ADVENTURES OF BOBBY BOBALONG

[Maharg67]

Thanks, Shadowmadnezz. I used to work for Coles Variety Stores, a chain of big shops that no longer exists, back in the late 1970s when I was still going to high school, so I got the feel of such places.

[Maharg67]

TWENTY-THREE

 

WHERE THE CLANKING DALLIED FATEFULLY TOO LONG IN JUNE

 

It loomed over the great valley, a mighty low hulking structure of a modern castle. Gunboxes of reinforced concrete poked guns down at the valley. A winding road ran up to a great metal gate that was wide open. Once a place of much grandeur where the Clanking himself had held his throne, the place was now only partly inhabited by so called beggar clans and seminomadic gypsies who would spend about half the year there. There were others also including the dreaded Dedjadie who had once been the elite bodyguards of the Clanking. When the Clanking dallied too long at that fortress, partly thanks to the influence of the Dedjadie, he was killed along with many Dedjadie who fought bravely to defend him. The identity of the attackers was never found.

 

The Dedjadie had been dishonoured and had dwelt in the castle for a very long time. For a time they became bandits but then turned to being mercenaries. But now they were gathering numbers and resources as if preparing for something. In power armour and with modern weapons they were deadly enough but they also fought with more exotic means such as their own special armour and weapons.

 

The first of the clues given by the phantasm merchant had taken Bobby to the Caverns of Dry Water which had been a surprise. But this castle and the actions were largely known to Bobby because of the truth behind the Dedjadie and others who dwelt there. The Clanking had been a traitor attempting to set up a betrayal of a deal with strangers from an unknown realm. Discovering the truth, the Dedjadie entrapped the Clanking in the castle so he would not make an appointment elsewhere with the strange envoy but that envoy sent terrible warriors to free the Clanking. The true Dedjadie leader had killed the Clanking, not the official one, and that was Bobby himself.

 

Since then an inner circle of Clansway Leadership had known the truth and the Dedjadie, far from being outlaws and then mercenaries, had really served against the enemies of the Clansway. Being outside of official and traditional forces they were freer to act but they had thirsted to be openly honoured and to have the stain removed from their name.

 

As Bobby himself had promised, that time had come.

 

The beggar clans were in truth a mixture of simple local folk, camp followers and other Clansway people in disguise working secretly with the Dedjadie.

 

Dedjadie warriors came forth in exotic energy/armour on horses that also wore energy/armour and they carried energy/swords, deflector/shields and also lasers. Explosive kinetic type weapons did not go well too close to such energy devices and were not used by these warriors.

 

But also Dedjadie in power armour marched forward with 20mm autoguns and missile quad/launchers along with shoulder/lasers and 40mm shoulder/cannons. They also lined up to greet Bobby and his party.

 

All the Dedjadie knew that soon they would be acknowledged for the true history and they would be compensated. Yet the reception was quiet and had not been advertised for they did not want the enemy to know the importance of it. Bobby doubted that the enemy was fooled. Again he sensed the near but hidden presence of a tall dark and powerful figure in black armour. It was the same one he had sensed in the Caverns of Dry Water.

 

In that castle he hoped he would find a waygate hidden in its underground levels between dungeons and storerooms. From there he intended to go to where he could attend a meeting with various important Clansway individuals to further plan and guide the on going war against the invaders and traitors.

 

But matters were not to go so easily to plan.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited May 8, 2010 by Maharg67

[shadowmadnezz]

good stuff :) cant wait to see what happens next

[Maharg67]

Thanks again, Shadowmadnezz (like your forum name very much)

[species5478]

Meeting time, huh? So I wonder if the next entry will embody action, or some other drama.

[Herculine]

Ah, yes... things NEVER go as easily as planned, do they?

[Maharg67]

Especially in war; often it is the side that makes the least mistakes who wins.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

 

ATTACK FROM THE AIR

 

The enemy struck hard and fast at the castle, a sneak attack of much cunning. Vertibirds and helicopters raced in from the east, gunships and troopships, dozens of them. More helicopters than the more dangerous vertibirds but a lot of firepower.

