Vroom vroom / Demo Disk Launch
Busy month, love a manic period
First off: I bought a car. Been looking at doing so for a while; my old Mini was old enough to go to college, so I was due to upgrade. Now I have a new, electric, Mini. Listen I like Minis I will not apologize.
The range is middling but it's apparently not like I drive far in the first place. You lose a little something, driving a computer on wheels, but it's nice to not be using petrol at all anymore. I feel better about driving. And it doesn't feel like the car might fall apart so that's nice
Second off: Demo Disk is back! I've been wanting to get back on the video train and this was an easy, familiar way to get things rolling. Demo Disk is an old project of mine, highlighting video game demos and prototypes that are interesting in some way. Of the things that got me into XOXO, it's... middle on the proud scale. RCRDList was accidentally huge, after all. That's a different story.
Right now I'm focusing on roguelikes, since that's a deep well, as I work on making the whole thing more distinct from Iron Pineapple's Steam Dumpster Diving. It's still at that point of a creative project where it's a blatant rip of its influences, the way Vapormage was when I was planning it all out, so the next step is to find my own voice and my way to make it distinctive. Hopefully I'll get there in an episode or three, and then maybe it'll get some significant viewership (though triple digits is nothing to sneeze at for me).
Look at these things
Currently reading: Mostly research and paperwork around the new car let's be honest
Currently listening: Children of Mirror by Mabisyo. I have a regular chat thing with Redacted (the bloke what's been helping me edit Vapormage and the sort) where we toss music back and forth in a sort of hipster slapfight. This is what he sent most recently. It's not bad!
Currently playing: Balatro, like everyone else who's even vaguely into roguelikes. I'm not that good at it, haven't gone to the exponents yet, but it is such a strong Steam Deck game. I should make a video on it maybe...
A little story
Because I've been focusing on other things, I haven't whipped up a solid vignette for the newsletter. My bad. So, instead, have a draft scene from Vicehunter, with Vapormage side character Rocko Larson working the eponymous job in Zeimatia. Under a false name, because... reasons.
The days around the solstice would be as busy in Tirasena as they were in Candhall. The Zeimatian capital was on the coast, and so while it wasn’t a city driven by sea traffic, the port was bound to be busy. It had been since shortly after Rocko moved to town. So he was unsurprised when Valentich told him the two would be dispatching to the port for an interrogation.
They drove, slowly weaving the compact autocar between pedestrian and tram traffic. The city hadn’t adjusted itself for Banner’s fleet of vehicles the way most of Cymona had, so even something smaller than a vintage carriage would struggle to push a path through. Rocko could drive—he learned to operate a Basilisk during the war—but he decided somewhere along the line that Thomas Kaplan never learned.
Valentich was a more serious driver anyway. They were a more serious person, overall: neatly trimmed black hair, their official overcoat pressed and clean every day, their demeanor stern and professional at every interaction. The two made for good colleagues, better than any knight Rocko had worked with, but there was no world where they’d be actual friends.
“You familiar with The Ballad of Avalon Chase, Kaplan?” They never addressed Rocko as anything other than Vicehunter Kaplan. Nearly two months working together and Rocko still didn’t know their first name, for that matter.
“Seen a few takes on it,” Rocko said. “Why?”
“So you know the Gordon Kallos character, yes?”
“The gentleman thief.” Rocko liked most takes on Gordon Kallos, especially the older films. He had panache, flair, morals. But Thomas Kaplan wasn’t supposed to be quite so open to lawlessness, so Rocko played down his interest. “Where’s this going, Valentich?”
“A couple town guards are detaining one Gordon Kallos, on suspicion of edict violations.”
Rocko huffed a small laugh. “A real life Gordon Kallos?”
“I know,” Valentich groaned. “Some nutcase smuggler calling himself Kallos. Won’t say his real name. He’s had a number of civil cases already, dodged all but one with a not proven.”
There was an anger in Valentich’s briefing. Any time the civil court system came up among vicehunters, there was a certain haughty disdain serving as the bedrock. Sometimes, it seemed the everyday civilians making up the jury were the reason, but the verdict system was the more common cause. A council case could only end as “guilty” or “not guilty”, but a civil case could end with a “not proven” verdict that let the defendant walk free with a knowing wink. Vicehunters and town guards saw the verdict as an obscenity.
