William Brand

How about the afterlife... which one do you want to be buried with? Buried...? I plan to go down with the ship.

I'm especially drawn to the work of Garth Duncan. His Jacobite Chieftain is amazing. 30 troy ounces of silver on a hand-forged Fararra reproduction blade.

As sentient beings we define ourselves. The answer lies in the conviction of self definition. I AM a redhead.

That's a fun find. I like the Flagship. Just one of my preferred haunts...

Swords are like anecdotes. You can't get through life with only one.

But of course....they're requirements of the theme.

Today's special is pasta with mizithra cheese and butter.

Again...redheads know if they are redheads or not. Blonds know if they are blonds. Brunettes know that they are brunettes. They just know. If you don't know, I'm not sure how I could know for you.

I could live in a place called the Dog and Bacon.

Would you settle for twice baked potatoes loaded with cheese and spices and a side of fresh greens?

I like a hanger, specifically a curved blade of about 24 inches. I realize this is a bit short, and it handicaps my reach while lending a certain advantage to my opponents, but I'm a brawler when it comes to sword play. I like my opponents to come in closer because I'm better at the German school of hand to hand disarming then actual sword fighting. My training has been limited and I'm pragmatic enough to know what suits me. Also, I like a sword with a good cage of steel, i.e. Scottish basket hilts, schiavonas, etc. I can't resist the urge to carry a little punching weight. If I was ever called on to actually fight someone to the death, I'm three times as likely to bludgeon my opponent to death as I am to stab or slash him.

I was at PIP for a week last year and I didn't burn. I've learned to dodge sunlight over the years.

My back is not what it has been and each time I think I'm doing better I have an issue with it. That aside, it's been a roller coaster week. After three years of chasing after a company that hired me to do art for them without paying me, I'm finally getting the opportunity to turn the tide of public opinion against them. Artists and writers that have worked for them with similar treatment are coming out of the woodwork. Their flawless reputation is being tarnished and they only have themselves to blame. Oh yes...I AM William Red Wake.

The first course of steak will be followed by another course of...wait for it... ...steak.

Today's special is steak...

I should start a crew of redheads. We would only fight at night to avoid blistering.

I believe the camp is in very good hands. I'm grateful to see so many people stepping up to volunteer to handle the various needs and responsibilities. That said, have we covered everything that must be covered for the festival?

