Drabblecast 301 – Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

[Algernon Sydney is Dead]

Feature: Everything Ravaged Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Drabble: My Robot by Christopher Munroe
Genres: Action Fantasy
Warning: Explicit language and violence



Saturday, November 9th, 2013
Just as we were all getting back into the mainland domestic groove, somebody started in with dragons and crop blights from across the North Sea. We all knew who it was. A turncoat Norwegian monk named Naddod had been big medicine on the dragon-and-blight circuit for the last decade or so, and was known to bring heavy ordnance for whoever could lay out some silver. Scuttlebutt had it that Naddod was operating out of a monastery on Lindisfarne, whose people we’d troubled on a pillage-and-consternation tour through Northumbria after Corn Harvesting Month last fall. Now bitter winds were screaming in from the west, searing the land and ripping the grass from the soil. Salmon were turning up spattered with sores, and grasshoppers clung to the wheat in rapacious buzzing bunches.

Kick Ass Donor: Lone Mopper Productions
Episode Art: Brent Holmes
Read by: Graeme Dunlop
Music: "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton

Twabble: “ Wiping my own piss off the back of my head, I stormed out of the men's room. It was time to take the portal gun away from Drew. ” by kentblue82

[Varda]

I liked this episode. If I had to pick one word, I'd call it "atmospheric". Rich on the sensory details, nice immersive worldbuilding. I can't think of how long it's been since I heard a good Viking story, either.

But what I really loved was the episode artwork. Holy crap! That viking is so lovably derpy on one level, and vacantly vicious on another. I want to write a D&D character based on the picture alone. Just awesome.

[danthelawyer]

This is actually one of my favorite short stories of all time -- one that I've read a couple of times. I even bought the collection a few years ago. The rest of the stories in the book are almost as good, though none of them are really in this style -- they're more the Carver-esque norm for contemporary short fiction, but damn good anyway.

So it was great to hear this story read so well. Thanks!

[tbaker2500]

Well... Umm... That was interesting. I think I'm just squeamish.

[strawman]

Wow, was this one different! Yeah, Tom, it is kinda hard getting that blood eagle out of your head, isn't it?
We typically gloss over history by forgetting the people's thought process and experiences as they created it. You read the paper and see groups of kids are walking the streets playing a game of knocking random people out, then you read this story and suddenly it clicks that we still have Vikings in our midst.

Nice reading on this one too, Graeme Dunlop. You are a convincing Viking.

Of course, if it weren't for professional sports, we'd probably still be doing these sorts of "hands-on" contests. If you could have somehow let the guys watch these raids on cable while sitting around drinking 6-packs of mead in the comfort of their huts, they would have gotten flabby like us, lost the fighting edge, and been good for nothing but desk jobs before long.

Or maybe it's more like the Outdoor Channel, watching people hunt.

*Munch. Munch.* Yeah, that's it.

[Spindaddy]

I loved this story. I always seem to run into fictional stories that take place at the Lindsfarne Monastery with a bunch of Vikings kicking the crap out of it. This was a great listen!

(Also, I always wondered why they called it a blood eagle... now I know.)