Outrun the Scythe: A Tale of Daemons and Immortals (Updated 8/3)

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🙠 Outrun the Scythe: A Tale of Daemons and Immortals 🙢

"I would outrun the scythe, glaring with failure.
It is a mere destiny I thought,
A threshold I had crossed before."

- Opeth, "April Ethereal"

Ironstars / Chapters / Stats and Stuff

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🙠 Chapters 🙢

🙠 Prologue 🙢

0.0 / 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3 / 0.4 / 0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7 / 0.8 / 0.9

🙠 Generation One: Heathcliff and Sheila 🙢

1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3 / 1.4 / 1.5 / 1.6 / 1.7 / 1.8 / 1.9 / 1.10 / 1.11 / 1.12 / 1.13 / 1.14 / 1.15 / 1.16 / 1.17 / 1.18 / 1.19 / 1.20 / 1.21 / 1.22 / 1.23 / 1.24 / 1.25 / 1.26 / 1.27 / 1.28 / 1.29 / 1.30 / 1.31 / 1.32

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(Reserved, actually saving the stats page for later lol)

[Trip]

🙠 0.0 🙢

Vega Ironstar became immortal so she could help others, or so the pitch went. It was the ultimate expression of sacrifice, kindness, and being a daemon. It was a way to forever help humans in their short and unhappy lives. For the smiles on their faces and the legacies they wouldn’t leave behind otherwise.

She did it alongside her own ambitions too, but the humans and living forever were supposed to come first. Vega would die an old woman too without a special plate of ambrosia every week. She had to train her son in that. So she was a busy woman. Because of that, most humans respected that and wanted to be like her, except with the spectre of death looming above them. It was the greatest bond between two cosmic brothers, forged when daemons first discovered that humid planet.

But of course, some of her mortals would argue against it and their entire history. And they would die, and lifetimes were becoming a thing that passed in the blink of an eye for Vega.

In fact, her son pushed an errant mortal out of the house that morning!

She fainted, and Samhain was too busy with the new baby to catch her. That woman was dead for over twenty years and buried in the basement, and those who died stay dead. Of course, there were bad actors among daemon-kind who raised the dead for selfish reasons. But Vega, selfish? She hardly knew the word. Nothing wrong with the humans disputing it, she never identified with them anyways.

That girl was one of the worst they had to offer to her, but it didn’t start out that way. The town was full of nicer people than Vega expected, as if they were already used to daemons and their customs. And then there was her.

“I want to ask your son out…it’s been on my mind my whole life.”

Sheila Drudge, who spoke without being spoken to.

“Do you think this is a game of love? It’s a game of matchmaking and I’m the only player. If it’ll ruin your life then I’m glad to have ruined it.”

It wasn’t meant to be controversial. It did affect the rest of their friendship though, since Sheila could never leave their household. Their almost-familial relationship turned into one where they barely spoke at all. Sheila still painted portraits of the Ironstars and raked leaves outside and it didn't seem to bother her. And if it did, it could end. That was the best part about death.

Powered by spite and the same ambrosia Vega and her family ate, that woman resurrected herself anyways. At least Screwtape was ready to deal with his unrequited lover. He never looked so angry and his patience with her during her first life was galactic in scale.

That patience would probably not be shared by her fellow daemons. They still had resurrection in the law as a punishable crime. She agreed even when her head was now in their line of fire.

Although she didn’t want to do it, the entrance to the garden of her judgmental peers was closer than anyone could have guessed.

In the house’s deepest chambers, there was a heavy door that Vega locked to her whole family. She said it was where she did her alchemy, which was true to some extent. Shelves of elixirs lined the walls of the secret room. She even kept a Philosopher’s Stone down there...no relation to any Philosophers she knew.

Her chamber was a warm room, an odd choice for a house in the muggy depths of Twinbrook. But it was dry, warmed and dessicated by a few torches that perpetually burned. Vega had plenty of things she could take with her, but those weren’t the most important.

“I need to look presentable,” she told her magic mirror. Her hair was getting dry from the stress of welcoming a new baby. “If I walk into the Philosophers’ Garden with my hair like this, it will be an even bigger scandal than Sheila is.”

“No prob, Bob! One headwrap from your bedroom comin’ right up!”

Why did she even program him to speak like that? Good thing that silk scarf from a New Orleans flea market turned out to not be a waste. Usually the people of Twinbrook didn’t care.