 

It was good that the Dedjadie were prepared for just such an attack and that from battlements appeared previously hidden defensive weapons. SAM batteries, pulselaser batteries, 40mm AA/guns, 20 AA/guns and robotic drones lifting into the air. Then interceptor vertibirds and vertibirds lifted into the sky.

 

Soon a great aerial battle was taking place, was being waged, as enemy helicopters and vertibirds attempted to land soldiers, robots and equipment/supplies on wider castle battlements. The vertibirds could carry heavier loads and they off loaded power armour infantry and battle robots before they turned and fled back the way they had come.

 

A helicopter exploded in mid air. Flaming bodies dropped from it. An interceptor vertijet shot between two enemy vertibirds and one of them fragmented into blazing bits in a most dramatic fashion. Enemy troopers with gravipacks floated and glided down to the castle. Many were shot out of the air by deadly Dedjadie sharpshooters.

 

Bobby Bobalong watched this from a thick fortified command tower disguised cleverly as one of many guard towers so the enemy would not pick it out to attack. The air attack was quite big and savage but he was not fooled. The real attack would come from elsewhere.

 

He had assumed the clue had brought him to the castle because the Dedjadie were there and their gathering forces would be soon very important. There was also the waygate, one of the functioning ones. But that was before he learned that the Dedjadie and a team of archaeologists had made a startling discovery down inside the deep base of the castle. An ancient temple that had been brought to the great artificial floating Columbia Island, a monstrous dark temple of black glistening stone and strange, disturbing spiritual alien artefacts. Not such as the zetans this time but shadowlings had built this temple with the help of an ancient Shadow worshipping cult back around 1800BC. The cultists had been betrayed by the shadowlings and had suffered a terrible death but their last act had been to unleash forces that destroyed the shadowlings in turn. Or so spoke the gold/copper alloy tablets carefully preserved in the temple and pictograms cut into the black stone.

 

Another possible way for the Shadow to break into the positive Multiverse from the negative Multiverse?

 

One had to be careful when dealing with the Shadow for it was an alien intelligence and seemed to be rather insane at times in what it did. One could not afford to assume that it approached life as did humanity or any other typical rationality.

 

Still when the shadow temple exploded violently, destroyed by multiple mininukes that he had ordered to have put in place, he was not surprised. Just before it exploded through a transdimensional hole, a small rift, shadowlings had started to come and with them shadowpires, lots of shadowpires. The great castle itself shuddered lightly but soon the enemy air attack was ceasing and the aircraft were flying away, abandoning those soldiers who had landed on the castle to their fate. The Shadowclan fanatics fought to the death but the others, mercenaries, were quick to surrender.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited May 8, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

TWENTY-FIVE

 

THE OTHER BOBBY IN TWINHIGH TERRITORY

 

One moment she was not there and the next Bobby was there, walking tough and sexy along a winding dirt path leading upwards through countryside covered lightly with spiketrees and tough, gnarled bushes of varied kinds. Molemice, ground squirrels and molerats were plentiful in the area and sometimes hunters came down from the big settlement of Twinhigh with its two great, massive low hulking towers.

 

Bobby was not alone. With her body-armoured figure dressed in typical Wastelander gear, casual tough and reliable, were three others, a pack/mule and a pack/brahmin plus three big dangerous hunti’dogs. Then there was a MrHandy, a MrPorty and a MrGutsy, all on their hoverjets moving through the air. MrHandy was there to repair the robots, including itself. MrPorty carried special equipment and supplies. MrGutsy supplied added firepower.

 

They travelled for a few hours over the growing and then fading daytime brightness. They passed ruins including of Post/Doomsday settlements abandoned for various reasons. They could see out over lower, flatter lands stretching into the distance. Twinhigh was a large settlement in a rather isolated region with relatively few settlements.

 

They could see up before them, rising in the distance, the tops of the great big towers. They were in appearance like the Trade Towers destroyed by terrorists so long ago except that many changes had been made over the decades of the New Dark Age. Defences were many as were alcove helipads, balcony food/gardens, lines of clothes drying in the slowly fading afternoon sunshine, added solar power panels and much else.

 

The three others were Clanforcers. Like her they were armed with experimental pulserifles, solid/state weapons able to fire pulse energy projectiles, pulselaser pulsebeams and pulse/grenades. Each was also linked to HUD inside the eyes of the three Clanforcers; Bobby didn’t need it.

