Deep In Thought 2

The second half of the flash fiction Deep In Thought, also available on my podcast, Pocket Fiction!

Writing ‘Deep In Thought’ went the usual way my mind works, which was ‘Here is a theme. How can I twist the meaning of the sentence to make it about something oblique?’ It’s by far not the first time I’ve done it. Playing with words is a favourite pastime of mine, and I’m always looking for anagrams, codes, Spoonerisms, hidden meanings and words-written-backwards (pretty much any time I see a name, like Mr Radnor, I’ll read it backwards in case it’s important. 99% of the time it’s not.)

Deep In Thought is one of those. It’s about someone deep in thoughts... someone else’s thoughts.

The skimmer flew on. Now that he was inside the long and gently curving tube, Jerod gunned the engine. It was an artefact of the visualisation, he knew; pushing further into the neuron had shrunk his skimmer down, to the point where the journey was taking far longer than it should have, but it was the only way his mind could make sense of it all. Either that, or Ramona’s mind was resisting, taking more of an active role in the simulation.

The axon tunnel ended abruptly, opening up to another large space, this one roughly ovoid. 

Deep In Thought 1

I’ve been writing quite a lot recently, since I left full-time teaching, and among other things I’ve revisited the 100 themes. This was a deviantArt initiative, giving you 100 things to write about as writing prompts. I’m going to start chewing through them; I’d done 51 before I stopped, so 49 more to go!

Here’s the first half of #52, which is also the text for this week’s and next week’s Pocket Fiction podcast; watch this space in a week’s time for the second half.

052 – Deep In Thought

It was mostly dark when Jerod opened his eyes. He was on a bench seat in the front of a skimmer, looking at the cramped dashboard with its softscreens displaying dials for speed and fuel, its cupholder, the little trophy girl with her hula skirt rocking drunkenly from side to side; even the little lead-glass laser sculpture of a brain he’d stuck on with sticky tack, a memento from his first ex.  The main control panel was alight, its sepulchral glow illuminating only the barest edges of everything. He ran his hands over the plastic fascia, feeling in its ruts and scratches a wealth of memories. There was the tiny smooth circle where his dropped cigarette had melted it; they’d been at an open-air concert, just Alice and him, and the touch of her lips on his was a welcome distraction. The music had been terrible, but at least it was free. In the darkness, Jerod smiled sadly. It hadn’t lasted. The sweet nothings became arguments. He was working long hours, on the fast track to make commander. She accused him of having an affair; the argument had escalated, and she’d threatened to get out while he was driving. He’d pulled over, of course, and that was that.

His earpiece crackled, breaking into his thoughts. “Commander, are you in?” The voice was female, all business.

The King's Thief

I have snow to thank for the fact that I’m aspiring to be a writer at all. In my second year of teaching, we lived opposite a Starbucks that was never very busy at the best of times. It was a great place to go and write; quiet conversation, background music, first-name-terms with the manager and the benefits of having a ‘regular’ drink. (Venti hazelnut latte, extra shot – not my favourite any more, sadly!)

The first week of January, I was ready to go back to work. My first term had been one of dizzying highs and hellish lows, but I’d rested and planned and resourced, and I was ready to go back. And then it snowed. We’re not great at snow in the United Kingdom; I saw headlines today in the newspapers that said things like ‘SIX INCHES OF SNOW MAY PLUNGE UK INTO CHAOS’. Now, there’s all sorts of jokes I could make about six inches of cold, hard chaos, but let’s suffice to say that in 2008 it snowed enough to close the school at which I was working.

I was totally ready to be creative, flexible, all that stuff... and all that energy just kind of backfired. Most shops didn’t really open. I’d got some games to play, but even that palled after a while. It was a brief window in my life when I wasn’t playing an MMO, so I didn’t even have Final Fantasy or World of Warcraft to fall back on. So I started writing.

It had some good world-elements. There was a race of people who were part-tree, with glowing green orbs instead of eyes, called Sylvans. There was a race of centaurs, called centaari, and a steampunk pedipulator that I’d actually forgotten about until I looked it up just now. In an homage to Metal Gear Solid 4, there were some awesome Banshees, women with emotional connections to Kaliss who were magically programmed to hunt him down and kill him. They had brass domes that completely covered their heads and rang like a bell with their constant screaming. There was a convoluted plot that involved the main character, Kaliss, pretending to be something he wasn’t in order to steal a fabulous gem, but secretly he was working for the king so that he didn’t get hanged. That influenced the title: The King’s Thief.

