SHIP'S LOG:

Dragon's Tooth

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Clammy Hamsphere 12/22/2019 11:11pm


I've been having trouble convincing my brothers three to get together to watch the new Mermaid Imperium. Back during the hard times, that show really brought us together. But now that we're all rich as kings it's like we've lost what's really important between us. We might all have housekeepers and AI powered bidets, but we've traded it for our humanity.

I'm having trouble finding that station again anyway. Can't remember which of the 7,218,198 channels it was. It was some kind of public access channel for the Invisible Art College. Maybe they only broadcast occasionally? Too bad I didn't see if they had a web page or something. I guess I'll just keep scanning all the stations.






Clammy Hamsphere 11/6/2019 10:36pm


Oh. My. God. You won't believe what I ran into flipping through the 7,218,198 channels on my new TV. It's a new season of Mermaid Imperium! I had no idea they were still making that show.

It's on some kind of public access channel, apparently run by international students who attend an "invisible art college." They keep talking about their school during the commercials and about how they can't tell us where it is.

My new TV gets more than just 7,218,198 channels. I also get over 12 million music channels, 177 streaming services, live cam weather for every major city in the triplanetary system, orders you food, and runs the robot vacuum and all the lights for my new condo.

See, things have really turned around for my brothers and me. We used to live in total squalor. "Cursed" my brothers said. So we sent that costume jewelry back to the cereal company and started watching Mermaid Imperium and hoped our luck would change. 

And boy did it ever! My brothers three and I, living in apartments at 273rd street and Broadway in each of the Tri-cities, one brother for each wife, suddenly gained title to our lands. So we kicked out the convenience stores, tore everything down, and replaced our blocks with mixed-use buildings combining retail and living space. 

Instead of a sketchy convenience store it's now a Wolfgang Puck Express. Right next to us is Olive's Oil shop, Salty's Salt Shop, the Red Rover organic poodle treat shop, and the new CBD micro-brew and kombucha vegan yaki-tori place. There's a new street car that clangs happily down the middle of the street, and we rent out the additional apartments to the "creatives" who are flocking here.

Now that we've each got our own TV, my brothers three and I don't see as much of each other as we used to. But maybe we should have a little dinner party get together and watch this new Mermaid Imperium together. I'll give them a ring.






SLYR 11/2/2019 6:38pm


SHIP'S LOG: DAY 655
Location: The Fault
Destination: The Rockwell Facility
Current Weather: Clear

It's been nearly two years since the fateful day I signed on to return the treacherous heirlooms to the Mermaid Kingdom. It's been just barely less than a year since Gra'thul and his demonic horde of lava creatures were destroyed in a last desperate stand.

The loss of the entire Sea Krait Republic had its downsides, naturally, but to be fair they were kind of reclusive and never really had a big impact on the global economy in the first place. In the year since the war, I've been working to restore trade routes and negotiate alliances throughout the different kingdoms. It turns out that having a monstrous cthonian common enemy is quite an efficient tool in the pursuit of unity.

In regards to the heirlooms that started this whole mess, I sure don't have them with me anymore. Presumably, they've been returned to the mermaid kingdom by this point, and my original client is free from his curse. My original logs were lost during a pirate raid when attempting to navigate through the Turtle Clan's territory, and so much has happened since then that I just don't know.

In any case, I've set the ship's course for the Rockwell Facility at the South Pole. I've been commissioned to transport some proprietary tech to an unidentified buyer near the outskirts of the New Mermaid Imperium. Very mysterious, but I suppose I'll find out more once I arrive.

Signing off for now,
Captain Slyr






Clammy Hamsphere 11/4/2018 8:27pm


The ads for the mid-season finale of MERMAID IMPERIUM: THE RISE OF GRA’THUL are like a glam rock super battle of the bands, where everybody's got guitars that look like axes and swords and there are towers of flames and Marshall stacks and giant metal fishboots. My brother doesn't like hair metal so he's been dissing the show, saying that they've "jumped the shark" and doing whatever they can to "turn it up to eleven." But there's still no way he'd miss it.

We're saving up our electricity credits for the big night. My other brother used up most of them for the month on his electric fence around the yard, to keep the rats out, or in, but it's been so rainy it's like a swamp out there and we'd sit up looking out the window watching dogs and mail carriers and Postmates delivery people light up like blue skeletons when they get too close to the house. The we got our first warning brown-out and realized we needed to be careful if we wanted to have enough juice for the big show.






Clammy Hamsphere 10/1/2018 8:41pm


If they weren't venomous then they wouldn't keep the rats away, is what my brother says. But I don't think that's true. There are plenty of snakes that eat rats that aren't venomous. Those are at the houses that don't have any undead zombie rats walking around in front of them like we do, on account of the venom. Those other snakes eat the rats whole, I tell my brother, but he doesn't believe it. "I believe what my eyes can see," he says, "and I see undead walking zombie rats in the dead front yard and the alleyway. So I KNOW they're taken care of."

