The Damnation Brigade, after Temporis

| Airealist | Blind Sundown | Cyborg Cerebrus | Raven's Head | Radiant Rider | OMP-Akbar | Sea Goddess | Untouchable Diver | Wildman Dervish Furie | Wilderwitch |

========

Airealist was his codename. An aerialist’s costume, complete with a cloud-printed sky-blue cape, was his outfit. Under a variety of glamours cast by Wilderwitch and/or one of her fellows sisters – Fish perhaps; Sorciere more often; Superior Sarpedon most often; sometimes even her little mother, Hush Mannering – being an aerialist was also his profession.

(Aires D’Angelo was the only one of the ten re-embodied supras to wear what passed for a uniform. He wasn’t the only one to either hold down a regular job or have to wear glamour, however ... In Aires’ case, it was because he, like his twin sister, barely aged after turning twenty-one.)

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

[David Ryne] did not have access to rings, witch-stones or howsoever Jesse got about inter-spatially. Wilderwitch, though, had a soul-self. He had seen it, a frightening sight if ever there was one, and he knew from firsthand experience a few of the supranormals he’d come across during the Secret War of same, the roughly ten years he was able to participate in it as a supra and not as a drooling, bed-wetting near-vegetable, could externalize their ectoplasms, as it were. Externalize more than that, too, some of them.

His godfather, Sedon St Synne, whom he’d learned that first few days out of Limbo back in Vancouver was still somehow alive, wasn’t one of the latter but he was one of the former. He called what he could do Wayfaring in the Wild Weird. Perhaps he, Cyborg Cerebrus, could learn to become a Wayfarer in the Wacky Weirdom. First, though, he had to concentrate on sending his consciousness, his spirit as he conceived of it, outside the stone sepulchre where his body was stuck.

Which he eventually did.

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

Blind Sundown kept the full range of his supranormal attributes a carefully guarded secret. He could not fly, though he could hover and had been seen walking on the air. His skin was hardly impervious and he was nowhere near as swift as Dervish Furie. Nor was he as physically strong as the Wildman or OMP-Akbar especially, though he came close.

Another of his supra-aspects allowed him to see through Raven’s eyes and, indeed, anyone else’s; so long as he was in physical contact with him or her, it should go without stipulating. His lack of eyes further granted him extraordinary perceptions. His uncanny ability to anticipate and avoid attacks was therefore more concomitant than nowhere-near-inexplicable.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

--------

The native American’s cosmic aura was such that, so long as he was within even a yard’s distance, Gentleman Jervis Murray could not become Wildman Dervish Furie any more than the Diver could become untouchable or Gloriel rainbow-radiant let alone rainbow-ride.

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

--------

Although he had no facial hair and was more than half a foot shorter than his massive companion, John Sundown was also a powerfully built man. Cloaked as he was in buffalo hide, a star blanket he called it, he too presented a magnificent figure. He wasn’t just decked out in his star blanket either.

On his head he wore an ‘issiwun’, a de-skulled bison head with its horns pointed upwards whilst about his empty eyeholes he’d strapped a colourfully-beaded blindfold. A similarly strung-together bead breastplate, hence oddly reminiscent of a washboard, was overtop his embroidered, leather shirt. Leather pants and moccasins completed his ensemble.

Carrying his solar spear, its spearhead giving off the faint but perceptible glow of Brainrock-Gypsium, with his dark hair braided and falling to his chest, all that was really lacking was war paint. Not that anyone in D-Brig was complaining. War paint meant just that, war, no holds barred, no matter against who.

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

--------

The Cheyenne Summoning Child rarely joked. Was not one for talking much either. Silence for Blind Sundown was akin to green for grass. Truth told he was more often silent than he was sightless.

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

Not just his father Joshua and his aunt Marea – the old-time Anthean who had helped raise him [Gentleman Jervis Murray, onetime superstar athlete, ex-wartime battlefield medic and Wilderwitch’s long time lover] after his mother Victoria, her sister, died having him – feared that, if the full Furie ever really got going, chances were nothing could stop him.

He [Wildman Dervish Furie] would just get crazier and crazier; become a berserk juggernaut of sheer, raw might. Much more of this and he would not be able to tell who was friend or foe, let alone give a damn. So he feared it, too.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

--------

There was a reason Gentleman Jervis Murray made a point of dressing so well. Even if he wasn’t – the Godling, Joshua Murray, was Jerry’s father – the Black Death always called Furie ‘son’; hence it was a matter of like father, like son.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

--------

No one, not even Dervish himself, knew what the full Furie looked like, let alone what he was capable of doing. Not having reverted to his Jervis-Jekyll persona since he and Cerebrus encountered Mars Bellona, Lord Tornado and the Shadow Woman in the Tokugawa Era Cavern of Temporis, on the morning of the 6th, he was beginning to suspect it would be a lot more murderous than anything Sundown or Raven had done in the past.