She figured that the philosophers would accept her better with a gift as well. Beeswax turned to gold would be easy to smelt into coins and golden threads for stitching clothes with.

Vega used to fear it, having watched her cousin get torn apart by a million golden shards by the same thing.

She was the master of alchemy that Vega swore to never touch. Meanwhile, her mind was going to be better suited to law and making decisions for daemons far above her. Joining the philosopher’s would keep Vega safe, but her cousin did not have that option. And she would never, dying on the spot instead. Vega tried to pick up the pieces and pour the contents of their shelves onto her. Something in them could heal her. They had science and magic on their side equally.

But even the forces of them combined could not.

One of her last memories of the Philosophers’ Garden was not of her induction into it or a winning mental argument. It was a funeral, where they all dressed in green in her cousin’s honor. She loved the forests where her human family set up their camp and the grass under her bare feet. Vega never carried the tradition of funerals on earth, but she said that two in her life were enough. The loss of her cousin was the worse of the two.

She missed those nights around their firepit when she spent summers with the only humans she knew. That connection would never be found again. But who’s fault was that but a cruel world?

In fact, she was forged to be cold about it, barely allowed to cry so Aunt Holi could have a shoulder to cry on.

It still made her chest tighten when she finished with her own golden trinkets. She was still alive, after all, as it seemed she was destined to be.

“I’ve always missed you,” she said to her stone, like it was haunted by the last person who used it.

Vega knew her way back to the Philosophers’ Garden. At least she didn’t pick the wrong door and end up on the lonely asteroid her uncle retired on. The garden wasn’t on an asteroid or anywhere tangible in space, which Vega preferred. She wouldn’t get whipped by a sandstorm or volcanic ash there. It existed in a void, in a hole in the seams of space, or even in the bowels of Hell if she had to explain it to a human. Springs and ponds existed without water and plants bloomed without any anchor for their roots.

It was magical, even if the greatest minds of daemon-kind were there to find the tangible causes for all of it, debate over it, and pen laws for its spaces.

Usually, the garden was a busy affair. Before she left, it bustled with discourse, hearings, and worshipping Savazhiva-ma. Her toothy idol was in the corner and Ma was the only deity everyone smart could agree on, or at least the ideas of.

Music filled the garden’s vacant spaces, and every philosopher who arrived was greeted by their superiors. Obviously there would be a scholarly schism within a few minutes of it, but arguing was healthy. Otherwise they would be tightly-knit and kind like Death’s acolytes.

But there was none of that any more. No reasons or turmoil in sight.

Vega got dressed for nothing.

“Only the second worst thing to happen here,” she mumbled.

Vega hated many things, but wasting time was one of the most heinous of them. And yet she wasn’t able to figure out who was wasting more time: her or the absent philosophers. When would anyone catch her up about new discoveries? What else turned into a supernova? What new maps were drawn? And of course, someone would ask about the immortal lifestyle. She was looking forward to that and didn’t know who took it away.

And even worse were her own emotions, which never bubbled up unless it was displeasure. Now Vega wallowed in that every day. The rest were foreign and she wanted to throw herself into the well in the center.

Speaking of the well, it usually stayed still unless someone was swimming through it. Even a philosopher could get rowdy, but unless this was a horrible surprise party, who was there to do so?

She always had a fear of the new host of law and order…

“Oh dear, I knew there would be a lot to explain.”

Even with her eyes covered by large sunglasses, Aunt Holi was a face that Vega would never forget. She was the only other one who wanted to be the at the funeral, though she got over what happened a lot quicker. It was her daughter, but someone she also never saw. She dropped that child off with her father and left in the night.

And to be fair, she wasn’t Vega’s favorite relative. But one who could tug at her heartstrings? For sure.

The only problem was how Holi usually arrived with dignity and dressed in long gowns. She did like to take vacations, though. Someone was taken from her private island in the rebuilt Maldives or the seas of Europa. At least she still had her youth that Vega couldn’t retain. Even Holi’s brother Pilona was becoming a weary old man too. But sometimes what stayed depended on what was valued. Holi’s asset was always being dark, fashionable, and shiny.