Trouble is, it was a bit crap. Kaliss had no character of which to speak. He was docile; people took him captive, or knocked him unconscious, meaning that he was lead around from place to place. He was boring and predictable, and completely devoid of use. Just recently, though, I think I’ve found a way to resurrect The King’s Thief, so I’m sorely tempted to plot it out and use it as my next novel. It’s cringeworthy to look back over old stuff – did I really write that? – but it will be useful in the long run.

Pocket Fiction is back!

I've started doing Pocket Fiction updates again, with a view to uploading a more finely-polished product each Friday. I'm using different software again, something simpler: Garage Band '11, which is actually a downgrade. Turns out they took out the Podcasting functionality in the most recent version of Garage Band, and it's pretty darned good. I've had a play around with it, and I think it's generally better for me.

I've also made a recording booth in my downstairs walk-in cupboard; it's basically a plastic box with some foam in it. I've also made my own pop-filter out of a pair of tights and an embroidery hoop... it's pretty good! Didn't get a single plosive in the two short stories I recorded today, so it's obviously doing its job!

Also! I'm going to take a break from recording episodes of Poisonroot, for two reasons. One, it's difficult to jump-on at any point other than the beginning. Two, some of the writing is actually a little shaky, and I'm writing better stuff now. If, at some future point, people ask me to do the rest of it, I will record the other half.

For now, the podcast is available on the iTunes Podcast store, on YouTube and on my Tumblr. It'll be updated every week now that there's absolutely no excuse.

I'm actively looking for other authors who would like their work read out. As a guide, 1600 words is about ten minutes talking time, so if you've got something of about that length and would like it narrated, then fully linked through my blog, Tumblr, podcast and YouTube channel, drop me a line!

More CYAO - Decision trees

Here's a sample of the decision tree for my CYAO:

It's pretty complicated already... and this is at a point when the hero is only just getting to Dragonstone Keep, the main area for the game. It's going to be pretty complex by the end. Those black ones are deaths; four chances to be dead already, and we're barely out of the starting blocks. I don't know about you, but my favourite bit of the CYAO games I read as a child was reading all the deaths. Some just copped out, with a 'You are dead' script, but the best ones were a bit more flavourful. The larger one at the bottom is a placeholder for something like this:

"A goblin club catches you on the back of the head. The sudden pain is quickly replaced by a warm, wet feeling, and you sink into darkness. You awake hours later, your shoulders burning in agony. As you reach over to see what's wrong, you realise your arms have been removed. The smell of sweet meat cooking finds your nostrils. A goblin looks up from where he is sucking the flesh off your fingers, growls something in a guttural language and grins, displaying a mouthful of fangs. You are (mostly) dead."

Grisly, fun and something worth going through the decision tree for? Or would most people see the words 'You are dead' in bold and immediately flip back? I can't think that both Sue and I are alone in wanting to know all the gory details...

Choose Your Own Adventures!

It's ok as long as you kept your thumb in the page, right?

I remember whiling away the hours reading through the Ian Livingstone/Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy books. They had green borders, wonderful cover illustrations, and the ending was almost always at paragraph 300. But I don't remember ever actually 'playing' one of them. Just reading through and assuming I'd won the fights, because it was fun to seek out all of the terrible deaths.

Then there were three stand-out series of video-game tie-in gamebooks, for Sonic the Hedgehog, the Mario Bros and Lemmings. I'm actually genuinely amazed that the first two have wikipedia pages, and that there were only two Lemmings gamebooks. I didn't just play those, I used to sit and trace the images. I can still draw a Lemming as a result of that book.

As a writing exercise, I'm trying my hand at creating a CYOA book, mostly inspired by those gamebooks of my childhood. It's complicated; thanks to this article by Karen Woodward, I'm using SimpleMind+ app on the iPad, which makes flowcharts fun and interesting to look at, and also simplifies it somewhat. I'm genuinely interested in inkle, a software for making interactive stories that are just a bit better than CYOA, as they feature sound, colour visuals and so on. I'm really interested to note that there are fighting fantasy games on the Nintendo DS and might see if I can check that out on my own 3DS.

Watch this space; I'll put the decision tree up as soon as it's finished.

I hope you had a great Christmas and that your new year has got off to a nice start!

Murder Matches - With Nana Li!