At least an argument could be made their extreme actions – sanctions, more like – were justifiable. The full Furie might kill for fun.

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2015 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

Yehudi Cohen, the Untouchable Diver ... could never take off his wetsuit.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

--------

Yehudi Cohen was of Jewish descent, though there had always been some debate as to whether his father was Jewish or just his mother. In other words, was he a bastard? He’d say indubitably but it wasn’t because he knew for sure who his father was; it was because, regardless of their comprehensibility, he loved to make jokes.

Of middling height and fairly skinny. He was dressed, as always, in a rubbery wet suit with a crimson visor covering his eyes. Generally speaking, he kept the rest of his face and his exposed skin smeared with tar. Otherwise he tended to lose substance, to literally fall apart. Today though, infused with Gypsium as he was, he was fairly glowing with energy and pride of accomplishment.

... from the original, 2001 version of 'Trigregos Diver', a short story that formed the basis for the Month One - After Limbo: 'The Weirdness of Cabalarkon' web-serial

--------

He’d long been an avid, lungs-bursting, underwater swimmer with a remarkable resistance to chilly conditions – so much so that, as an even younger teenager, had spent time training with Italian frogmen working in his Hamburg home.(Italy actually started World War II with a squad of commando frogmen.) The wetsuit, though, was mostly his own invention; just made sense, he told Jacques Cousteau when they met, after the war. Seals did it, why shouldn’t humans?

It really was a wet suit; not at all like the rubber ‘immersion suit’ made famous by the (mostly) American showman, Paul Boyton. (Boyton, sometimes Boynton, who’d died in the early Twenties, designed his suit to keep its wearer relatively warm and dry as he propelled himself through the water on his back.)

For some reason he had yet to get around to stitching sleeves onto it, so he smeared the exposed skin of his face and arms with tar. Pushing a raft piled high with explosives, he swam out to a newly-launched des­troy­er. Taking his lead from what some of his co-religionists were doing in British-mandated Palestine at the time, his intention had been to sabotage the Nazi-built warship.

Spotted and fired upon, he dove deep beneath the water – the weight belt being another of his designs. The raft above him exploded just as he touched a strangely glowing rock he intended to use as an anchor to hold himself under for as long as his lungs held air. Which, as he quickly realized, thanks to the effects of the miraculous rock that, ten years later, he learned to call Gypsium, they no longer needed to do.

... from "The Weirdness of Cabalarkon", a web-serial published in the early 2000s that continued The Damnation Brigade saga

--------

“Daddy’s back, mommy, and he’s brought some funny looking guy with him. He’s all dressed in blubber.”

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

---------

First the Diver was caught near the kitchen glaciers, their refrigerators, off the floor level and beneath the second level of the mastaba. He was trying to ingest his meal privately, away from prying eyes. Ingesting for the Diver involved particlyzing his dinner, plate and all, inserting it into his gut, inverting the plate, shaking it off, pulling it out, whistle-clean, and starting to digest what he’d dumped inside himself.

Some of the time he burped and most of the time he did so breathing. Which he had to remind himself to do as he had no need of air; hadn’t had since ’38. Air just came to him if not exactly supernaturally then at least supranormally. Then, probably because, despite his best efforts not to be seen, he’d been spotted coming through the floor; was understandably given where he was, mistaken for a devil.

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

“As you might assume, the desert’s not the best place for an essentially aquatic animal like Sea Goddess. Apparently she turned to water one day and, if you can believe it – we’re talking supras here, so you should – actually evaporated.” Somewhat involuntarily she started giggling.

“Enter Dolores Rivera, Superior Sorrow ...

“In any case, Sorrow went to the same place Sea vanished with a tanker truckload of seawater. Lo and behold, who do you think reformed but Thalassa."

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

Although bodily equine, with a crow-like head and unicorn horn, she was no dumb animal. Was more his partner than his mount, truth told. She was also the last true ravendeer; at least she was when on the Outer Earth. A maybe magical species that went back to pre-Flood days, ravendeer – perhaps Raven’s Head herself, Sundown used to joke – were mentioned briefly in the Bible: Genesis 8:7, to be precise; albeit without the ‘head’ attached to it.