Which of course is nothing compared to what crew of the Dragon's Tooth went through in STRAITS OF THE KRAITS. Those poor Kraits! It seems like Gra'thul will do anything to prevent the crew from reaching the sanctified sword maker, especially if it involves really elaborate fight scenes between the Molten Minions and fully armored troops from the Mermaid Imperium. The new fighter class they introduced--Fish Monk--is so awesome because of course the Imperium would have developed underwater Kung Fu. And when you hit the Fins of Fury combo just right you can destroy Molten Minions all day long and it's super satisfying.






SLYR 8/30/2018 10:38pm


I've set out on a quest to obtain a sanctified sword. The main problem I'm facing is that there aren't exactly any detailed instructions on how to get one. However, I found a tome in the Imperial library talking about how there was some kind of undersea archmage who claimed to know the secrets of making a sanctified sword. His name was written in arcane mermaid runes, which when spoken in the ancient dead mermaid language of }~{ sound like "KcH~H/rIcc|SB[NzZ'v[QQz," so to keep things simple I'm going to call him Steve. Steve supposedly lives at one of those thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, in the center of an undersea trench that cuts through the Sea Krait Republic. I've heard the Sea Kraits aren't particularly friendly to visitors, so we'll try to keep out of their way. I've got enough on my plate dealing with Gra'thul at the moment.

In regards to what Gra'thul's doing, he's on land just offshore. He dug a temporary burrow into the ground down to the mantle, where he's absorbing heat in preparation for his next attack on the Mermaid Capital. Our scientists predict he'll have gathered enough energy to be hotter than the surface of the sun in about two weeks. Last time, we stopped the raging monstrosity by retreating into deeper, colder water, which cooled down Gra'thul enough to force him to go back on land to warm up. He won't make the same mistake again, so we have to be ready.






Clammy Hamsphere 8/30/2018 8:54pm


There has never been a show more epic than MERMAID IMPERIUM: THE RISE OF GRA’THUL. Unspeakable horrors from beyond! Hideous lava slug creatures! The Slaying Sleighs! Giant talking octopi! And of course the indescribable monstrosity of Gra’thul itself.

Mermaid history was really cool, but my brothers and never guessed they’d break out and create a whole new mythology to explore. Gra’thul was some kind of larval space parasite, floating around looking for warmth in a new born star system. Gra’thul and its ilk find a star nursery, bury themselves in the molten core of a planet as it forms, then grow for billions of years, eating the planet from the inside, until it finishes growing and explodes the whole planet, spewing new larval parasite babies into space, where they find a new stellar nursery and start the whole process over again. Pretty awesome.

Coincidentally, it turns out my brother has a bicycle tire fire smoldering in his closet. He says it's been going on since before he moved in, which explains the burnt rubber smell that's always here. He offered to take us back to look at it but we were too scared after the Gra’thul scene in the last episode.






SLYR 7/28/2018 10:03pm


The emissary to the Cephalopod Country came back. He says that the Cephalopods have chosen to not support us for fear of drawing Gra'thul's attention to them. It's hard to say whether they made a good decision at this point.
I did some research on how to slay the ancient gods, and apparently if you find someone "pure of heart" to wield some kind of "sanctified sword" they can kill the ancient gods pretty easily. All sanctified swords of the past have long been lost or destroyed, BUT it's possible to make more. That just leaves finding someone pure of heart, and I guess that's just someone without heart diseases and that seems easy enough to find.






SLYR 7/28/2018 9:51pm


Well, it seems that my adventure to the pole has had some ill effects. Mainly, that fact that we dug so deep we dug into the fiery realm of the ancient god Gra'thul, and he is rallying his horrific armies to kill us all. I gotta say, this is really not how I expected the mission to go, but what can you do? We're gonna need a lot more power on our side if we wanna come out on top, so I sent an emissary to the Cephalopod Country to see if they'd support us in our war against the Old One.






Clammy Hamsphere 7/28/2018 9:19pm


RETURN TO THE MERMAID IMPERIUM wasn't on tonight. It was preempted by WORLD'S SADDEST VINES, which is usually right up my me and my brothers' alley, but instead we went to the Mermaid Parade. We got there just as the mermaids were emerging from the river, covered in bioluminescent slime. It was beautiful, and the slime stuck to them like dewdrop spider webs, dripping off their tails and tridents and long stringy hair and three-wheeled choppers as they drove up over the beach and onto Main street. There were vendors with fresh wet seaweed on sticks, and the mermaid children threw candy seashells from the floats.

Ha ha! Get it? Floats?

There wasn't anybody else there but us, but the Mermaids didn't seem to mind. They just like to have a parade now and then.






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