Muffalo Cross Vlog

Started by anthraxus, April 27, 2016, 11:22:03 PM

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anthraxus

The video shows a wooden wall, with sunlight angling across it from the left.  Triple bladed frondgrass carpets the ground up to the wall.  A middle aged man enters from the left.  Assuming the wall is a standard height, he would be just under six feet tall.  He wears his synth thread jacket open and is shirtless and ripped underneath.  His dark hair is trimmed down to the standard cryptosleep buzz.  He walks to the center of the frame and looks to the camera.  His face is vaguely familiar, although it is hard to place from where.

"Here?" he asks, his voice is smooth and deep, flavored with a faint spinward glitterworld accent.  Another voice responds from off-camera, "Yeah, dude, go.  We're recording already."  The man on screen looks down, coughs lightly and his lips can be seen to move quickly, like he was praying or speaking to himself quietly.  After a second he looks back up and smiles, white teeth glittering in the sunlight. 

"Hi,  my name is Bret Cross.  You may remember me from such golden joywire classics as Merrin Veck and the Solar Wreck, Colony 2291 and the Urbworld Urchins series.  Although since it has been a couple decades since I was last on the wire, I wouldn't blame you if you don't."  He swipes his left hand over his head, the movement instantly recognizable as a signature gesture of many of his characters.  "At my brother's insistence, we are starting this running vlog of the foundation of what we are calling Muffalo Cross.  You may be wondering why I dropped off the map so many years ago, and what I've been doing since then.  Well, some of you may know that I am originally from Eribin Dani, and that when that world collapsed into the fires of religious nuclear war I was safely off world, filming Urbworld Urchins.  What you probably don't know is that I had a brother who was still on Eribin Dani when it all went down." 

He seems to think for a moment and then quickly advances on the camera.  The same voice from earlier is heard saying, "No, quit it Bret, Stop!", and the source is revealed to be another man, slightly younger than Brett but with an obvious family resemblance.  The younger man also wears standard cryptosleep synth thread pants, but no other clothing.  While he is as physically impressive as Bret, his back bears the unmistakable stripes of a whip, and he has a large full-color tattoo across his upper back the legendary warship Donnager against a star filled backdrop.  Bret keeps the younger man in a simple headlock as he pulls him into the shot.

"This knucklehead is my brother Daniel.  Say hello to the galaxy, Dan!"  Dan waves awkwardly towards the camera and twists out of the headlock.  He holds his hands up warily towards Bret, but looks to the camera.  "Hi galaxy!" he waves again, more naturally and at ease.  Brett continues, occasionally feinting towards Daniel like he was going to grab him again, "Anyway.  I wound up having to spend the majority of the fortune I had made in my joywire career trying to get him off of the ruins of Eribin Dani.  We wound up more or less bumming around the spinward systems for several years, working on odd jobs to make the ends meet and just trying to settle on some kind of direction.  Finally, we landed a contract to join a group looking to establish a colony on the antispin rim, somewhere around Upsilon Maxi.  We made friends with another of the colonists, Naoki McGuire, a former Planetary Guild Navy researcher who prefers to go by the nickname Muffalo."  A couple shots fire in distance and both brothers look in that direction. "Um, yeah," Bret looks back to the camera, "Anyways, I got the luck of pulling regular maintenance shifts for journey out.  Imagine my worry, then, when I happen to cycle up for my shift only to find half of the warning lights on the maintenance panel flashing emergency indicators.  Apparently the last person to pull shift duty had died at some point during his shift and the ship quickly started to fall apart. Um, we'll pick this back up in a minute" 

Another shot echoes from off camera.  Daniel looks at Bret and they nod in silent agreement.  Daniel walks towards the camera as Bret draws a pistol from under his jacket and walks off in the direction of the gunshots.  The last shot is of Daniel reaching out to turn off the camera.

Jakub k.

haven't read this yet,but this is not a vlog,its a blog.a vlog is a video blog,wheres the video :P

anthraxus

The camera comes back on to the same scene as before, although the angle of the light is lower.  The time stamp on the shot indicates it is a couple of hours later.  Bret is center frame again, and after a second, Daniel enters the shot as well.  "Ok, so turns out Muffalo was just securing us fresh meat for dinner.  No worries.  Where was I?" Bret asks Daniel.

Dan replies, "At the ship." 

"Right, right," Bret nodded, "So the ship was so far gone when I came out of my cryptosleep fog that there wasn't anything I could do to save the Portnoy Fisk so I began evacuation procedures and jumped back in my pod.  One of the engines failed during the evac and put the ship into a flat spin, so all of the colony cargo we were carrying has been launched into shallow orbits around the planet.  From the orbital mechanics the ship computer broadcast to each of the crash pods, we can probably expect random drops of supplies over the course of the next decade or so." 