I've been wanting to blog about this for a while, but it's only just been properly finished - just in time for the weekend!

Murder Matches

by Nana Li and Steve Cook

Nana's idea for Murder Matches was a really lovely one to work with; a mystery in eight parts, designed to be picked up and read in any order. Each one needed to have a unique voice; they also needed to provide a series of red herrings, motives and gossip, while still dropping hints as to how the death of the Colonel actually occurred.

It was a really lovely challenge, and I hope people have fun reading them, and enjoy owning the spectacular artwork by Nana. If you're anything like me, the pictures will give each character an accent in you head as you're reading, as they did when I was writing.

Nana Li will be exhibiting at Thought Bubble this coming weekend, sharing a table with John Aggs in New Dock Hall, table 40.

Flash fiction set in Koru

Koru, one of the five countries that make up the continent of Ehrian. Although, that said, one that I'm thinking of changing the name of, mainly because that makes the spoken language 'Koruan', which is little too close to 'Korean'. Maybe 'Korun' works, or 'Kor'. 'Caw, listen to me speak my language'. Bleh.

Anyway! A bit of dunking in the politics of Koru.

General Sun-Ji looked out upon his empire, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. The sun was setting, painting everything in shades of blood; the warmth of the day had already begun to sink into the coolness of evening, and a faint mist was rising from the reflection pools in the shadows far below.

His son, still standing at the desk a few feet behind him, cleared his throat gently. “Father,” the young man said, “The staff are still in revolt. We must do something.” His plea echoed around the hard walls and floor, sounding empty.

“I have already put measures in place,” Sun-Ji said. “Soldiers have set up a perimeter, and the workers are being contained.” He half-turned and graced his son with a smile. “You worry too much, Mako.”

“They will fight.”

“They will die, then,” Sun-Ji said, turning back to the sunset.  Even at fifty, his back was straight and his shoulders broad. He closed his eyes and listened. Whoever had designed the Imperial Office had known his audience. Every movement, however slight, was amplified. There was the sound of a step, almost too tiny to hear, and the susurration of fabric moving against skin. The slightly uneven sound of Mako’s breathing, and underneath it, something out of place, off to the right.

Teaching Lows and Podcast Highs

Almost exactly as I predicted, term started and I dropped completely off the radar. Not a single blog post since September 1st, when term started. The truth is that the school I'm working at now has very high expectations and is also expecting the Inspectors any time soon. That translates to very late nights, working at the weekend, and generally not wanting to do anything other than vegetate in the evenings.

That's not entirely true. I play a bit of Final Fantasy XIV; it's fast becoming an escape from what I do, but this week is a prime example. The first time I was able to get on was last night, so it's not exactly taking up all my free time!

I've found time to do some writing. As well as continuing to work with Patrice Aggs, I'm collaborating with Nana Li on a project which should be finished soon. But it's not as much writing as I'd want to do, sadly.

I do plan to do NaNoWriMo, my second one this year, and the plan is to write Noctis Point during that month. Whether I actually manage to get the time is a question I can't answer right now. Work's getting busier and I'm getting more tired as we crawl closer to Christmas.

However, one thing I have managed to do is release a podcast every week, and a video on YouTube! I've yet to garner much interest, but that's to be expected. I think it's fairly niche, but hopefully eventually I'll just have been doing it so long that I get watchers/listeners through attrition. It's also incredibly handy; it's allowed me to spot several mistakes in Poisonroot, and also realise that I really don't like the first ten chapters or so. I should have rewritten them. They're a bit pants. Luckily, it picks up after that, almost exactly at the point where I started writing it as my NaNo two years ago. Funny, that.

I have found time to do some reading, namely 'Endgame: The Calling' by James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton. It's the first part of an ARG (alternate reality game) sort of thing where there is a real prize of $500,000 in gold coins. Think Kit Williams' Masquerade or The Merlin Mystery (both of which, I know, date me slightly!). So far, it's fairly impenetrable to me, but that's because I just read it through like a normal book. If I really want to go for it, I'll need to sit with a notebook and actually try and solve some of the puzzles. There's a book signing next week in Waterstones, Piccadilly; I plan to ask the author why it's written in the present tense, which I find a little difficult to parse!

Hopefully it won't be another six weeks until I update this!

Whisp's Tale

This is the last of the Paragon Path tales that I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

The journey back to Fjornik was a quiet one, everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts. Only the rhythmic beat of the horses’ hooves disturbed the silence, a silence which had been hard won.

