Invidia Luxuria (II)- Train Rides And Talks
--- Booker H. Freeman ---
Much like their previous trip stowing away in the train to sneak into the fight club, the cart itself was largely in the dark save for the light of these little black boxes belonging to the Inferni pair in the center of the car (almost like a bonfire.)
While they’d been like this for a fair moment, and Booker himself was content with simply listening to the sound of the tracks passing beneath them, his youngest companion apparently was not.
“So, uh, Tucker… you knew Booker in life… right?” Lydia hesitantly asked.
“Yeah, Booker and I were partners in crime for… eight, nine years?” Tucker nodded a faint (but delightful) grin on his face. “Met a year or two after I got back from the great war, and stayed together until he decided to retire to the countryside… Always regretted not joining you when I had the chance.” His oldest companion confessed.
“I’m sure you had your reasons.” He shrugged, not actually able to remember the time between enough to care about their separation.
(Lust: At the very least it was probably amicable if he’s still talking to you.)
(Envy: The way he’s talking it’s the things he stayed for he regrets.)
“Had ‘em, right up until they got me killed.” Tucker chuckled darkly. “Worst part is I’d finally wised up enough to get on the train to join you when it did.”
“That is dreadful timing.” Booker had to agree.
Lydia looked between him and Tucker for a moment. “So, if you guys go that far back then is he very different from how he was topside?”
Tucker seemed to consider that for a moment. “Well, I’m not sure how much he’s changed in almost a hundred years, but he’s still the scariest fucker I know.”
(Gluttony: Was there ever any doubt?)
“He also still has that whole drag you along showboat charisma if you know what I mean?”
Lydia glanced his way. “Yeah I think I do. When I first met him he dragged me into this whole musical number thing.”
“Oh, fuck he does that without Emily now?” Tucker laughed, hand through his hair.
“Wait, he did the musical things in life?” Lydia grimaced (grotesquely.)
“The two lovebirds were always breaking out into duets together, was sickeningly sweet.” Tucker smiled with a shake of his head. “He wasn’t so bad about it before meeting her, but he did once work his way into a KKK meeting as the entertainment before uh… doing some stuff that would’ve gotten him sent down here.”
“What kind of stuff?” Lydia asked, just a touch of hesitation to her voice.
“Well, I don’t know everything he did, but I know he killed a lot of people. By the time he left the city, everyone was terrified of the Black Bayou Butcher dragging them into the swamps to be eaten by the beasts.” Tucker explained, before noticing the worried looks everyone was giving a still smiling Booker. “Eh, don’t worry he only went after murderers, rapists, and other assholes. You know the guys the cops wouldn’t touch because of money, friendship, or just not caring about the victims. Got to remember there was a lot of corruption topside back then.”
(Wrath: Our work may be dark, but it was a necessity.)
(Envy: Whatever you’ve got to tell yourself.)
“So Booker is down here because he was a mass murdering serial killer.” Lydia noted in an odd tone. “Yeah… yeah that fits the guy who told me murder would solve all of my problems…”
“To be fair. I was right.” He felt the need to remind her. “In fact liberal applications of murder and violence have solved most of the problems I’ve been presented with since I woke up here.”
“Eh, that’s how things usually are for you Sinners.” V admitted, looking far less disturbed than the younger girl. “Apparently when you can’t die, violence becomes your go to solution for everything.”
“It works for Inferni sometimes too, but it can also get you a lot of grudges if you don’t know how to run as well.” Beez’el added his own opinion. “At the very least you need to know how to fuck some up long enough for you to get away while they regrow their kneecaps.”
“True.” The pink Inferni conceded. “Just wish there were more ways to deal with things than sex, violence, and money.”
All of them were quiet for a moment after that as they dwelled upon what a world like that might look like.
(Pride: Unambitious.)
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
(Greed: Powerless.)
(Lust: Kind.)
(Envy: Impossible.)
(Gluttony: Boring.)
(Wrath: Peaceful.)
(Sloth: A pipe dream.)
(Hmm…)
“Right, so uh, hopefully a nicer topic… Who exactly is this Emilia you and Booker keep mentioning?” Lydia tried asking. “I mean, I think you said something about her and Booker being married?”
