Eustace & Hitomi, Prologue. In Which Things Are Stolen and Mysteries Sprout like Mushrooms
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| From "Local Nerd Nearly Dies Exposing Corrupt Banker." Maidenstead Monitor, August 3, 1996. (see CREDITS for IRL photo attribution) |
Prologue, or A Hero Starts Somewhere
Dear reader, what can one really and truly say about Eustace Delmont that the press have not already said? Shall we discuss the time he identified as the Mystery Man upon a certain action hero turned super model's yacht (a pun both wicked and delightful)? Should we dive deep into his years spent studying foreign drama? How about the time he single-handedly saved the town of Yarsburg from a a flood of negative spiritual energy and became a close friend of Jack Fall in the process?
No, thinking back over his long and illustrious career as a premier explorer of mysteries and solver of deeds nefarious, you will find no better place to start your investigation into Eustace Delmont than 1996 in the sleepy Gulf Coast town of Maidenstead, Alabama. A quaint and quiet town where Delmont settled for a post-baccalaureate stint in the then exciting world of novel explorations towards applying microcircuitry to long distance communications.
[ Hitomi, here. Alright folks, Eustace asked me to edit and type up these tapes for his biography and I agreed. I just did not realize he was going to be quite so...Eu...about it. I just want to jump in and add some commentary here or there so that you can better understand the context and appreciate that though he is an obvious idiot, he has helped a lot of people over our years together. ]
[ The "stint" was moving back home with his parents while applying for grad schools, getting stuck for four years due to various reasons, and then being made by said parents to work at Harley Shack, which was a blatant Radio Shack ripoff but frankly it had its charms. Ralph is a sweetie just don't tell him I said so. It also acted the town's internet provider at this time. Eustace spent more time playing with the junk in the backroom than helping customers but Ralph did not seem to mind. Ralph had a tendency on some afternoons to smoke a cigar during opening hours and the few customers who tolerated that were the kind of old cranks that Ralph liked to bitch at about the day's news. ]
[ Also, I was there with him on the yacht. The actor was a b-movie celebrity that twenty-years later became a hot-dad sensation on Reddit. We won a sweepstakes put out by the production company as a tax write-off. It did give us a break from the kids and some much needed rest & relaxation. Plus gave Eu an excuse to grow his beard back. I had missed it. ]
Ralph Harley, Delmont's mentor, specialized in cutting edge applications and saw in Delmont a fellow-pupil of the digital horizon. After a mere few weeks under Harley's tutelage, Delmont was given special access to the the so-called "back room," an archive of technology beyond the understanding of your average Maidensteadian.
[ Hitomi, again. No one from Maidenstead calls themselves that and we have lived here for years and are friends with practically everybody. Shout out to my girl Morgan for keeping me sane through the years. ]
This job afforded Delmont two luxuries. First, he was able to chase his dreams of acquiring rare works of international art. Second, he became an invaluable member of a certain amateur astronomy society. The "tech man," they called Delmont. And it is the latter partnership that acted as the catalyst which forged Eustace Delmont from a simple Maidensteadian to a full blown sleuth.
[ Hi, there. Hitomi, once more. The "art" that Eustace refers was actually old comic strips, fan productions, and other memorabilia related to Doctor Who. He ended up becoming friends with some of my UK acquaintances who, for some reason, were extremely helpful in helping Eustace slowly but surely track down such stuff during what he assures me were called "The Wilderness Years." His obsession with cheap British collectibles hit a few years before nerd-dom became "cool" and sometimes had a tendency to make people treat him a bit oddly. We will not talk about the scarf. ]
[ If you are feeling any sort of secondhand embarrassment, just remember that I married the man. ]
[ As for the "society" it was definitely an amateur astronomy club though most of the meetings were spent at the Maidenstead Public Library debating Star Trek or playing Dungeons & Dragons. Eustace did help to dig up old pieces of equipment from the "back room" to aid them in their research. This case did lead to some acclaim for Eustace though not quite for the reasons one would hope. "Local Nerd Nearly Dies Exposing Corrupt Banker," read one headline. ]
The Society had constructed, through support of Delmont, a rather ingenious way to sync up a number of telescope and monitoring stations around the Gulf of Mexico to better punch through the problem inherent in such tourist destination locations: light pollution. The same garish neon signs in the shape of fish and palm trees and "NOW OPEN" meant the heavenly spheres above were a mere dimness and important astronomical events were at risk to be lost to those who counted Maidenstead and Gulf Shores and Orange Beach as their home.
On the night of Friday, June 14, a boat—the aptly named Archwitch—was launched from Maidenstead as part of an expedition to track a celestial conjunction of The Moon and Jupiter. However, after getting into position three miles off the cost of Florida, the captain was forced to admit defeat because communication with the hub was hampered. Upon further investigation, the foul deed of some miscreant was laid bare: the hub was not merely failing to act, vital components had been stolen!
Thus on Monday, June 17 at 9:15am the phone call that would set a modern hero into motion to achieve his true destiny occurred. Ralph Harley accepted the phone call with the gravity it deserved and knew it was time for Delmont to shine.
