Hello there, and welcome to the seventeenth edition of... Son of Thunder!
As I write this, it's 39 days to opening day.
The annual Cubs Convention was this weekend (couldn't get tickets, sadly).
Can spring be far away?
I won't be around when the Times hits because I'm going to be at my grandmother's 95th birthday party in San Jose. Just for the weekend, in and out - but I am looking forward to it.
Some of you may recall when I last visited her, kind of grandma-sitting for my parents and sister who were out of the country, my grandmother nearly died. Literally. If I hadn't been right there, in that room, at that time, she would have. No ifs ands or buts.
So, I am very happy she made it to 95.
You know how it is, you reach the age of funerals? That's where you pretty much spend your vacation time traveling around the country to say goodbye to people?
Father Jim Mannis died right on New Year's Eve. Fr. Mannis baptized all the kids in my family, went to our confirmations, married most of us and was a good friend throughout his life and ours. He met my father in a hospital in Syracuse, and my dad told him he was going to Notre Dame. Fr. Mannis was a fan and they began to talk. From then on, even though Father was assigned to Pennsylvania and Massachussetts and Albany and all over, Fr. Mannis was part of the family. He'd come for Christmas, or Easter, or just to visit.
When my parents moved to California, his visits became less frequent, owing to distance as well as his advancing age. Some fifteen years ago, his vision had deteriorated to the point where he couldn't see a ship that I could see - and as many of you know, my vision is terrible.
Happily, he eventually got to live out the rest of his days at Holy Cross Hall, a retirement hall for priests and brothers... at Notre Dame.
So I went down to ND, representing my family - my parents had guests and couldn't go - to his, well, technically it was a memorial service, because the funeral was to be in his family hometown in Massachussetts. Just seventy-three priests, brothers, and me. And Father Mannis himself, looking better than the last several times I had seen him. Finally, at peace.
Well, on that note...
I do have a number of new pictures; the fun starts at the very bottom of Americana's Art Gallery #17, then continues in grand style in Americana's Art Gallery #18. Really, I have the numbers right this time.
I have three new stories in the Americana section. First, Americana returns home from New Orleans for some peace and quiet. Unfortunately, she gets neither, for: Ride, the Four Horsemen!.
Speaking of peace and quiet, she says her final goodbyes to the Ex-Patriot - a bit wordy, but a nice Requiem.
And Americana fights to save... a rib shack?! (but the pulled pork is so-o-o good!) from The Man With the Golden Guns.
AND - I have the first three chapters of a tale I've been working on, on and off, for a couple years now, at least. I took so long doing it, in fact, that I've decided not to draw it out but post all three chapters at once. Hopefully you'll have Chapters Four and Five next time.
As most of you know, years and years and YEARS ago I created a character called Hornet. Actually, my then-REALLY-little sister and I sat down in our old big black chair in our old living room in our old house, and created Hornet together. She was basically your typical flying energy projector who'd reflect things away as a defense.
Years later, when I was actually running a Champions game, I introduced her as a GM PC, under a couple assumptions. One, we didn't have any females in the group and two, she'd spend a lot of her time deflecting attacks and hence, wouldn't take away from the main PCs much. Since she wouldn't be much help on offense, other than attracting others' attacks, I gave her contacts, a tunnelling power (unusual!), a neat backstory (expanding on her being the daughter of the Green Hornet, which my sister and I may or may not have overtly given her) with the Brahmins and the psionic-generated powers and CHESS and Summer Silversmith and the house with the rotating garage and all... pretty much from day one.
When the full implications of CHESS hit me (you had an organization running around killing or kidnapping people, there obviously had to be victims, and all that implied) and I needed an excuse for Hornet not to hang around with the heroes anymore (since we had more than enough players by then) I changed CHESS - and Hornet - into much darker characters, operating on the fringe of my reasonably good world.
Having set this whole thing in motion, I knew that eventually the story would eventually have to end, sometime. Hornet was too determined, CHESS was too firmly planted in my world, for them not to have a final showdown.
Granted, this was YEARS ago. I was finishing up college and starting a new career! And I had gotten into the habit of taking the best of my previous games, and introducing them into my current campaigns, sometimes tweaked, sometimes not. I kept thinking that maybe I could work it into Forte, but couldn't really come up with a convincing way to do it (hi, you meet Hornet at a 7-11 and decide to adventure together...).
Well, now it's been twenty five years, real time, and it's time for Hornet's final run - The Last Hornet Story.
And I think it's pretty good.
K.C.