Tawny began to stir from the deep, trauma-induced sleep that had left him at the mercy of elements, men and death. By now, the rot which had taken his ear and much of one arm had spread to parts of his brain. In decay, his mind began to open doors which Tawny had closed and forgotten. Light spilled in upon a memory all but lost... He stood in the open door of the barn on the outermost edge of his father's property. He was dressed in simple clothes, bearing no adornment. The clothes of a traveler. He stood there, half in and out of shadow. The day was very clear, but Tawny could see the clouds that promised afternoon rains. The light on the unkempt fields made everything burn in a vivid color unlike any day that he had ever known and he smiled to think of what would be. Brianna saw him there as she approached, her heart all but breaking with the hope that he would prove as genuine as his letter. She had it clutched in one hand, fearful to let go of it. The words within had been the sweetest she had ever known. They promised a love he had never expressed verbally and they belied a life of joy and comfort she had begun to suspect would never come. Brianna had tried not to love him. More than once she had even tried to hate him, but she could not escape the perilous company of him. He had changed so much in the year she had known him that she feared he had found another and that she would come to the barn one day to find him gone forever. Now, with the letter held so tightly to her breast, she walked toward him, begging in her heart of hearts for it to be true, reading the letter again in her mind, having memorized it completely. My dream, my dear, my only love, Brianna, Please know what a fool I have been to have loved you so much in silence. Until this moment I was mute, healed to words by your constant and perfect love. How can I ever be silent again, having found the voice of my adoration? Please, take what you will in raiment, in purse and in joy and come away with me to life as it should be forever. Come away in secret and we will quit this place, this nativity of our affection, and discover the world hand in hand. Yours. Ever and always, Yours. Her heart burst a little in joy when she neared enough to see his face. There was a sweetness to it and a smile so perfect, that had she not loved him before, she would have in that moment. It was so simple and perfect that it made his face as beautiful as it always should have been. Only in the throes which followed their passion had she seen any smile like unto it, but here it was in its prosperity and she couldn't decide if the sun made it more beautiful, or if it the sun, but she thought to die with joy some day with that smile to send here from this life to heaven. He held his hand out to her, nothing more. It was only time he had ever done so. Tears had already brimmed in her eyes and she went to him, hand outstretched. They entwined in a kiss that killed her sweetly. She would have gladly died in that moment to preserve it and he too was touched in ways he could not express. They went this way, hand in hand for the first time ever to the straw he had strewn upon the ground, not with the chilling shadows of the barn, but in the open sun just beyond it. "One last time he said, before departing." The sweetness of these words caused her to weep as they played the parts they had rehearsed so many times before, but now as the lovers they were, not the ones they had portrayed. She laid aside her clothing in a slow, deliberate way like a ceremony. She set aside the heavy purse, brimming with the coin he had given her. "I saved almost all." she admitted in a way that made her seem very vulnerable. "Almost all." she repeated, and while she had kept most of it against the day that she might become pregnant and be cast out, she was glad of it now, for if they meant to travel far it would be that much more for them to share together. She loved him then, in the face of his smiles and lies, never knowing that she had succumbed to an incubus. She never loved more than she did then and he let her. He was the demon absolute in that moment, for her love, as sweet and true as it was should have turned him from his course, but he would not turn aside from the impending path of murder he had chosen. He had made up his mind, and this is where he truly became the monster. Here, in the fertile soil of pure devotion, he smiled to think of her murder with no more thought than how it would destroy Christopher and all else with him. It was in this moment when Brianna saw the smile on the face of the boy a year before. That tremulous and unsettling smile that she had not understood. It crossed his face again as they lay naked and entwined. It was almost the same as the smile that had broken her heart, but uneven and made of stuff not forged in heaven. Some true and perfect instinct woke up inside her then and killed her before the knife fell. Indeed, she closed her eyes in that moment and prayed in despair. "Come, death...if it be not love." If only she had died as peacefully as that perfect wish in her heart then. If only Tawny would have allowed it. The time of peace was past. Tawny had taken up the knife and his damnation at the same time. August 5, 1704 - St. Pierre at Martinique "Noooo..." Tawny groaned in that half waking world between perfect remembering in sleep and the dream of dust we wake to. It was perhaps the last piece of himself crying out to be heard. Some sliver of his former soul, lodged in the twisted metal of the monster he had fashioned for himself. In the epiphany of that waking second he regretted and prayed in despair as Brianna had done, and like her prayer, his proved too gossimir a thing. It was as fleeting as his sanity and it disappeared beneath his self-perpetuated evil. He woke in the pain and anguish befitting his crimes stinking of rot and vinegar. He could feel a hundred injuries burning. The near fatal shot, the severed ear, the scalded skin, the tomahawk wound, the ravages of rot and the dog's violent tearings. It seemed to him that he woke in Hell, fearing for the first time in a lifetime the death and judgment which comes to all, his many injuries to others finally revisited upon his head. Genuine and mortal fear crept into the cold goosebumps which sprung up everywhere on his flesh, even as it burned from fever. The bandages about him, he took for restraints and those heavy threads which lead men carefully down to Hell. "Mon dieu. Pas complètement, monsieur ?" Someone said from what he took to be his left. "The French..." he thought. "...the French...in Hell..." he wondered in confusion, and it might have been funny had he not been so certain then that he was damned. Still the words woke him, raised him to some hope. The voice came again and it hurt his mind to hear words at all. "Parlez-vous français ?" "Noo...noooo..." was all that Tawny could manage again, though he had intended to scream a little. The regret which had surfaced, that sliver in his skin pushed out by the puss of three dozen plus murders, made him want to cry out, but only one word could find its way. "...nooo..."