... Raven – his beauty, as he often called her – could fly and even on the ground was far faster than Furie ever was. She could even access Samsara, the universal substance between space, the same as the Diver and most witches could, via their agates (a generic term for stepping stones, first coined by the Anthean Sisterhood thousands of years earlier).

As she proved in Temporis, when she overrode the devic Vultyrie’s attack-commands, Raven also had a supra-special mental affinity for all sorts of birdlife. Couldn’t control birds, not as such, but could often strongly influence their behaviour by sheer force of will exuded. Too bad the vultures composing the Cloud of Hadd seemed beyond her limits in that regard.

Together or individually, she and Sundown emitted a protective nimbus, their externalized cosmic aura or, more specifically to the Cheyenne, exclusion zone. While its exact nature was poorly understood, should they wish it this aura of theirs allowed them to hide within a kind of cloud – an undeniably useful ability outside the Dome, where raven­deer were unknown even in mythology.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

No, seemingly spun-silver for hair was not a good thing to have in the Weirdom of Cabalarkon. Best to cut it off and take it to the bank for deposit before anyone else did it for you, starting at the neck.

Although riding Raven, Radiant Rider was no Lady Godiva, if only due to the fact she was wearing clothes. With her soft-looking, very lightly olive skin, Caucasian but easily tanned, muscular arms and legs, comparatively moderate breasts and hips, she reminded some there of the Zeross girls and all too many of the older female hybrids, none of whom were beyond their teen years as yet ...

Gloriel was dressed in fine, shape-revealing silk or something similar. It was the same near-gossamer material Melina Zeross and her daughters wore under their warm, woolen sweaters and leggings or trousers, except hers was iridescent, all the colours of the rainbow. Even if her hair was an unlucky hue; even if she was not built to their preferred proportions; with no shoes or under­wear they could perceive, many of the more open-minded men could not help having the same thoughts about her that their non-mending-minded women had about Furie.

Sensual was not the word for either the Wildman or Radiant Rider. Sexual, plain and simple, was!

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

At perhaps 6½ feet Kronokronos Akbar may not have been as tall as most of the men and some of the Utopian women but, in terms of width and breadth, he was about the size of two or three of them standing back-to-back-back, arms-in-arms. His florid face, great beard and shaggy, greying mane suggested an advanced age for a human or near-human. Nonetheless, he appeared perfectly capable of snapping any one of them in two, as if they were matchsticks.

Near-human because he made no secret he was a Devason, like their Master of the last 30 years. Rumours being rumours some had already pegged him for Saladin’s … what? Quarter-brother in that they shared the same devic half-mother, Pyrame Silverstar? Was that even for sure? He might not know himself. Did know his parents were fucking faeries, though. Reputedly high and mighty fuckers as well, the highest, their king and queen of the time.

No question he had a devic half-father, Dand Tariqartha of Temporis, hence his full name Akbarartha. The six foot long, rune-carved cudgel he always carried with him ended in a 3-eyed head deliberately fashioned to approximate that of that selfsame Master Deva, Lazareme’s Earth Magician, whose star had been shining out of the night’s sky since the 6th of Tantalar.

... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2015 continuation of the Damnation Brigade saga

--------

OMP-Akbar had no choice but to take them all on by himself. Notwithstanding his impressive size and strength, or his even more outstanding weaponry, they were more than willing to take him on, too. With bullets and even spears or arrows for those that, wisely, didn’t dare venture too close.

Hardly for the first time, he regretted breaking apart his regalia the week previous at Hideaway Damnation (formerly Crimefighter Central, within Grouse Mountain across Burrard Inlet from Vancouver city proper). Had he especially had his Cloak of Many Colours, what devils in here referred to as Lazareme’s Starcape, he would not be just invulnerable but shape-shiftily so.

... His normal, as in more like supranormal, defense mechanism was, to say the least, counterintuitive. The Dand-head of his Homeworld Sceptre didn’t repel bullets and arrows; it as good as collected them.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

--------

From Sunday night until he transferred himself, minus his regalia, to the Head on Lazam-Friday, OMP was busy sending selected folks dreams via his Homeworld Sceptre. Much to the horror of those of his D-Brig fellows who found out what he doing too late to stop him, he was letting them know the King Crimefighters were back and unaged, albeit as the Damnation Brigade.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

--------

Top of Page - Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx

========

Top of Page - Return to Page Contents - Bottom of Page Lynx