“How did you find me? What does this mean about...I didn’t resurrect her! I didn’t mean to do any of this, and I hate this place now, and--”

She could only run away. It wasn’t a huge garden and she risked falling off the edge of it and into a wormhole or a limbo for dead stars and fading daemons. But there was always a game of Go.

It was a hard game to play alone for most, but Vega was used to knowing every move in advance anyways. That made Sheila’s resurrection that much worse. If she just let Marco’s line die out or if she threw her urn into the river, then it all could have been avoided. But she had no sign to do either.

Otherwise, she improved Twinbrook. Just ask anyone who wasn’t Sheila. Or Sinbad. Or Zo with her seven kids, but she seemed to love them…

“Isn’t it interesting, how being surrounded by eight in this game is a loss. Yet when eight of you surround a village of Earth, it is what improves the lives of many on earth,” said Holi. Her Go army took one of Vega’s stones.

“Well, it’s not lost on me,” she said. She held her breath, with her cheeks straining and puffing out. There was a lot she never discussed with Aunt Holi. The argument over the dynasty went by in a whirlwind.

There was a lot of physical pulling right after a funeral, but at least it was fast.

From the words of Uncle Pilona: “Would you waste a brilliant mind on Earth? Don’t do this to us, you’re not meant for that kind of work.”

But the winning argument came from Aunt Holi: “Nonsense, you’re the only person who can continue V’s work, and it fits perfectly into being an immortal. All the plans about healing and moving past metal scarcity isn’t a waste of a mind in the slightest.”

“Mining is the only thing we do.”

“This isn’t about our business at all…”

With her interest in mining well into the negatives, Vega ended up scouting out locations to live in on Earth. It took her to a swamp and penned a story that was supposed to last a lot longer than it did. She had a great-great-grandson of all things, but it was supposed to be more.

A town surrounded by eight, as Holi said.

“V’s probably disappointed in me,” she said. Vega took to the ground and sighed hard. She still couldn’t bring herself to cry about it, but it was the closest she ever got.

“You had to have gotten far,” said Holi.

“My grandson has a grandson.”

“Then nothing’s lost. Let him into your basement to figure out your secrets.”

“Secrets that killed your daughter? And I can’t even warn him--”

Holi took a seat on the ground next to her, putting an arm around Vega for the first time in a while. It made Vega shed one tear. “Apamiveka, dear, you also like chess, another game where eight different classes battle.”

“Do you think he’s ready for this?”

“We don’t have to tell him about V.”

“I have my concerns, he’s only an infant. And now there are some bad influences I never thought would come back,” Vega said.

“Surely your family wasn’t that dysfunctional. I did abandon my daughter after all.”

“It’s a long story I need a PR tour for…”

[CeresIn]

Wow I don't know where to begin, Vega's world expanded in this way it's intriguing, not to mention that gorgeous garden. This first chapter of the prologue has me hooked, looking forward how Vega and Holi scheming affect Heathcliff.

[Trip]

Wow I don't know where to begin, Vega's world expanded in this way it's intriguing, not to mention that gorgeous garden. This first chapter of the prologue has me hooked, looking forward how Vega and Holi scheming affect Heathcliff.

@CeresIn thank you! That particular lot takes forever to render thanks to how many flowers it takes to carpet the ground. Though you run into the same issue with museum pieces eventually due to the sheer numbers (once the lot loads it's better don't worry) The ladies will have their moments and I'm definitely not wrangling them to shoot another chapter as I type this out.

[Chubling]

Yeeeeeeees. This is a very interesting start. I love the aesthetics of this whole post! Everything is so creepy and beautiful and mysterious in that other world. And I love Sheila! Mess up those Ironstar plans! Get your happiness! Or at least an actual real shot at it away from Screwtop and his crap. Tho, in is defense, Sheila, come on, what was he supposed to do? Resist the lips? Please.

[Trip]

Yeeeeeeees. This is a very interesting start. I love the aesthetics of this whole post! Everything is so creepy and beautiful and mysterious in that other world. And I love Sheila! Mess up those Ironstar plans! Get your happiness! Or at least an actual real shot at it away from Screwtop and his crap. Tho, in is defense, Sheila, come on, what was he supposed to do? Resist the lips? Please.

@Chubling: it's almost a shame we have to mostly hang out in the real world, especially in the first gen. But I also really like the down to earth chapters so it's meant to appeal to someone.

We'll be hearing from Sheila...now! It would have been this morning without the site outage.