Faces flashed before her eyes. Maran. Ena. Doe. Even Vile, she thought with a snort. He was a bastard, but he didn’t deserve to die like that. The last weeks weighed heavily on her, and she knew the others were feeling it too.

“We won, didn’t we? We’re heroes.” she said aloud, more to herself than anything else. 

Toofi looked round. “It doesn’t feel like it, though,” she said quietly.

Whisp nodded and fixed her eyes back on the road. Then why do I feel so insignificant?

Gods. Demons. And she just a human. She narrowed her eyes. It was clear that the monsters of this land were too vast to be easily hunted, cornered and slain.

Ostardva's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. As a bit of back story to this one, we left Ostardva's story hanging at the point when Tiamat, the evil dragon goddess, had offered him a place as her paladin. We kept the suspense up until the very end of Heroic Tier about whether his Paragon path would be as an evil paladin or as a righteous one, or turning his back on the path of a paladin altogether. Enjoy!

“No.”

The word echoed around the cavernous chamber. Ostardva, stood on one of Tiamat’s long, sinuous necks, stared defiantly at the five immense dragon heads, arrayed in front of him.

The central one, the red one, started backwards a little, as if surprised.

“No? Just like that? You disappoint me, child of Arkhosia.” The five heads spoke as one, a woman’s voice but with a hint of growling bass in it. The sound was like a hammer-blow, every word a storm to be weathered.

“Just like that,” Ostardva said, holding the red head’s gaze.

“I offer you power.”

“I don’t need power.” Ostardva felt a small flame kindle in his chest.

“I offer you privilege.”

“Privilege must be earned.” The flame grew brighter, and Ostardva began to remember how it felt to be righteous.

The heads began to move closer in unison. “I offer you the respect of your companions. As an arbiter of a god, they would see the worth in you.”

“You offer me nothing that I cannot gain on my own.”

Futch's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

Futch frowned as he walked away from the others. No-one seemed in a particularly celebratory mood; they had won the war, beaten the Lich, but at a high cost. Hundreds had died, thousands perhaps. Ostardva, Gieve, the others on the airship.

Maran.

He gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, fighting the surge of frustration that threatened to boil over. To have been so far away, and not able to do anything, or even know about it... It wasn’t fair. He wandered through the streets, barely aware of the direction his feet were taking him, lost in thought.

Finally he stood in front of the southern gate, looking out over the plains. The gently sloping path that lead to Varikause and beyond lay in front of him and, with one backwards glance at Fjornik, he shifted.

Faster than the wind, faster than thought, he ran, and as he ran he allowed the sheer joy of it to carry away his anger and sadness. They can never know this, he thought to himself, never see the world through scent and hear the smallest sound, never run through the wilds on four paws like this.

Kali's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path stories I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

Kali stood in the confusion of the city. In a way, ruined as it was, it felt more comfortable to her; instead of stone formed into buildings and walls, it was more like the hillsides of her childhood, rough and unformed.

She rubbed her shoulders at that thought, feeling the roughness of her own skin. It was still odd to her; she’d grown used to the small slices and nicks, the little pieces of skin that grew back harder than scars should, but the final battle against the Lich had been devastating in more ways than one. Hundreds had died, an entire city fallen into a pit, friends and travelling companions blasted into nothingness. In the darkness and heat of the cavern under Ortmund, revealed at last, they had battled the Lich and emerged victorious. She flexed her hands, remembering the freezing cold and biting pain that had stung them as she had grabbed at whatever was inside its armour, holding it in place so that Toofi could deliver the death blow. The backlash of energy had flayed her torso open, revealing a rougher layer beneath the skin that ached still.

She wandered out of the city. A few children waved at her in passing, and she smiled and waved back. The road sloped gently downwards towards the grassy plain to the south of Fjornik, and Kali lengthened her stride. As she walked, she scanned the horizon.

“Aunty Moonie,” she whispered to herself. “If you’re out here, I could really use some help.”

Toofi's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path stories I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

The bar was loud, uncomfortably so, but Toofi had found a quiet corner in which to sip her mug of ale. Fjornik was coming back to life, more so now that the threat of the undead horde was gone, and it was good to not have to watch her back all the time.

The events of the last few weeks were still large in her mind, though. Memories rose unbidden; fabulous journeys into other realms, the weird feeling of controlling a body much larger than hers, and a grinning face pressed up against crystal.