“Yeah. Happiest I ever saw Booker was with her, even including his whole… blood and insanity thing.” Tucker nodded a faint smile on his face as he remembered better times. “I only met her myself a few times, after… Something they never told me about, but was one of the few times I saw Booker look legitimately guilty for something.”
(Envy: We didn’t deserve her…)
“I can’t recall.” He confessed truthfully, even as his fingers drifted to the pocketwatch in his tailcoat and he remembered the inscription on it.
(‘Booker H. Freeman.
You are both the second worst and the
second greatest thing to ever happen to me.
I will always hate and admire you,
Emilia Lafayette.?’)
(Lust: That could mean a lot of things…)
(Sloth: Namely that we made a mess of something good…)
(Envy: Like I said, we didn’t deserve her…)
“Either way, girl was… I spent one weekend with her and was willing to kill behind her. She was that… sweet of a person. That… special.” His oldest companion told them with a wistful sigh as he shook his head. “It was actually meeting her that convinced me I needed to get out of the old life. Try and find what you’d found for myself…”
“I… was lucky to have her in my life.” Booker agreed, even as his thumb continued to brush over the watch, wary of what such an inscription could mean for the state of his marriage. (Especially given the heavy implications of what I did to her father…)
Even if he couldn’t recall the actual event, he had enough clues to make a guess as to what he’d done to be the ‘second worst thing’ in her life.
(Lust: Hey, hey! That message says Emilia Lafayette, not Emilia Freeman!)
(Envy: Your point?)
(Lust: That the watch is from before we married her!)
(Pride: Possible if unlikely given how the watch would need to be over a hundred years old at this point.)
(Lust: Easy answer… Magic~)
(Pride: Point.)
(Lust: Yeah, see and we’re also the second best thing meaning she forgave us and chose to marry us in spite of… whatever we did…)
(Sloth: So that’s what mental gymnastics look like from inside the mind.)
(Greed: It’s almost impressive.)
One of the black boxes began vibrating, pulling him from his thoughts and leading V to pick the device up and inspect it. “Alright, looks like we’re almost at the station where you guys will be getting off for Invidia Luxuria.”
“Right… the porn district…” Lydia sighed, before giving the two Inferni an almost pleading look. “I don’t suppose we can just skip it and go wherever you guys are going?”
V and Beez’el glanced towards each other before glancing at Tucker, who grimaced.
Deciding to save everyone the trouble of reiterating that particular batch of social awkwardness, he clapped Lydia on the shoulder and told her, “Come now my dear, I sincerely doubt that this district is solely dedicated to pornography! There must be something else of interest there!” His eyes met Beez’el’s with a fanged smile. “Correct?”
“Uh, yeah… Just because that’s the main thing doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they’ve got going on.” Beez’el tried to reassure Lydia, even if he didn’t sound like he knew anything else about the district. “I mean… there’s strippers too?”
V rolled her eyes as she shoved her ex-paramour. “Booker is teaching you magic right? Well, most of the Invidia districts have some kind of magic thing going on if you look for it.”
“Really?” Lydia asked, almost sounding hopeful.
“Yeah, it’s not always the main thing but each district has something culturally connecting each sin they share. Invidia is magic and media, while Luxuria is sex and romance.” V explained as she crossed her arms. “Admittedly, I don’t know where you’d find that stuff but it’s probably there if you look for it.”
“Oh, right… Cinder is based out of Invida Luxuria isn’t it?” Beez’el blinked as if just realizing something.
“Cinder?” He repeated curiously.
“I know what that is, and no you won’t be interested.” Tucker frowned, looking almost pained at the idea.
Booker tilted his head. “Are you sure?”
“It’s… matrimonial ads.” Tucker explained, with an understandable amount of embarrassment.
“Matrimonial… the fuck?” Beez’el frowned in (hideous) confusion.
“Oh, yes I’ve no need for something like that.” He agreed with his old friend.
(Lust: We may be a murderous psychopath, but we’re a faithful murderous psychopath! Thank you!)