[Trip]

🙠 0.1 🙢

If you want to know what death feels like, you have to take it from the dead.

You fall. There’s no end in sight for the longest time, and the cliche of your life flashing before your eyes happens there. It happens in between screams as you fear death again, after whatever agony you suffered.

My death was peaceful, even if I was being insulted by a family member right before it. I was not as keen on my life and very little made it fulfilling. I left behind my son and my fiancé, who had to watch, but thought mostly about the former. My dearest Marco, the son I wondered if I’d ever have. He had a girlfriend that I didn’t think he was in love with, and the rest of the family was wary of him for even existing.

Marco and I were both born into a house of daemons that we weren't allowed to leave. I at least never questioned the rule. As much as I loved my mum, Eva, I blame her for it. She was naive and having second guesses about marrying my dad. So she took a daemon’s word on having a haven for her and a child while under their wing.

Mum and dad made up, but that mistake would last for generations.

They could hate me all they wanted to, even if that still hurt. I think it’s what killed me like a horn rammed through my chest. For Vega Ironstar, the old grey daemon acting like my parent and captor all at once, it was a sudden change. Once my own mother died, any of Vega’s love for me died too. And I wondered if she faked it all along.

But it was probably about Vega’s son, Screwtape. The grey man who should have been my fiancé even more, who should have fathered my son, who promised so much and gave so little back.

He kissed me before and I felt his fangs on my tongue. He even said he loved me, he implied he was trapped in a loveless marriage, but nothing changed either. He still stayed with his wife and never talked about it again.

We may have partied too hard the night before.

At best, he set me up with my actual fiancé, Heath. Heath reached into lonely places within me. But no matter how much he gave, I couldn’t repay the favor because I was obsessed with another man for the rest of my life.

But before I could make peace with any of it, I hit water and plunged to unknown depths. That was where everything changed. Water didn’t fill my lungs, though it wouldn’t have made a difference. I didn’t expect rescue but a pair of hands hoisted me up anyways.

I grabbed them. They were lotion-soft and smelled like wild cherries.

I expected Charon himself, because I read Greek mythology like any good high school student (still failed it though). But I hit my head on the motor of a speed boat on my way up. I had so many questions for Charon.

Or who it really was.

Although she hid behind a hood and wore thigh high boots (she'd never!), I recognized her almost immediately. If Screwtape was my first love, then she was the first one to love me back before Heath was even even born. Or so I wondered was the case. It was something I was scared to bring up again to anyone.

And it all started in the same place. We all grew up in Twinbrook together, or just outside of town...

We had prom in the school’s gym. They didn’t even put away the basketball hoops so we had to make it special in our own way. I only wanted a dance with Screwtape. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He didn’t have a prom date. He didn’t even have a male friend to be his wingman. It was just the two of us, the world’s most unpopular teenagers.

Screwtape never got my hints.

And I gave no hints to Cara Lyffe, which is because I didn’t know her well. She was a year older than me, ruddy-skinned, and her dad was a social worker. That was used to threaten some of us into behaving, but not by Cara.

She wrapped her arms around me for a dance, no questions asked. Even if she asked, I knew I wouldn’t say no either. I almost never felt the warmth of someone else. My mum often stayed in her own world.

I would have guessed that Cara was the opposite of whatever species Vega was. The way she stared into my soul was full of tenderness. It reached out to me like my father’s embrace. Did I mention that he passed away right before prom? She couldn’t have known.

Maybe Cara knew all along.

For years I treated Screwtape as the one who got away. Because we lived together anyways, it was always so close to me. He and his wife had the room right next to mine, so I saw and heard everything that I was missing.

Cara disappeared more subtly. Although high school was nice, we graduated and went to different universities. I didn’t answer the RSVP to her wedding, feeling fire in my cheeks when I thought about it and not knowing why. Our kids were too far apart for playdates. Finally, around the time her daughter grew up, no one picked up the phone again.

I thought she hated me, but becoming a servant to the dead was a much better excuse. But did that make her a daemon as well? How complicated was that world beyond Earth? I shuddered at the thought.

“Hey, I tried to leave a voicemail,” said Cara.

“I...uh...I changed my number and all’s forgiven?” I said. “I wish I knew more about this.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Cara helped me on board, not caring about the water dripping from me. She was still as beautiful as I remembered her, while I aged as much as anyone. And she almost made me forget about how I should have loathed her for being part of the daemonic world.