Ilneval.

Toofi’s mouth twisted in distaste. Who was the demon (was he even a demon?) going to take his revenge on? Who were the descendants of Ragnus? Had they settled one problem only to free another, greater threat?

Slapping a couple of coppers down onto the table, Toofi stood up. Hanging around in taverns worked for trying to track down killers and thieves, but finding out about the first men who walked the earth was going to require something a little more definite.

Projects Update!

Pocket Fiction has launched!

Essentially it's a channel for audio stories that I'm recording. Initially it'll be my own stuff, mainly Poisonroot. One of my jobs this week is to continue recording chapters of Poisonroot in advance, so that when term starts next week I've got a load of updates. At first it will be updating on a Friday only, but I might up that to two-a-week when I'm more confident with it. I've also been posting them to Tumblr, at stevecookfiction for a bit of cross-media notice.

I'm really excited about it!

The deadline came and went for D&D stories, and everyone seemed really happy with them. Essentially, all the characters reached paragon tier, which is a major advancement point both in roleplay terms and in stats. We had a four-week break for real-life reasons between finishing one chapter and actually having the characters get their paragon paths, so we roleplayed it that all five characters went away for a week and had their own personal adventures. I had a long talk with each of the players and we hammered out what their characters did, and then I wrote up an individual story for them. No-one knew I was doing it, which was both exciting and a little scary; trying to capture each character, and at the same time writing a story that would be 'right' and considered canon, was a challenge. However, everyone was really pleased with them, and I got permission to post them here. I'll queue up the posts and you'll get one each day, starting tomorrow with 'Toofi's Tale'.

Next up: Work for teaching work, and then cake-making.

Projects on top of projects!

I'm making a lot of work for myself and should probably clear some of it off. In no particular order of importance:

1. I've planned out, and just need to write, Noctis Point. It's the new and improved psych-based story that I think will work really well. I just need a bit of discipline and actually get writing it. Go go fake NaNoWriMo time, perhaps!
2. Dungeons and Dragons! Ok, so I've got normal planning to do, and also a little bit of a special project that I can't share until after Sunday. I don't think any of the people who play actually follow this blog, which is sad times, but even if word gets back to them I don't want it spoiled. Lets just say that I should have a few days of updates on here next week that I'm queueing up now.
3. Pocket Fiction! It's going to be a real thing soon. I've actually recorded five now, but they're in varying degrees of quality and I really need to confirm which recording method works for me. I'm also trying to get hold of a royalty-free fire-in-a-fireplace video that I can set the stories to, so that people have something to look at. I'm going for that 'cosy story in front of the fireplace' feel to it, but Sue pointed out that it could easily double for 'everything you love is burning to a cinder', or words to that effect.
4. NomCake! Not sure I've ever talked about that here, but we do cakes to order. I love baking and don't do it enough. NomCake is my way of making sure I do some at least. Reasonable prices, any cake to order within reason.
5. Working with Patrice Aggs! I'm very lucky to be working on a project with awesome illustrator Patrice Aggs on a project that I don't think I can talk about yet. But it will be awesome, and you can bet I'll talk about it a bunch when it happens.
6. Work for which I get paid! Or not at the moment. But I do need to do some actual planning for next term. I've done some, it's just a matter of getting down to it.

Two of those are fairly quick to finish; NomCake's deadline is a week on Saturday, and D&D's deadline is this Sunday coming. Pocket Fiction is an ongoing project. Noctis Point is a long-term project, at least a month without much else going on. The others are open-ended, so I guess that prioritises things!

Camp NaNoWriMo

Seriously thought at one point I wasn't going to make this target; I had a few days 'off' over my birthday and finishing work, and they build up. Luckily, I'd gotten ahead some, and I had a few good writing days. I've also really fallen out of love with some sections of the story. It's really not the story it started as, and the characters aren't the same anymore. But then, it wouldn't be fun if everything stayed the same!

I'm definitely going to write something else, maybe in the same world, but first I need to write a short story for this year's Manga Jiman competition!

When is a word 'public domain'?