“If we’re showing up,” Rocko said, “I’d imagine it’s not civil.”
“We’ll make it not civil,” Valentich said.
“How so?”
“Trip him up,” Valentich said. “Press him until he lies. Then we have him on lying to church officers.”
Rocko immediately hated the idea, but he wasn’t sure if Kaplan did. He needed to stall. “Why are the guards holding him, though?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me. I need to be thorough.”
Valentich sighed. “Smuggling. Possible bribery.”
“That sounds pretty run-of-the-mill, frankly.”
“Big problem in Cymona?”
Rocko shrugged. “Wouldn’t say that. Just that, when it came up, the cases were predictable. They’d give some bullshit line, probably about sahagins. You’d call their bluff, they fold like a bad card player. Ordinary stuff.”
“So what were your extraordinary cases?” Valentich gestured at the traffic around them, the crowds of people preparing for their solstice activities. The autocar was at all but a standstill. The two had some minutes before they’d make it to the port.
“There was this case, a couple years back.” Rocko paused, tilting his head back as if wistfully remembering and not making things up as he went along. “I was working in a town down south, and there’s a lot of swampland there once you get a little ways out. Had a dry year, and some adventurer spotted a beak sticking out of a bog.” Rocko looked at Valentich; they could tell where the story was going. “So, yeah. Body was thirty-some years old. Been there that long, I mean. Guy was dead before I was born, looked like he died that week. We were lucky Cymonians love to keep papers on damn near everything, no other way we’d learn enough of who he was.”
“Let me guess,” Valentich said, “wife did it?”
That’s the obvious route, Rocko thought. Wait. Shit, this is a Trouble in Paradise episode. Improvise. “Business associate,” Rocko said with a deliberating tone. “I guess would be what you’d call him. Local guildmaster, built up a lot of influence in the years since the murder. Made the whole thing a big scandal. Everyone did figure it was the wife, though. Small village gossip, you know how it goes. Tragic, really. They hounded her for years. Wound up, only person she ever killed was herself.”
Valentich shook their head. “Hate when you get a suicide case. Feels worse than murder. No real closure.”
“Very true.” Rocko stopped himself. The deeper he went on a topic, the more he’d have to remember about how Thomas Kaplan saw the world. He still needed to be conservative in creating the character.
“Well, it all sounds like quite the saga. Sort of thing you make a documentary about.”
“Or an episode of Trouble in Paradise,” Rocko said with open frustration. He felt a need to acknowledge it. Maybe Valentich knew about the show already and was testing him. “And of course, they made it so the wife was the killer. Typical.”
“Not familiar with the show,” Valentich said, a bit dismissive. “Is it popular?”
Rocko shrugged. He only watched the show so he could joke about it with Kell. He had no clue if anyone actually liked it. “I won’t speak for my countrymen, but I’m not really a fan.”
Valentich let out a small chuckle. “Y’know, Kaplan, they warned me you were the cautious type. You keep proving them right.”
Rocko responded with a stronger laugh. “What can I say, Valentich. Diligence does the job. And nowadays I’m representing my whole country. Can’t blow that.”
“You’re a vicehunter. You represent Hakuta.”
“Sure,” Rocko said, “but I mean, how many Cymonians have you met?”
Valentich focused on the road as the vehicle started moving. “None.”
“Well, one. Me. So, far as you know, I’m just like all the other Cymonians.”
“I’d be a fool to believe that. One person’s behavior can’t represent a whole country. They represent themselves and little more.”
Rocko nodded. “No guilt by association.” He was getting more out of Valentich than they were out of him. He preferred that arrangement.
“No guilt, perhaps,” Valentich agreed, “but where there’s smoke there’s fire. And this Kallos fella has been smoking too much for Zeimatia’s taste.”
“What’s his brand? Jarveys?” Rocko snickered, half to himself.
Valentich didn’t return the laugh. “You’re not funny, Kaplan.”