There was so much I could ask her. What was she hiding from me about Vega? Did she even know about her? And why were they immortal anyways? What was the point? Clearly they dabbled in death, I had nowhere else I could have gone to but the land of the dead itself.

“So...you have to explain the speed boat.”

“Our boss sometimes gives us an upgrade,” said Cara. “But she’s as stubborn as she is kind, at least you only have to deal with us.”

“And is this just part of Vega’s sick playground?” I asked her.

“Kill me if it is. I know Barry makes fun of her kind all the time, and you have an appointment with him, talk about your sins or just the rest of your life I guess.” She quickly looked around the islands near us. I at least figured that my sins were mundane, outside of trying to break up Screwtape’s marriage. “Yeah, it’s gonna be a bit of a ride there.”

I actually recognized her dad behind us, wearing the same hood and thigh high boots getup and reclining near where Cara docked her boat. His old job was taking away neglected children after all, a life far more traumatic than this.

She put her key in the ignition, and I clutched her vinyl seating.

“Wahoo! Call me uber-Charon, ladies!”

Looking to my side, I at least got my answer as to where pets went after death. One of the servants of death hugged a furry airedale mix.

“We don’t get every human down here but we try to get every dog,” said Cara. “Oh, and I dunno if you ever met my mum, but that’s her. We’re all born to serve Death and believe me, it was a huge shock!”

“Wait, she owned the pizza shop,” I muttered to myself. It was a hipster-y place right outside of Twinbrook with brick ovens and pinball. And those pizzas fueled a lot of parties. “Uh...so it’s not all humans?”

“You need to meet a daemon before Death really cares about you, and there are so many more swamps like this. But I think experiencing nothing is a lot better...no offense to you. We don’t have a choice in this. You screwed up by meeting me.”

“Or being raised by Vega.”

She looked towards the steering wheel and became very quiet.

“Fine, I hope my parents and uncle Harwood were at least happier than me,” I said. It wasn’t like anything was ever fair to me before anyways, compared to anyone. The only humane thing to do was to get my mind to stop racing.

“Hey, I hope they were too.”

And our boat ride was over. Cara implied it would be longer, but this wasn’t my waterway.

I meekly approached Barry when we docked, hanging my head down. Of course I felt humbled, but I was also tired.

He dressed the same as the others: hood, modest top, hot pants, and those high boots again. And he must have had a life on Earth before this, much like Cara and her family, with a name like that. My only consolation prize was that he was far better looking than Cara’s dad...with no offense to her. She looked like her mother’s daughter instead.

“Sheila? We got ya early,” he said. He had a very clear voice, forged from a city I had never lived in. But he must have had a life on Earth like Cara did.

“Regrettably.”

Barry escorted me to one of the wicker seats, keeping the tip of his scythe only inches away from me. At least it still smelled like being stuck in the tall grass of Twinbrook’s swamps.

“This is unreal, you have to know that,” I said to him. “And can you put that thing away?” His scythe's blade could have poked my eye out.

“Imagine how I felt when I was told what my new job would be,” he said. “The scythe is the best part of it, even for you guys.”

“I want to trust you on that.”

He then sat further away from me, so I felt a little safer. But if there was a barrage of questions for Cara, then Barry had the same ones. And different ones, for a man or daemon that I never met.

“What is even going on here?” I asked him.

“Just my family’s business,” he said. “It’s like a funeral home…”

“...run by daemons.”

“Now you get it.”

“You do know your kind is awful, right? That some of us are here because daemons ruined our lives? What can people like me do to trust you?”

He looked at his scythe, gripping it with both hands. “I know it’s hard to talk to a man with a weapon. I never really think about it, there are as many of us as there are of you. I could hate humans for a lot of things too. Ever hear about the potato famine?”

“Of course I did! It’s different when you’re reeling from what happened for your whole life.”

“Like famine victims?” Even beyond his hood, I could see Barry rolling his eyes at the thought.

“I...I know. But I don’t know how to feel about any of this. I lived a whole life for this? I died unloved and I didn’t have a way to escape it, and…”

I tried to escape Barry’s island. I got up and walked towards the edge of it, thinking that a super-powered daemon couldn’t catch a dying old woman. But I bumped into his blade. It could extend out further than any weapon I had seen before.