The Making of Tawny: Part Seven Three days passed before the discovery of Christopher Daniels and Brianna Woodbridge. They were found as Tawny had left them, but any dignity that he had allowed them in death was undone by jackdaws and crows. Brianna was so badly damaged as to make it impossible to recognize her. She was identified only by a small book of poems which she kept upon her person. It was tucked neatly into her clothes which lay scattered about in a way that suggested that she had undressed herself. A few very large, round, golden coins were found within the pockets, which her parents could not explain. Her mother was taken to bed unconscious in grief for days while the father was found many times in the streets in a state of such drunken surrender that he might have poisoned himself with drink. He purchased every dram with the coins found near Brianna and would wail so loudly in public as to make those who witnessed it retreat in grief. Christopher was found that same day and very nearby, as were his clothes, evenly distributed among those of Brianna. It looked as if they had helped one another undress in equal portions. His bodied was discovered naked and aloft, hanging in the midst of the lower rafters. His neck was neatly broken by the fall in the noose he had employed to hang himself. His hands were covered in caked blood, presumed to be Brianna's. No other mark could be found upon him, and but for the carrion birds, he would have been as beautiful in death as he might have remained in life. No note was ever discovered to explain the scene. There seemed no need of it. It was the worst, single atrocity that anyone could remember. It was assumed by all, though with understandable shock and disbelief, that Christopher had lured Brianna to that place of secrecy to lie with her and afterward killed her for reasons unknown. It was also taken as red that he had killed himself in remorse for that damning act. It seemed so obvious in its horrible simplicity, in its stark coldness, that it left a kind of wound on everyone who learned of it. The shock that such a thing could have happened, and that that angel of a boy Christopher could have done such a thing, shook the community to its core. People who had openly trusted the world about them, now ran the bolt of their doors at night. Some turned to God in anger, frustration or sorrow, while others quit his company forever. Those who could find it in their hearts to pity Christopher believed that the loss of both of his parents had driven him to the horrible act. Those who could only hate him believed that it was he that had caused their death and they spat at the mention of his name. Cormac was devastated. He was only just recovering from the terrible revelations of Aingeal when Christopher disappeared. At first, he thought that Christopher, horrified by Aingeal and David, had quit the place to find solace elsewhere, but with all of his possessions and clothing left behind it had seemed unlikely. Now, with the whole terrible truth laid at his feet the slightest breeze might have carried him away. Once a man of great carriage, he was now listless and bent. It would be impossible to say what Aingeal had become by then. She closed herself away in the tiny, secret room of the house and would not come out again. David-Tara, now Tawny, was the only person for a hundred miles in any direction that felt just fine, if such a thing could be imagined. Outwardly he was careful to express a kind of confused sadness, which came over as genuine and pathetic. It never entered into the mind of Cormac, Aingeal or anyone else that David had had anything to do with the murder and suicide. He had in fact left enough evidence to betray himself, for even he had not thought of everything, but nature and chance had washed away much of it with the rain and vermin. Brianna's father destroyed all the rest when he burned the barn to the ground in a fit of rage and sorrow. There is little more that remains to tell. Tawny was born in the destruction of everyone who had made him. Some innocent. Some guilty. Most were left alive. Some were killed and spared the years which followed. The most innocent perished at once, but for Brianna's parents. Cormac died a pauper, but not because of Tawny. Bad fortune just seemed to follow him after. Aingeal remained a dead woman as long as she lived and no more can be said of her that could not be imagined already. Many of the girls which had known David-Tara wondered what had become of him. He never went to any of them after, so when some of them heard of Christopher's deeds and death, they feared silently that he had been that very boy that had loved them once. One girl, so frightened by this idea, took herself to a nunnery. The rest enjoyed some love and some loss with others over time. Some were happy. Most of them were. Tawny's other child was born and lived but a short time. It was common for newborns to succumb to illness and perish in early life. It was a boy.

My art chest is filled with obsession, frustration and other mixed media.

You cantankerous wet-quaker, I would not be seen with the likes of...oh hell. I'd love to.

Redhead dreads...cool. You need to check out this ancient thread... http://pyracy.com/index.php?showtopic=4314...p=0entry0

Today's special is leftover Halloween candy!

Quiet, you pickaroon pirates! You kidlays. You goatish, caw-handed rantipoles! You...ahhh. Sterling and Dutch. Carry on, then.

I never met him myself, but he lives on by reputation.