Illegitimate Sun

Archive for March, 2008

Name: Haley Greer

Appearance: Haley is a 21 year old, white female with shoulder-length brown hair and green eyes. She is 5’5″. Her costume consists of a combination of workout clothes and mail-order armor. Her armor includes a bulletproof vest, shin and forearm guards, elbow and knee pads, & a pair of steel-toed work boots. Her one customized addition is a tinted-visored, close-fitting hockey helmet that she has covered in a thin layer of stone.

Known Talent Abilities: Cascade has the ability to create and control viscous pseudopods of stone and earth. She is able to use this power in a variety of manners.

Cascade can cause stone to rise up and bind a person in place or strike them.

Stone pillars also rise out to protect Cascade, blocking incoming attacks.

Cascade also uses her control of stone to propel herself rapidly from place to place. She does this by causing a pillar to rise suddenly underneath her, throwing her in her desired direction. From her landing point, another pseudopod will rise up and catch Cascade and lower her to the ground or propel her further. Using this method, Cascade has been clocked moving at speeds of 60 mph. The drawback of this method is that it leaves a clear trail of pillars and dents in the stone.

One of Cascade’s favorite tricks is to project stone out from a skyscraper and ride it like a private elevator to the top of the building.

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Name: Unknown

Appearance: Hewn is an animated statue. His appearance is that of a 7’0″ roughly carved humanoid made of granite. His facial features are crudely shaped, but his hands appear to be finely crafted. He has a voice that sounds like the grinding of gravel.

Known Talent Abilities: Hewn is superhumanly strong, having demonstrated the ability to lift 1,600 lbs. Hewn’s strength appears to be somewhat uncontrollable. He is unable to perform fine manipulations or use less than his full strength when required.

His body is also incredibly resistant to damage. Small arms fire at the most takes off chips of rock and leaves scratches. Hewn appears to need neither air nor food.

Finally, Hewn has been observed to have some type of remote viewing or precognitive abilities. Usually this occurs after Hewn has entered a stasis or rest period. During these periods he is unable to be roused by outside stimuli, but when he comes awake he often has knowledge of events far distant to his current location.

History: Florida politics are a mean and dirty business, but a man can make a small fortune if he’s willing to sell his soul. Mark Firberg was such a man. Utilizing connections he made in business school, Mark served as an operative for the Republican Party. He was a part of every quasi-legal fund raiser and dirty trick pulled by the party to control the Sunshine State.

In the year 2000, Mark was one of the ‘consultants’ paid to remove thousands of African-Americans and low-income voters from the rolls under bogus pretenses. These voting blocs tended to vote Democratic. Denying them the ability to vote was seen as a way to insure a Republican victory in a tightly contested election. No one could predict the chaos that followed the voting in Florida.

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Toronto has a huge Asian population. At least 20% of Toronto is of Asian descent. Because of this, there are some interesting places in Toronto that cater to this growing population.

One of these places is T&T Supermarket.

T&T is a supermarket that specializes in catering to the Asian population. Announcements are made in Chinese. All the labels are in both English and Chinese. Of course, the goods are mostly Asian foods shipped from the Far East.

Shopping here is interesting for me. Here are some of the things that really stand out.

First, the music piped throughout the stores is Asian covers of Western songs. My favorite was the Mandarin version of ‘O Susana’ complete with melodic flute solos.

Secondly, we keep finding amazingly good deals. My favorites tend to involve meat. The last couple of times we shopped there, we found 4 pounds of beef roast for $2 and 6.5 pounds of roasted pork for $3.70. So far, I’ve made a pot roast from the beef and still have 2 pounds left. We haven’t even touched the pork yet.

How do we get such great deals? We tend to visit the store late in the afternoon. T&T will mark down lots of their perishable items in the evenings to clear them out. That’s how we got the roast pork. They literally set a giant plastic bag of roast pork on a folding table in front of us as we browsed by the deli section. When I grabbed it, there were several elderly Asian women circling like sharks – waiting for me to drop my guard and the bag of pork

T&T – it’s a great market, but watch out for elbows. Those old ladies can be mean.

The Northman is here.

The Northman is here and he is God’s wraith.

Pray, pray that God will save you from pain that is to come.

Repent your sins and maybe the Northman will pass your town, spare your wife & children, your crops and livestock.

Accept God’s mercy and maybe the Northman will spare your parishes’ relics.

If your faith is strong, if your soul is pure, God may send a champion.

God will protect His own.

At Lindisfarne, He protected Saint Cuthbert’s relics.

With three strokes of Cuthbert’s staff, a brother of the monastery smote the Northman’s ship. Raiders were driven into the waves Their bloated corpses were food to crabs and dogs.

God’s wraith pours from the North like the tide and only the men with the greatest faith will rise above the blood that is to flow.

So, Toronto is on track to have the greatest amount of snowfall in a single winter since 1938. They’ve had about 7 feet of snow this winter, with very little of it melting off.

That’s just great.

As most of you know, my universe is governed by irony.

So it’s par for the course that when I come to stay at Toronto for awhile – the Artic winds blow and dump all the snow this town can handle on me. Everyone – everyone – tells me how this is the worst winter they’ve ever experienced. Local governments complain about rapidly dwindling supplies of salt, sand, and money for road cleaning. Mounds of snow tower over the sidewalks and spill into the streets. Parking is impossible. Biting winds blow ice bullets between the builidings. Everywhere you look, people are mummified in their own winter garb.

I’m done with winter.