“Can this just be over?” I asked him. “Hit me with the scythe if you must.”

“As many doctors say, it won’t hurt one bit. And I’m sorry ‘bout all this.”

“Really?”

“Wish there was more I could do about it. At least there are cool parts to being a ghost.”

I looked up as Barry jumped and lunged towards me with his scythe. That was when I knew he loved his job. His devious grin told a longer story than any of his words to me could. And he knew his craft better than I did, because it didn’t hurt at all.

My skin and spirit separated, but it wasn’t painful.

The blow knocked me to the ground so I could split into two. I felt my bones from inside of me as I got up.

Barry ended up helping me to my feet.

“You’ve been a good human, even if you tried to break up a marriage,” he said, taking my hand. I felt my spirit fading away in his grasp. “We’ll see ya later."

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“Maybe I am a little, we can't revisit every case.”

"I'm not even gonna ask..."

And I was gone. Plunged into darkness but aware of it. Time slipped away yet dragged on slowly, and worst of all, my parents never visited. They probably got a private beach for spirits or for my mum, a nice little library.

But I got nothing.

”Did you know that one?” Barry asked Cara. “I remember being that miserable too.”

“She was an Ironstar,” Cara muttered. “And it’s unfair to die as one. I didn’t even know that I’d miss her this much, and I didn’t even try to save her from that, and...can you not mistreat her?”

He looked up to the great blackness above him while Cara burst into tears.

Barry sighed. “If you insist, Cara.”

As time went on...

I was not the friendliest ghost they could have known. In my solitude, I yelled and cried and kicked and screamed. But for a while, I figured they weren’t listening.

But even the chambers of Death had thin walls like any crummy apartment.

I could hear them too, sometimes. Or I wanted Cara’s voice to ring in my head forever as the years stretched on, and I wondered if I had grandchildren and what they would learn about me.

Did it trouble her? Did it trouble Barry? In a strange way, I wasn’t surprised when his red hand appeared to dig me up from the deep. He gripped me like a vice, and I would follow him anywhere, even through a well.

And that was how I returned.

For the last twenty-something years I had been a silver ghost, dressed in the same cocktail dress I died in. I was surprised when it was real though, back in a familiar swamp with Barry holding my hands.

“Some of us have to sleep,” he said.

“If this is for punishing me, then--”

“It’s for punishing Vega. Or to see your new grandson, or something we’ll revisit. You have to get there fast.”

“There? Fast? Grandson? Punishment? You’re kidding me, Barry.”

Cara grabbed my arm and I instantly relaxed. Could I even relax as a ghost? Whatever energy held me together was much more loose.

“All I can say is that I said we should resurrect you. Everyone deserves a nice life,” she said. “Or, well, I couldn’t stop thinking about you and it came to a head. And then my daughter told me that Marco and Alhena finally got together.”

“Wait, you gotta be kidding me too!”

“We’ll explain the rest later, that’s not really what’s important.” said Barry, as we walked towards a door that would take me to my remains. I had a good idea of where they were but not any of the fine details. It’s not like I was allowed to ever visit my mum’s urn and tell her all my regrets. Or see her ghost. Before I died, I was 50/50 on whether they existed or not. Or if Barry ever let her out.

For a moment, I didn’t even know if I wanted to live again, even though I was a miserable ghost. But I had a grandson! I was gone for a while, since I only remembered Alhena as a little kid. A bratty little girl like her mum was, but Marco needed someone forceful in his life. Or not. I missed out on a lot of his life too.

At least my grandson had no choice but to be adorable between the two of them. I couldn’t wait to see him.

“I can’t thank you enough.” I leaped up into Cara’s embrace, which was easy because I was weightless.

“No problem, and remember one thing,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Vega can’t hurt you anymore. But she’ll probably want to.”

“That doesn’t sound new...so what are you doing now?”

“I have to find my daughter and have a long talk with her,” said Cara. “You know, about joining us underground or raising a teenager, just the usual stuff.”

“Well…I shouldn’t stop you. I know I’ll be busy.”

I still don’t know how she left without anyone noticing. Her daughter had to have still lived in Twinbrook or close by. And she had a grandson too? I almost wished we could have had a normal life together.