[ Ralph first asked them—in a fit of particular Monday morning irritation a bit too on brand—if they had checked their moms' couches for their missing toys until finally relenting to Eustace's own insistence that this was an important project. Since it ended up spawning three patents, I would argue that it was. ]
And shine is exactly what Eustace Delmont did.
DOUG'S UPDATED COMMENTARY, January 1, 2025
My plan is to patch up the Eustace & Hitomi series over the early part of the new year, including just rewriting stuff and changing some text around. It has been 5+ months since the series started and it's initial version was going to be played out over a couple of weeks with a similar, but sillier, story structure as Gareth Hendrix and the Bunker Bigfoot: two or three posts to establish a plot, two or three to break it down, and a big overly dramatic finale (where Eustace maybe becomes and immortal spirit wolf, who knows). However, things got in the way and it ended up getting updated over a much longer time frame (see that 5+ month line, above) with one single post split into three parts a couple months separated. Because of this, the "off the cuff and the damn the rules of writing and good taste" vibe it was meant to have started to clash with characterizations I had to live with and work with in a brand new year.
One of the biggest (by sheer word count) changes was that Eustace's "foreign language drama" is no longer an obscure 1970s Japanese tokusatsu show named Cyano Raiders Mystery Force. There are two reasons. One, collecting toku-related stuff in the mid-90s in lower Alabama was very difficult unless it was Godzilla or, sometimes, Ultraman related. However, Alabama Public Television did get the rights to bring over Doctor Who and some stuff related to that did show up.
Secondly, Hitomi popped into existence as a 20-year-old Japanese-British woman staying in Mobile for the past couple of years and kind of drifting around and burning out instead of getting a college degree. Once I decided that Eustace would be falling for the Shaggy-analog—Shaggy was my favorite and the Velma-analog felt too easy of a trope—I had to create her. She was going to wear baggy clothes, be a bit grungy. Chain smoke. Eats fast food. Lives that kind of slovenly life style that a Shaggy-type might but is also a bit tall and skinny. Sighs dramatically while listening to worn cassette tapes. Less a pure-Shaggy-type and more a 90s-alternative-rock girl with a side of finding herself. The Japanese aspect was a random naming table that gave me a name that could be Japanese (I do not remember which one) and so to clarify, I went and rolled a Japanese name more fully.
It would feel slightly odd and personally distasteful for me to have a campaign about a dork meeting a loser and hitting it off and have that entire "hitting it off" be because his toku-interest makes me jump at the chance to meet a Japanese woman. As realistic as it might be for such a thing to happen in the 90s or 00s. Again, the tokusatsu series (like the "super model" change I talk about below) occurred before Hitomi existed, and after she became half the series it no longer quite worked for my own comfort zones. It felt weird and out of character for my boy.
The original paragraph, by the way, read:
The "art" that Eustace refers was actually, at this time, collectible action figures from a late-70s tokusatsu series called the Cyano Raiders Mystery Force which was partially Americanized in the late 80s and highly influential on his toku obsession. A college friend moved to Japan and helped Eustace slowly but surely track down several pieces. His obsession with expensive Japanese collectibles hit a few years before it became "cool" and sometimes had a tendency to make people treat him a bit...oddly. If you were wondering, yes, the Japanese Drama that he translated was actually just the Cyano Rangers' hyper battle video about how Dark Cyan transformed into Bright Cyan in order to stop the machinations of Dr. Chartreuse.
Rest in peace, Dr. Chartreuse. May you live again in some future world.
Other changes, there are quite a few, include:
- There was mention of Eustace being on a yacht with a super-model with an implied romantic tryst. Later, Hitomi (currently as the nameless editor), chides him for never explaining why he was running off with that woman. At the time, before I really figured out that the editor was going to be his future wife (to begin with, the futured editor was basically myself as Delmont's Watson), I wrote the "super model" bit and it never made sense with later storylines. Once it was worked in the second part that the editor was Hitomi and they were both retelling the story of how they met, it felt pretty icky to imply Eustace is cheating on her before she even showed up. I shot that part in the head and resurrected it into a fun vacation for a married couple to have some sexy-times while away from the kids. One in which maybe some future mystery does show up.
- I centered Hitomi and Eustace's romance at the very start. She names herself before she shows up. I have no regrets for this decision. I think they are adorbs.
- Because of this, Hitomi's insert are way more flavorful and have elements of her voice added, references to her point of view, and so forth. They were initially more in my own voice and slightly comical but a bit divorced from the story at hand.
- Eustace's beard is actually mentioned early rather than just cropping up in a few posts.
- The year is now officially 1996 and the time is early | pre- summer. Apparently it was spring of 1995 in this first post but that got completely re-written by the very next post (in other words, I forgot).
- The AI art is gone. The Maidenstead Monitor newsprint motif takes its place.
- I used to use fancy graphics for section breaks but because blogger gets a little weird when digging through the media archive and because I would have to go through and change the colors whenever I updated my schema, this is now gone and just replaced with bog-standard HR tags. You are welcome for my sacrifice.