 

They were a long way from the Jagged Highlands and from the war going on there but not away from conflict and danger. In the far distance behind them moved a family of killclaws, pacing fast as if to get out of that territory. Animals seemed to be deserting the area around the settlement as were plantimals, mutated plants that could and did move.

 

Something was wrong on the great big tabletop mountain, a small mountain with gently sloping sides, something subtle and evil was there that nature seemed to be detecting but not all humans. It reminded Bobby too much of the Shadow.

 

They passed a so called clusterfarm, basically a cluster of farms using community facilities and sharing needs such as defence, medical and water supply. People didn’t seem to be leaving but there were four armed adults at the main gate with a track leading to a dirt road.

 

Bobby’s party went to the main gate of the clusterfarm seeking to gain knowledge, to trade for it.

 

Soon she was standing in front of a hastily put up table. The old woman on the other side smiled warmly at Bobby and spoke. “Something tells me that far from cheating us, you are one of the rare ones who will hurt our pride by giving us too much; go ahead and hurt our pride, we will get over it.”

 

Bobby smiled back. “Oddly enough, I like you, Mabel Grey. Who is in power now in Twinhigh?” She dropped a gold Emergency Issue Coin onto the table worth a hundred Emergency Issue Dollars. It came out of her hand in a way that seemed magical.

 

Mabel shook her head in wonder. “Normal fake magic tricks I can look through but what you did then was true use of power. I get what you are saying with out saying it but we don’t cheat on honest folks who don’t cheat on us. Reputation is almost everything in these parts. As for who is in power? In theory it is Mayor Riddle and his cronies but they have had trouble with a new rising faction much more cunning and powerful than old fool Riddle ever was. Dark, cold eyed people. Dark not of skin but of ‘feel’. They have been doing the typical nasty tricks of Twinhigh like bribery, intimidation, murder, blackmailing and making people vanish but they are better at it than anybody has ever been in Twinhigh. They got lots of respected currencies, they got valuable tradegoods and they have a small army of cold/eyes, mercs, robots and even low paid local thugs they use up as expendable.”

 

Bobby nodded. “So you go there to trade?”

 

The woman shook her head. “Nobody goes there now unless they have to with but one exception. We trade with caravans from the Union of Columbia, especially those based in Canterbury Commons because they can be better trusted and have a better range of goods. If one goes up to Twinhigh, the one exception is the Free Trade Sector. One stays in the FTS outside the inner wall and inside the outer wall. It has a tough independent minded sheriff, and she is fair, who has a few deputies, robots and dogs backing her up. Sisterhood of Charity run a centre there. There is a Regulator Outpost Station that Mayor Riddle would love to get rid off even more than the sheriff that he hates. Folk who live there in the Twinhigh FTS are tough, independent minded and well armed. Yet even they are thinking of leaving as one big convoy for self protection but I am not sure where they would go.”

 

Bobby dropped another gold EIC. “The Ice/Eyes, they are most dangerous. Do they have a named leader in Twinhigh?”

 

Mabel nodded and shuddered softly. “She calls herself Dame’Doreen! A silly name and she is big, solid but very fat. She wears ridiculous overly colourful and bright 19th Century British dresses and is overdone with the make/up. She should be ridiculous and harmless seeming but truth is there is something damned cold, clammy and lethal about her. Like you and your friends, she seems calm on the surface but one can sense something very dangerous beneath.”

 

Bobby nodded. “Dame’Doreen, an anagram for DaDoreenme, a slight misspelling of a name I will not say aloud. A very powerful and evil entity who should not exist on this dimensional plane. I killed her once. She will be weaker now but she is working with other powerful beings of her kind.”

 

“You got that from my mentioning a name.” Mabel scooped up the gold coins. “Most impressive. I can see you are not easily deceived by false appearances.”

 

“True!” Bobby said and raising her pulserifle she aimed it at Mabel. “You have willingly dealt with the Shadowclan and with a Shadowmage of great power. Not DaDoreenme but one of her foes. I smell perhaps VadriDoreenme, biologically related to DaDoreenme as only such entities can be. He is powerful in the Shadowclan but under challenge by even more powerful Shadowlords who doubt his loyalty to the orthodox Shadowclan Leadership and Coda of Shadow.”