I had my doubts about their food raising the dead, but if nothing else, I’d finally know what it tasted like. Screwtape compared it to “the most pungent of durians, the most sweaty of Samhain’s gym socks and other equipment, and the best part is that I and my marital partner can both cook it!”

Well, if this wasn’t what Clarissa had in mind either, then it felt and tasted even better. I thought it was more like blue cheese, my favorite salad topping and wing dip of course.

The real question was who left it out? I assume they'd get blasted by Vega for it even without my presence.

And it worked. I floated like a spectre but felt my skin coming back to me in patches. It was warm, it was exciting, it was the kind of disobedience I craved.

“I struck magic! I can’t wait to see the look on Vega’s face when I--”

“Oh Sheila Jane Drudge, if you thought you would come back to life for a friend, you have come back for an enemy instead!”

Unfortunately, nothing was going to change Screwtape. It was a lesson learned far too late.

[Chubling]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Cara! I...don't remember her but I love her. She's a stunner and I am on Team Sappho. Berry has a sense of style I deeply approve of. The best part, obviously, was the dog. Stole the entire show. A+. Very good boy. I'm so excited to watch all the drama unfolding. Yes chaos!

[Trip]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Cara! I...don't remember her but I love her. She's a stunner and I am on Team Sappho. Berry has a sense of style I deeply approve of. The best part, obviously, was the dog. Stole the entire show. A+. Very good boy. I'm so excited to watch all the drama unfolding. Yes chaos!

@Chubling: Cara was one of those characters I made up entirely for Outrun. Let's not kid ourselves. Being the child of two service NPCs is an excuse to say "well she grew up just outside of town!" and not accept any questions (kidding!) I do wish I had a red line for the Ironstars to marry into back then, but I accepted my fate with Alhena pretty quickly.

So of course I have a ship among many for Sheila since everyone adores her now, but at least you like my extras who butt in too because you better get used to it!

[Chubling]

I am glad I didn't forget such a great face! I do love the Twinbrook npcs! Or that Sheila had a brush with the ladies! I am waiting to make up my mind about which ship I'm going to get on for Sheila, but it will be captained by a lady, because she deserves far better than a man!

And Mozzy Weller! It's always fun to see her around. She can add some real spice to a sims line, though I am bad about remembering her. Twinbrook has so many great npcs it's so hard having to pick. I use Al all the time though, as he is one I actually noticed was red. Is Mozzy on the red slider too?

[Trip]

@Chubling: Mozzy is red! There are two other Twinbrook service NPCs on it too (Bill Copperfield and Mollie Kewell) but the Mozzy x Al pairing won out when I was playing around. A lot of Twinbrook's service NPCs are older so they age out of their roles before I think to get a pizza or set things on fire so it's more like I want to have fond memories of them but have to create my own. I want to think that I had a dynasty attempt where I got Al in as a pollinator but abandoned it. He's very close to elder so it's like he was custom made for the role and everything.

I do get my dream of a big family for Al because it does get kind of crazy the more people we meet. Mostly characters created outside of usual gameplay but no one has to know.

[mpart]

I absolutely love the lore in this. It's just *chef's kiss.*

I have no idea who I am rooting for right now. On one hand I want Sheila to succeed to spite Vega but on the other hand I love the Ironstars. They all have such distinct personalities.

Also the editing, sets, and poses for this story is fantastic. 

[Chubling]

@Chubling: Mozzy is red! There are two other Twinbrook service NPCs on it too (Bill Copperfield and Mollie Kewell) but the Mozzy x Al pairing won out when I was playing around. A lot of Twinbrook's service NPCs are older so they age out of their roles before I think to get a pizza or set things on fire so it's more like I want to have fond memories of them but have to create my own. I want to think that I had a dynasty attempt where I got Al in as a pollinator but abandoned it. He's very close to elder so it's like he was custom made for the role and everything.

I do get my dream of a big family for Al because it does get kind of crazy the more people we meet. Mostly characters created outside of usual gameplay but no one has to know.

I have a whole ritual when I play normally that involves moving npcs/homeless sims into homes before I start. I also tend to not turn aging on for a week or so just to let sims settle in and have a chance at some babies before the older ones die/age up. Otherwise I found I was just sticking to a few favorites and I like genetic surprises around town. Though, granted, I've always had a thing for the homeless sims and npcs vs the starting townies, so I tend to try and keep them around as much as I can.