I was writing part of Psy-Clones yesterday (oh! I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo this July! And then hopefully straight-up NaNoWriMo in November!) and I wrote about hyposprays. I wanted something that was futuristic, needles being already a thing of the last century and surely soon to be replaced. It didn't even occur to me that this was a problem until I read that chapter to Sue.
"That's from Star Trek," she said. "I'm not sure you can use it."
She's right; this Wikipedia entry about hyposprays specifically lists it as being a Star Trek invention, developed because NBC would not allow them to show needles being used to inject substances. That's fair enough. It seems I'm not alone in automatically using the term 'hypospray' to refer to this device; these three articles, among others, also do. Apparently the term we should all be using is 'jet injector' which is slightly clumsy to me.
Part of my wish to cling to 'hypospray' is that I feel 90% of the readers of Psy-Clones would immediately understand what I'm talking about. It's part of what made Star Trek so good, the 'by-the-way' science fiction stuff they invented. It wasn't a massive thing; it's not like I'm importing the entire Starship Enterprise, or the Borg. It was one of the little life-changing things that the optimistic future will contain, I'm sure.
At what point does a word like 'hypospray' become public property? Consider 'robotics'. Isaac Asimov often pointed out in his essays that he invented the word without even realising it. No-one who uses the term robotics now uses it and immediately thinks 'Oh, that's an Asimov thing, isn't it?'

NaNo is going well; I'm slightly ahead of the curve and trying to do what I did last November. That is to say, I wrote a little more than I needed to each day and finished a day or two early. However, this time, I'm going to try and continue the pace, writing about a 1000 words a day. I missed Saturday because I was ill, but made it up on Sunday, so it's not un-doable. I'm also going to try and write some short stories specifically to be read out for another project. We'll see if that comes to anything!

Writing Day 23/06/14

It looks like I'll be writing a post to update on my 'writing day', once per week. So how does this work?

I've been a full-time teacher for nearly 6 years, and after a couple of jobs that weren't as good as they could have been (mainly management issues), I decided that enough was enough. I'm now a part-time supply teacher, four days a week by choice, and the other day is my 'writing day'. It's a day for me to get things in order, do as much writing/editing as I can, hopefully get some stuff sent off and, by the looks of things, update my blog.

Today's a good example. I've got a piece that I'm submitting to Mocha Memoir's 'Avast Ye Airships!' anthology (some adult content on that page. NSFW warning). I've tightened it up and I'm getting ready to submit it. I can't post it here, but I can tell you that it's about airships and dragons. Clockwork dragons.

I've been working on a short sci-fi story that I submitted last week to Daily Science Fiction. It's quite retro, lots of the influences from old Asimov tales in there, but it's set in the Psy-Clones universe. If it doesn't find publication there, I'm at least generally pleased with it. It's called 'Diplomatic Immunity'.

I'm thinking about sending two of my stories to the Stuff You Should Know podcast. For a start, they always like to receive stuff and give a shout-out. Second, both bits I'm thinking of sending, 'Diplomatic Immunity' and 'Eve and the 10,000 Year Clock', were inspired by podcasts of theirs. It might be nice to close the loop and send those in.

I had my first brush with a client properly this week. I applied to do some freelance work writing articles on MMOs, of which I am an avid player. Unfortunately he wanted me to buy ingame currency, something that is explicitly against the Terms of Service, and then write reviews of the experience. I declined. Square Enix work hard to keep my game free of Real Money Trade and I'm not about to make their job more difficult.

Eve and Tic 1

Another piece about Eve.

I had the wonderful thought today that it would work perfectly if Eve was an honest-to-god furry. And Katze vonDue could be this immense persian in a suit with a cigar and a gold-topped cane.

More thought required!

Eve took a deep breath, surveying the scene. Ahead, the stone bridge ended abruptly, but on either side there were metal railings, the remains of the previous expedition. The cold sandstone walls seemed to loom over her, just on the edge of the lanternlight, flickering shadows moving in the corners. She moved closer to the end of the bridge and looked down. The chamber seemed to plummet into blackness. The walls were bare, but the doors through which they had come were covered in an amazing sculpture; ten people with their mouths open, possibly amazed or awed. Possibly screaming. Eve took a step back from the sheer drop, hoping they weren’t screaming.

 “Tic.”

“Yes Eve?”

“I need you out here.”

The little Cog whirred out of her backpack and up to eyelevel. He was small enough to sit on her cupped hands; A quarter-sphere sat on a circular base, he was made of brass and heavier than he looked. Four green crystals, moulded into his domed front, shone in sequence as Tic woke up properly, and the clicking, whirring sound he made while floating intensified slightly.