“Point is, I’m sure you guys can find something to keep you busy. And if not it’s not that hard to get to a different district.” V told Lydia.
“Right, yeah… just the way you guys were talking about this place…” Lydia trailed off.
“Well, the main thing a district is known for isn’t the only thing a district is known for.” V pointed out. “Sort of like how Ira Invidia is more than just the prison they lock people up in.”
“Ira Invidia has more than the nazi prison?” Lydia asked, her voice somewhere between devastated and outraged.
“You… didn’t know that… Meaning you were… shit.” V cursed, her face slowly paling. “Kids aren’t supposed to… shit…”
“Kids… aren’t… supposed to be… in IRA INVIDIA?!” Lydia repeated, voice now leaning towards outrage.
“Yeah… if, if a guard found you, they were supposed to let you out… send you to one of the orphanages to help you settle.” V nodded, eyes wide and panicked.
Lydia was quiet for a moment, her breathing coming out in ragged pants, until finally she screamed, “THOSE MOTHERFUCKING WHORESONS OF BITCHES!!!”
“Oh, uh, hey, look at that we’re at your stop!” Beez’el interrupted as he pulled open the train door. “Hate to see you guys go but you don’t want to get stuck walking up the tracks!”
“Ah, that would be inconvenient!” He agreed, picking up a snarling Lydia and tucking her under his arm as she continued to curse the powers that be.
“Come along, Tucker, we mustn't be late!” He told his fellow sinner before hopping off the still moving train as Lydia began foaming at the mouth.
For anyone who may be interested… Here's an audit of my writing for the Seventh Year Anniversary.
Today marks the seven year anniversary of when I first started Deviant’s Masquerade and I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for following along this far and post a chapter for each of my stories. (Note: Was going to write Black Briar’s today but stuff got in the way.)
Additionally, I also try to do something semi-special each anniversary and while I do not have a new quest or game what I do have… is an audit.
You see about a year or so ago I saw this meme, the uncle iroh one, where it was asking writers ‘do you actually have plot or are you just going off of vibes’ and that sort of stuck with me.
Namely because I realized how many of my stories are just going off of vibes rather than plot. Which is part of why for my seventh year as a writer I am doing a sort of self-audit as it were for this past year to see what I can do to improve each story partially by re-reading a lot of my previous stuff. (Note: This excludes the various chapters I am releasing today and tomorrow.)
Hacking Reality
-Age: 5.5 Years
-Word Count: 263k
-Word Average: 47.8k per year
-Last Year: 14.4k
-The original idea was just for a mad scientist protagonist, and as one of my early stories I didn’t actually have a big bad beyond the kidnapping group. (Which has sort of been forgotten about.) As such most of the plot has been sort of slap dash with things going through frequent slow patches because most stuff is made up as I go with this story while using humor and Maya’s insanity to cover it all up.
In reality, we’ve a few small plot points that are sort of pushed to the side for a in game month until we eventually do something about them. Which in turn means there are no clear ‘arcs’ or ‘books’ that I can divide things by.
So, Plot to Vibes= 3/7
The Huntsman’s Quest
-Age: 5.5 Years
-Word Count: 370k (Excluding 25k for the preboot)
-Word Average: 67k
-Last Year: 17.1k
-The original likely would’ve had similar issues as Hacking Reality, but at the same time Jon being more reactive than proactive in the reboot makes it easier for him to have events every month that he has to face and overcome over the course of that month. None of which quite make for an overarching plot.
From there I’ve currently got two maybe three events outside of December/Christmas stuff which can form a sort of ‘monthly novel’ sort of approach. Though after December I’ll probably have six dead months as far as plot goes given the remaining time for ‘a year in the life’. (I have however had the ending more or less planned for years, with it being flexible enough to match our choices.)
Plot to Vibes=6/4
Get Ink’d
-Age: 5 years
-Word Count: 189k
-Word Average: 37.5k per year
-Last Year: 14.3k
-From the very beginning we’ve had a general plan of ‘break away from the syndicate’ and ‘reopen the cabaret’ with one or two tasks a month giving us the most clear direction of my first three quests.