 

Mabel shrugged. “We had to do it to survive. Truth is Twinhigh has been cut off from us and no caravans have come this way for over a month. The animals are vanishing. Even those damned plantimals are crawling away. We need goods and he gave us plenty of goods. Yes, we had to pay a price, but that is normal.”

 

Bobby nodded. “The price was somebody else, another family, all four generations from great grandma right down to a new born baby, sacrificed to the Shadow. Oddly enough, I like you Mabel Grey, but you and the others who willingly made this agreement must pay along with the Shadowmage sheltered in your clusterfarm.”

 

Then she shot Mabel Grey dead with a glowing pulsebeam. The old woman simply crumpled dead with a sigh as of relief, almost as if she had hated what she had done and felt better for suffering for it.

 

A moment later Mabel Grey stood up again, all naked and young, glowing yellow white. She shimmered softly and she smiled at Bobby. Then she spoke. “I was frightened and I was too proud. When the sacrificed family screamed, I knew I had damned us all so I sent my cousins Anne and Annette with the children, sent them to the Free Trade Sector at Twinhigh.”

 

“Why is why you are now an elementor of the light.” Bobby responded. “Now, please help stop the next sacrifice from taking place.”

 

The elementor nodded, turned and the fighting began.

 

The clusterfarm was already divided between the majority who had signed the pact and the fair sized minority who had opposed it. In the majority was a fair sized minority who had come to regret their decision. Under Bobby’s influence people soon formed into two fighting factions. Gunfire swept back and forth. Dogs attacked those infected by the shadow. A brahmin trampled a man who had turned evil, unnatural. A house burned and bodies were dropped onto bundles of devil/weed and dry wood, a traditional way of burning the corpses of the damned.

 

The Shadowmage fled, leaping over the wall, screaming his rage and fear. Yet as the gnarled old man moved with amazing strength and power, he came down upon a silvery shimmering blade of a broadsword held by Bobby. The Shadowmage screamed in agony and burned away, his body vanishing into nothingness.

 

Over a third of the people were damned but the others were saved to become elementors of light, life or the blue/ice. Most of the damned were not killed. The elementors of blue/ice took them off to their own realm where they would be locked into the blue/ice until they paid and reformed for the evil they had done.

 

Then Bobby and others rested, fed and did what they had to before they went to Twinhigh now to track down the clusterfarm’s cousins and the children along with doing other things of importance.

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited May 8, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

TWENTY-SIX

 

ON GOING BATTLES IN THE WAR FOR THE JAGGED HIGHLANDS

 

Twelve Warlords moved armies across the Jagged Highlands causing death and devastation but they also suffered losses.

 

The Warlord Harusa Mars and his army was crushed in a mighty battle at the Twin Domed Mountain Pass. Foolishly he had underestimated the fighting ability of local Clan Tribal people and also the ability of Clanguard forces to reach the isolated rugged area in large numbers.

 

The Warlord Genane Tarong and her army surrendered as it started to sink into the boggy swamplands of the Gobblelus. It was the swamp itself that truly defeated her but a Clanguard legion that took her and her soldiers captive.

 

The Warlord Yanto Charles led his army up to the gates of a small, isolated and weak city to promptly surrender to a small force of poorly armed militia. The Clanguards were quick to arrive only to find the Warlord and his mercenaries having a wonderful good time celebrating with the locals their wonderful victory.

 

That led nine Warlords with their armies but they were generally not doing well and five were attempting to escape from the Jagged Highlands, to fight their way out. Then word came from the Clansway Government offering amnesty to all Warlords who would change sides and lead their mercenaries against the Shadowclan. Considering how they had been betrayed, the Warlords agreed. What choice did they have? They got less promises but they were actually paid what they were promised. It seemed then only a matter of time before the Clansfolk won the war and drove out the enemy.

 

But appearances can be deceptive.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited May 8, 2010 by Maharg67

[shadowmadnezz]

Adding some barbarian bulk to the ranks against the shadowclan :) good stuff