- The "trapped by the future" elements such as "NEXT TIME ON EUSTACE DELMONT" sections and some of Hitomi's foreshadowing of Frank and Daphne's death and other tragic elements have been downplayed to help the keep the tone lighter, sillier, and more prone to consensual kink dungeons than any real sin (there will be murder in this murder mystery, though). There are hints of a gun fight coming up. I left those in. As of writing this, I still do not know what that means.
- Hitomi's edits were initially inserted in a dark red color and set off with <<guillemet>>>. Since her edits were the first time I experimented with adding "lore" directly into posts, I now just assign her comments a "lore" tag. I have replaced the marks with just standard [ square brackets ] like I tend to insert my own notes. This means they are readable no matter what the color of the blog.
- Morgan gets an early shout out. Originally Hitomi was going to be running with her step-sister and friends when not with Eustace. Dice and oracle disagreed a new character was created.
- Ralph Harley was initially a snottier character meant to be more of a foil. With Sheriff Raylon taking up that role, and just going with my gut, Harley ends up being a sweeter—but still cranky—character. Especially considering how much he helped Hitomi by Chapter 2, and later the both of them, I felt it only right that she would defend him a bit.
ORIGINAL COMMENTARY, July 25, 2024.
[ With a few edits, mostly grammar. The second and third paragraph shows a lot ideas that got dropped. ]
The Alabama Weird stories are absolutely the most fun I have while writing and being able to gamify them into solo play is just a bonus. After wrapping Gareth's story and thinking about serious it all went, I had a plan to follow that up with another Alabama Weird tale about Alexander Dumas (aka, "Alex the Dumbass") that had a lot of the same action and over the top action but rather than a nearly immortal werewolf it is just a group of three idiots who survive dangerous situations by sheer pluck and strategic retreats (a kind of Alabama take on John Dies at the End). I think I will still play that out, too, but first I wanted to try something completely different.
Eustace Delmont (a strange play on words on Del Eustace, from my first unchronicled Sinister Semester X playthrough) has no super powers, no real fighting skills, and is absolutely not mopey. It's a friendly geek who gets along with a wide swath of his town. If there is a burning building at the end of this one, he is going to call 911. The idea is to play it out like all like Campion meets Midsommer Murders. Center it around the notion of Eustace being a goof whose wife lovingly edits his overblown attempt to explain himself in a "classical" sense.
While "Gareth Hendrix and the Bunker Bigfoot" was about being trapped by the past, Eustace Delmont and the Case of the Rambler's Inn is about being trapped by the future. Little asides and toss outs about things that happened during this adventure and after give me a framework to stress about and I like that change even though really it's the same mechanic: you say something and then desperately try to figure out while keeping it interesting.
For the adventure, it is again Tricube Solo and this time I picked Maidenstead Mysteries as my one-sheet scenario. I like how it has a slightly different take on the traits—Alert, Brainy, and Charming instead of Brawny, Agile, and Crafty—and that it gives me a chance to play a proper mystery. Mystery as a concept shows up in a lot of my games. This case, the mystery will be the game. [Later Doug's Note: Also a terribly awkward nerd Romance with extra nerds on the side]
For the main quest, we got the Gone in the Night (tourist goes missing from haunted room), Labyrinth Hotel (an old hotel that is built like a maze, in this case the "Rambler's Inn"), and Teenage Troublemakers (essentially the Scooby Doo gang complete with dog). The secondary plot is about the dog going missing. The tertiary plot about the owners of the Inn trying to sell it off when the mystery throws a wrench in their plans. All these characters (and what really happened) will be settled live.
CREDITS
The game engine behind the Eustace Delmont series is Tricube Tales, Tricube Tales Solo, and Maidenstead Mysteries: all by Richard Woolcock.
It eventually shifts to Mythic but that's a future Doug talking.
Additional gameplay elements will be derived from:
- Random Realities by Cesar Capacle
- The Book of Random Tables: 1980s -1990s, BORT: Modern, and BORT: Eldritch by Matt & Erin Davids. Possibly other BORTS as needed.
- Table Fables: Modern by Madeline Hale
- Lots of just random facts culled in a hurry from Wikipedia, sites of Alabama history, and so forth. I have not that worried about veracity since Alabama Weird is a different state than Alabama Real but I like to pretend.
The photo used in this post is "Old Monitors & UPSes" by Ryan Finnie on Flickr and it was made available through CC BY-SA 2.0. Originally I used DALL-E to generate a generic black-and-white line drawing of the back of Ralph Harley's shop because I had this idea of a kind of court-room sketch type vibe for a lot of the graphics. When I started doing these rewrites, I realized that for the 90s, something emulating a kind of cheap newsprint cut outs. I edit the original with GIMP and use a mixture of desaturation, curve adjustment, newsprint filters, photocopy filters, and old photo decor. I had thought about starting with this photo from Sears Department Store as a base but as much as I love it, and as well as the colors worked for the newsprint effect, and only after finishing an edit realized that it had flat screen TVs. I am not going to be super-precise on technology to the time period that felt a bit too far.
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