Vajra Enterprises Fiction Podcast presents a podcast of narrated stories based on several of their published role-playing games, as well as some public domain stories.
Stories from the terrifying and beautiful worlds of the role playing games published by Vajra Enterprises, plus other stuff we happen to like.
(Unless noted, quotes are from the role-playing games that the stories are based on.)
Manhattan, 2080. Ruined by decades of war and global crises, the city is now home to those that can't or won't fit in elsewhere. The city is little more than an anarchy, plagued by every imaginable evil and horror, from self-reproducing serial killers to pusher gangs who hold down people and force them to use drugs.
Yet in the darkness of the city, a flame of hope smolders and grows. Homeless families are turning the wisdom from generations on the streets in to power. Good people are starting gangs for self defense, turning gang membership in to something to be proud of. Young people are using the same illegal technology that turns some people in to monsters to turn themselves in to powerful heroes.
People in the city have finally realized that nobody else is going to save them, and they are learning to save themselves.
A serialized podcast of the second novel set in Fates Worse Than Death.
Tina is a teenage runaway living in a small single-room-occupancy hotel with some other runaways in the Bowery. The Bowery is the most blighted part of Manhattan, one of the most blighted inner cities in America in the year 2080. Tina survives by begging, by shoplifting, and occasionally by prostituting herself.
Tina likes to think of herself as “The Blade Queen,” a badass knife fighter who always protects her friends and will not back down from any fight. Yet she worries that she's not actually the Blade Queen, that she's what other people call her: a psycho, a junkie and a whore.
Tina wishes for a challenge, something to come along and change her life, prove to her who she really is. In the next few days, Tina will face a tragedy, a mystery and a danger that will make her regret that wish.
(Full title: Hartmann the Anarchist; or, the Doom of the Great City) A serialization of the science fiction novel by E. Douglas Fawcett, first published in 1892.
The plot centers around Mr Stanley, a young moneyed gentleman who aims to stand for election as part of the Labour party in the early 20th century. Through his associations with many of London's most prominent socialists and anarchists, he encounters and befriends Rudolph Hartmann and 'goes along' with Hartmann's plan to attack London using his airship The Attila.1)
On plantations, slaves cobbled together a powerful system of magic, learning to gain luck, manipulate minds and even to kill using common objects.
On lonely country crossroads, desperate people made bargains with the Devil for wealth, talent and power.
On the shores of Louisiana Bayous, under overhangs of Spanish moss, free Blacks met to practice an ancient and secret religion, calling powerful beings into their bodies.
In isolated cabins and shacks, bitter outcasts waited until night and traveled forth in another form to prey on the communities that had rejected them.
Under “hanging-trees,” in graveyards and on old battlefields, the spirits of those who had been murdered returned to terrorize the living.
Deep in ancient mountain-side forests, ancient and terrible beasts stalked, preying upon first the native people and then the Scots-Irish settlers that came after them.
And today, on the city streets, on the lonely country roads, in the swamps and mountain forests of the South, these powerful humans, spirits and creatures still seek to settle old scores, satisfy their various hungers or find redemption for their sins.
The South is haunted by its past, in more ways than one.
If you look down the wrong alley in the middle of the night, you may see something happening which is terrible, inexplicable, alien. If you are like most, you will keep driving and try to forget what you've seen.
Yet some pain or hunger inside you may drive you to turn back, to try to gain another glimpse. You may spend sleepless nights peering down dark alleys, reading heretical texts, performing strange rituals, exploring abandoned places, trying to grasp the sensations that squirm at the back of your mind. Along the way you will discover that you are developing incredible and dangerous powers.
And there will come a day when you catch a glimpse of something that sees you looking at it, that realizes that you know things that you're not supposed to know. And without a word it will rush at you…
A serialization of the science fiction (future history) novel by John Ames Mitchell, with historical notes by Brian St.Claire-King.
First published in 1889, it is the fictional journal of a Persian admiral named Khan-Li, who rediscovers America in 2951 by sailing across the Atlantic. The world has been devastated, and North America virtually wiped out by climatic changes, which had later reversed themselves. Civilization there was just beginning to recover technologically (to the level of 1889). The book is, on the one hand a satirical look at ways and customs of the United States as reconstructed from the ruins and the Persians own spotty histories. It also seems to be a spoof of the archaeological discoveries that were being made at the time. All of the Persians have farcical names (Nōz-yt-ahl is the name of an historian, for example) and often speak in breathless wonder at what they see. The overall language is archaic in an odd sort of journalistic way.2)
They come from every walk of life. There are humble Christian monks, passionate artists, logical scientists, intense shamans and more. Some studied various philosophies and mystical systems for years before embarking on the path, others just woke up one morning and decided to make a change. They are young and old, rich and poor. Some are powerful and influential. Some are fugitives, on the run from the law.
What they all have in common is that each has decided to throw himself or herself headfirst into the search for wisdom, self-improvement and power. Each has decided that, rather than pursuing one specific dogma, they will travel the world learning from every person and every experience, in essence letting the universe teach them what it will. Each has developed powerful abilities and each has discovered that the world is a much more complicated, much more dangerous and much more wonderful place than they had ever imagined.
In 1950, Chinese communist soldiers marched in to Tibet. They forced the Tibetans to agree to a slow conversion to Communism. Yet as the number of troops in Tibet grew, so did the intolerance of the Chinese.
It is 1959 and Tibet is a country on the verge of chaos. Tales of Chinese atrocities are spreading. The Chinese seem ready to disband the Tibetan government at any moment. The people fear for the fate of their religious leaders. An anti-Chinese rebellion is slowly engulfing the whole country in warfare.
Yet things in Tibet are not always what they seem. Tibet is a place where ancient mystical teachings have been hidden. The opportunities for enlightenment are powerful, but so are the dangers. Sorcerers, malevolent spirits and cursed ritual objects are just a few of the magical hazards. For all its peace and beauty, Tibet is a harsh and dangerous place where one must be strong or smart to survive.