An alpaca, dappled brown and white, strolls up behind Bret and nuzzles the back of his head.  He smiles and pets it a couple times before Daniel leads it away.  "That is Cypress, our first new colonist.  Anyway, so the three of us dropped down in a section of hilly rainforest near the southern ocean.  Fortunately we had all been involved in the planning discussions for the original colony and we decided to pretty much stick to that.  We landed just north of a nice flat area between two hills, both of which were heavily laced with steel.  We immediately set to work walling in the area and building beds to sleep in.  Some windmills and a freezer room  were to follow.  We got almost all of that taken care of in the first seven days.  I got to say we are all feeling pretty productive."

Vaporisor

Quote from: Jakub k. on April 28, 2016, 05:23:07 PM
haven't read this yet,but this is not a vlog,its a blog.a vlog is a video blog,wheres the video :P

True, title is misleading in a way.  It is blogging a Vlog ^.^
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anthraxus

The camera focuses on a decently sized wooden walled room.  The room is bare, with a smooth dirt floor and lamps in the corners of the room.  A large double bed, covered by a stiff green blanket, dominates the center of the room.  Brett lounges in the bed.  "Hi," he begins, "it's been almost two weeks since the last one of these we did, and man what a busy two weeks it's been."  He takes a sip of water from a steel cup on the floor next to the bed. 

"So we got the cooler working with a couple new windmills and solar panels to power it.  The very next freakin' day a damn boomalope went rabid and came after us.  It took both Dan and Muffalo with the guns to finally kill the thing, but of course it charged right in the middle of the windmills and solar panels we had just built at the same time Muffalo finally caught it in the head.  The explosion seemed to echo for almost five minutes and it took us almost five hours to finally get out all of the fires.  Both windmills and both panels were destroyed and one of the outer walls nearly collapsed."  Voices can be heard talking in the background, muffled as if coming through a wall.  "Apparently the explosion was loud enough to attract attention.  The next day, as we were trying to cleanup the mess and get power to the cooler again, we got a shortwave broadcast from some guy named Garrett.  He said he was a slave that just escaped from the Cannons, apparently a local pirate group.  He asked for asylum and we decided to take him in." Bret chuckles and continues, "Unfortunately there were half a dozen pirates chasing right after him.  Dan and Muffalo set up a firing line to handle their gunslingers, while I chased down the other two  that were closing in on Garrett.  They took him down, but I got both of them and the guys broke their lines.  All of them died except the lady who took down Garrett.  I rolled her over afterwards and nearly had a heart attack!  It was Dan and my mother!  No shit, it really was.  We captured her, but at the expense of Garrett bleeding out before we could get back to him.  Comparatively, I think we made the right call.  She is brainwashed pretty hard and hasn't really recognized us yet, but I have hopes.  Muffalo is still dealing with gut worms, but we are all mostly healed up from the fight.  Next time I'll take you on a tour of colony as it stands."  He clicks a remote and the camera turns off.

Vaporisor

Well now!  That was an interesting twist with the slavers!  I do love this game!

*noms popcorn
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Element4ry

I like this! Now I shall wait for the next part. Keep it up Anthraxus :)
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anthraxus

The camera starts and focuses on two shadows in the dimly lit room.  One of the shadows moves and the camera light brightens the room.  Brett, obviously battered and bruised, sits on the floor and dusty alpaca head rests in his lap.  The alpaca is heavily bandaged and an IV bag hangs on the wall, it's tube leading down to the alpaca's leg.  Brett holds up a remote and the camera zooms in on his face.  Besides the bruises, his face is dirty and smeared with dried blood.  Tracks down his cheeks show where he has been crying.   

He sniffles and rubs his nose with his hand.  "I..."  he seems to choke up and looks away for a moment.  "It's been a bad day.  We thought everyone was pretty much recovered from everything, but apparently Muffalo's gut worms were worse than we thought."  He sniffs and wipes his nose again, and pets the alpaca's head in his lap.  "So he got a really bad infection from them and started wandering while Dan and I were asleep.  By the time we found him, the worms had ruptured through his stomach and he had bled out."  Brett's face crumbles and he sobs.  "It must have been so horrible.  But then, while I was hauling  him back so we could bury him both Cypress and Harvey, our alpacas, went mad.  I guess because they were bonded to Muffalo, but whatever reason they both started attacking everything on sight.  Cypress killed Thudpaw, Dan's dog, and then attacked Mom.  Harvey here," he looks down at the animal, "attacked me.  As you can see I had to cut him up pretty bad to get him under control.  Once I stunned him, I helped mom knock Cypress out. Dan came in long enough to help me get the animals situated, but I haven't seen him since.  I thinking losing Thud and Muffalo at the same time may have hit him hard, but I can only do so much you know?" 

Tears begin to slowly slide down his cheeks again.  He stares into space for almost thirty seconds before visibly shaking himself, and moving Harvey's head from his lap.  He wipes his face with both hands and says, "Time to feed everybody and check the medicine.  If mom doesn't come around soon, I don't know what we are going to do.  There is too much work for just two people."  He sighs heavily and his exhaustion is obvious in the droop of his shoulders and the slump in his stance.  "This is such bullshit."  He clicks remote and the video ends.

Vaporisor

Wow... that was very well written.  Good job.

Keep strong Bret!  The Dan needs you now more than ever if they want to pull through!  You guys can do it.  For Muffalo!
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