship. At the time of the Snake Crossover, they have reunited, but there’s a lot getting in the way of Auren’s happy ending, including Barret’s refusal to be kept hidden for his own safety.
Barret knows Drin and Dance peripherally through some common aquaintances in the music world, and has taken matters into his own hands, hand-carrying a mysterious viola case to a certainly dangerous rendezvous.

Maxwell Bennie is an ex-cop from Hong Kong with considerable forensic background. He prefers to go by Bennie. How he and Auren first got to know each other is murky, but what is known is that he once worked under Auren Han in Zelin’s Ways and Means Division. He now works as Auren’s operative in Auren’s consulting company, Atsidi. Auren has sent him to investigate worrisome trnds I identified, and to lay a trail to attact Turner, a chemtrail assassin who has targeted Drin for unknown reasons.
Bennie is meticulous, dedicated, intelligent, and quite mad.

I, myself, do not work for Auren Han. I own Strangeways House and created and secured the Strangeways network. I let Auren and his people live here; occasionally I make myself useful to Atsidi.

Other Names to Know
Pen, himself a war relic with strange modifications and a patchy memory, is a mutual friend. (There is no dollie for Pen, or his children, or his zoomorph girl.)
Turner, a very serious threat indeed, has not yet made his appearance.
We are in the Deep South, but the location is secret. Fozzie’s down-home Rancho Deluxe for rescued Kiplings (lab-created zoomorphs with many special functions in the last couple of wars) has already repelled attacks from an increasingly creepy collection of altered trackers and assassins.

Please stay tuned for further dispatches from Barret, who has just been peeled off a really horrible tour bus here.

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45 thoughts on “Our Story So Far, or WTF is going on here”

  1. The bus tour and other parts of my end are under a story filter, to avoid spamming my whole flist so much of what’s been happening. I would be delighted to add people who are interested!
    PS–hate to say it, poor Emberley, but that isn’t a truly *horrible* bus tour. In my experience, it’s only a *typical* one. Now, a horrible one…*cracking knuckles over the keyboard* hmmm…

  2. I think there’s a place in this particularly flexible world where your characters exist and intersect with these guys too..

  3. And well you should. ^__^

    I have been trying to be pretty discreet about Simon, because his bit might or might not mesh with the ambiance, in Snake Crossover Land.

    Besides, he can be quite a technical boy if need be.

  4. If you can build bug boys that are half cyborg, I bet you can build or clone your favorite fictional characters. There might be dozens of cranky pet Sherlock Holmes models on the used lists because everybody *knows* what a pain they are to live with.

  5. Oh, Kiya’s people make mine look like Mennonites, as far as technology goes.

    Tricky bit about Simon is that he is seething with magic. In Strangeways proper (Strangeways Prime?) that’s why his house is just a little bit bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and why he signed on to help Ira, who was trapped by a geas.

    That said, Simon is also very good with machines. Think of him as a kind of vital, insatiably curious 18th century scientist-mage, someone whom Goethe would appreciate.

    In a world seething with bug mods, Simon might be the tinkering sort.

    Subtle, he is.

  6. Oooh, that might explain how Emma/Evol Twin Skippy managed to pull off a few things, if she had help like *that*. I knew it couldn’t be solely high-tech bug-style, or else they’d have figured it out and stomped her long before she ever got going.

  7. Well…if you just refuse to buy the basic science-magic opposition and start…well, say, start from Goethe–

    You could get an interesting primordial soup from which to derive bug modifications and rather elegant uses of music.

  8. Me too. Patterning? Movement of sound through solid bodies?

    I played a Chamber Harp by Pratt the other day. Felt the vibration very low in my body, very deep and queer. Got kind of smitten with the sound, unfortunately (expensive stuff, harps). But it makes me think quite literally about the therapeutic properties attributed to harp sounds. String sounds?

  9. Mmmm, fascinating. And there might be all those interesting effects of stringed instruments you play up close against your body, like guitar and violin. Piano harps are bigger, but more distant. Isn’t it intriguing that Dance *was* playing violin, an now he’s interested–with more body mass to him–in a slightly larger instrument of the same general sort, the viola?? I think that’s fairly unusual in string players, they sort out pretty early in their training.

  10. I know a guy – grew up with the kid. He’s one of those musical prodigy types. Played violin like a pro by the time he was six or something. Last I checked, the kid played almost thirty different instruments. I used to play flute – he picked the damn thing up, asked me something like two questions, and rattled off a quick little almost-melody. He’d never touched one before. Freaky-awesome.

  11. I’m having intriguing notions of Simon as somewhere between Leonard of Quirm and Doctor Who, with maybe traces of a few other amusing folks (the crazy professor in Back to the Future) thrown in.

  12. Now, the fact that I have never, ever thought of the completely obvious parallel with The Doctor…? Suggestive. **looks at Simon squinty and sideways**

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