Based on my timings I see us finishing the first Act mid-december (in story) while the second act of actually building a gang and escaping the syndicate taking two or three more months. After that though, I have no idea what to do for a final act unless I wrap things up at the end of Act Two, which again would fall short of the ‘a year in the life’ goal. (I do not actually have an ending planned though.)
Plot to Vibes=7/3
And All The Sinners, Saints
-Age: 4 years
-Word Count: 115k
-Word Average: 18.75k per year
-Last Year: 10.4k
-This quest started out because I had an idea for a cool cast of characters (half of whom are batman expies) forming a found family and wanted to write a story about them. Unfortunately, even if the characters are cool, cool characters alone do not make a plot. Hence why things tend to slow down mid ‘sin’ while ‘sinless days’ progress so much faster.
I do however have plans for two/three more kids to be adopted as well as further exploration of things with the vigils. That said, I might need to make ‘sins’ less of big overarching events outside of the children because of how much its slowing things down. (Basically if I can’t do an ‘event’ in less than 10 chapters, I probably shouldn’t.)
Plot to Vibes=4/6
Hex City Devils
-Age: 2 Years (Upon finishing Act 1)
-Word Count: 131k
-Average Yearly Count: 65.5k
-Word Count Since March: 8.3k
-A national writing month challenge, the idea here was to write a certain amount every day for a whole month. In order to do so I slapped together a bunch of cool character ideas and threw them into a city together as it went to crisis/quarantine, each of which I had three ‘acts’ for.
Unfortunately, I misjudged how hard it would be to stitch all of these stories together into something coherent, while also explaining why things were bad enough for a quarantine. The later of which I hadn’t actually considered and in turn made me grind the plot to a halt as I tried to fix things. And after finally wrapping up most character’s act one this story is going to need an overhaul with a lot of clean up to make it work after how bad I fumbled everything.
Plot to Vibes= -5/5 (because there was a plot, too much of a plot honestly.)
Smile Like You Mean It
-Age: 2 Years (If we count Patron Time)
-Word Count: 121k
-Word Average: 60k
-Last Year: 40.4k
-This quest similar to the one above began with me taking one cool character and wanting to write a story exploring them in an interesting setting. Except I actually planned out a massive backstory for that one character that creates a sort of overarching plot as we explore the setting.
Which when combined with the four contract children, the three hell children, the four family members, and the sin cadre all having their own interlaced plot points makes me confident that while a bit of long haul I will be able to write out an entire open and closed by the time we explore all 28 districts of hell.
Plot to Vibes=8/2
Black Briar Library
-Age: 2 Year (If we include patron start time, and ignore a 5 month hiatus for SLYMI)
-Word Count: 81k
-Word Average: 40.5k per year
-Last Year: 31.1k
-Inspired as a sort of ‘anthology’ this was meant to be a story following a large cast of characters across numerous stories in what I now realize would’ve been a highly flexible but poorly thought out plot based on an episodic nature.
That said, the story focuses so much on Fischer’s slow opening up and dealing with his guilt, that realistically I could consider his overarching plot finished by the end of Book 4. Which would just leave the plots of his co-librarians which we have not explored at all, and who at this point are far less thought out due to me wanting to maintain flexibility within the story.
Plot to Vibes=6/4 for now, 5/5 overall
Daemon Daze
-Age: 7 months
-Word Count: 94k
-Word Average: N/A
-Last Year: Total
-This one is meant to be an exploration of the days of the Voodoo Wars, a sort of prequel time period to the rest of the setting while also letting me engage in a sort of creature collectathon.
For the actual plot I have three overarching and intersecting ‘plots’ that I want to try and tie together. (Pennyworth, Helena, the Families. And the Daemons as a sort of side-story thing.) The cases themselves are meant as a sort of narrative vehicle for those plots, but admittedly I need to plan them out more to keep the cases more interesting for what will probably be 10-ish, novellas. (500k-ish words at the current rate.)
Plot to Vibes= 7/3
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Now moving onto planned or unrealized quests that have been up for votes:
-The Devil’s Due Casino: (3k Written) I had a cool character duo with three important plot points, and a small cast around him. I probably could have turned this into a duology type of book but in reality things were nowhere near planned enough to do a proper story putting it on the Hacking Reality level.
-The Legendary Travelers: (3.7k) A cool idea following several interesting characters, each having a sort of cool plot. Could be a precursor idea to the BBL, as of now I probably could not create a good story intersecting them all as a cast so will cannibalize them for other stories each better fits within.
-Sanctuary Rosemary Branch: (0k, memo side story) This one would have revolved around the relationship between Nicholas Stone and Caleb Cross, as well as Cross’s various misadventures and Stone’s clean up. In truth I had very little in the way of an overarching plot, but several cool characters. This one probably would have ended up somewhere around AATSS as far as plot to vibe, but stuttering out since there was no connecting plotlines between everything.
-Simon Lorde, The Overlord: (13k) Another cool character prompts a story idea, with me having vague ideas for six different cities each of which having a character to tie back to Simon. While I had a cool overarching plot idea, the internal plot of each city/location was fairly lacking so it would probably end up in a similar space plot to vibe wise as BBL rather than SLYMI.
-Soul Stitcher Quest: Looking back, this one was a quest born of a hyperfixation idea between Sinners and South of Midnight. I had a couple of cool characters and a decent setting idea, but in reality there was no ‘motivation’ to the plot beyond ‘you have the power, use it’ which would likely put this plot to vibe score on the same level as Hacking Reality.
-Horror Survival Quest: This one plot wise was actually fairly straight forward, kill several demon bosses and their cultists before getting out of the sealed off town. And would actually be fairly easy to build an overarching plot for… but I’m a little unsure if it would be better as a quest than a video game. If done it would probably be a ton of sub-1000 word chapters while also being fairly game-y in nature which makes me a little iffy on writing it.
-Drone Civ Quest: This idea, while technically not a previous vote, is one I’m considering for my next quest. The idea being that we play two competing factions, one a middle manager trying to reclaim a death world the corporation they’re a serf to lost control of and the other the drones working to maintain their freedom. While an interesting premise… I’ve realized aside from mechanically exploring vaults I don’t have an actual plot outline beyond the beginning.
-Monster Hunting Quest: I’ve an idea for a sort of overarching plot line to tie things together, but the majority of the story would’ve been exploring several locations and hunting monsters with a colorful cast of characters. I have several overarching goals and several interesting boss monsters/quests for forming a pattern similar to Daemon Daze in structure and likely eventual Plot to Vibe in scoring with each ‘plague’ having its own plotline.
-Vandergeist: Another next quest idea, but one where I have an interesting city with multiple clashing factions and several heroes for each that could make an interesting civ quest with the protagonist having a focused goal to carry things through several phases. And despite thinking it was a hyperobsession I have enough plot planned to safely put it with Daemon Daze on plot level if with a longer overall story.
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Now for the actual numerical values of my Stats as an author:
Time Active: 7 Years
Total Word Count For Anthology: 219k over 1.25 years, for an average of: 175.2k yearly
Total Quest Word Count: 1231k over 5.5 years, for an average of 223.8k per year
Quest Word Count of the last Year: 240k
Side Story Word Count: 115.4k over 2.25 years, for an average of: 51.1k per year
Unrealized Story Count: 19.7k + 25 k for the Huntsman flop.
Total Overall Word Count: 1,611,500 Words, for an average of 230k per year
Past Year’s Word Count:
Total Page Count: Roughly 5800 Pages of story, 852 of which are from the last year
(325 Page) Books Written: Roughly 17.84 (Ignore my books being closer to 425 pages for 13.64.)
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So, all in all I’m actually up on my yearly average if only because of how quickly I’ve been writing Daemon Daze. (Which I can so easily write due to not being bound by my usual OCD rules, which is a whole other topic.)
At the same time, while often experimental I feel like I’m learning enough with each story written that my skill as a writer is slowly improving. (Especially after reading the first dozen chapters of Hacking Reality and the Huntsman’s Quest.)
Still if you read all of this, or any of my stories really, I just want to take one last moment to thank you for reading and following along for as long as you have.
