User:Jms2117

Bio
My full name is John Mack Schlicht, the Second.

The program I am studying at the Art Institute of Seattle is Game Art and Design.

I first plan on making "casual" games during the first part of my career. If all goes well, I might concievably look into full-time 3D game design.

My current interest in this class is how to write BETTER fiction. I tend to dabble in it every once in a while, but I have yet to produce a finished piece.

I am also hoping to keep the option of a writing career open in case games don't work out.

My current favorites are science fiction and fantasy stories. I sometimes enjoy a bit of nonfiction on the side.

Response
Ryan,

I very much enjoyed your ekphrastic piece. I am a die-hard science fiction buff, and what you wrote sounds a lot like the stuff I like to read. I am somewhat amused that you managed to find better inspiration from the Sculpture Park than I did. I think my response to the trip was kind of half-hearted.

The piece itself was well-written, and I couldn't notice any glaring grammatical or spelling errors. The plot was well-thought and engaging. I think you may have something that may be worth expanding upon at a later time, perhaps leading up to something greater. Keep up the excellent work!

Style
"The Peachalk"

By John Schlicht

Inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as his short story  The Dunwich Horror 

These days, when a traveler passes through Belfair and takes the old Victor Cutoff, he’ll come across what is now a less-travelled Rocky Bay Point Road. If they take the west fork, it will lead them through what was once a pleasant waterside community. Nowadays, most of the houses will be forgotten and dilapidated, save for the homesteads of a few stubborn holdouts. The forest will have largely retaken its former territory, and one will find entire fields left to foxglove, tansy, and scotch broom. Afterwards, one sometimes will learn, either from the few remaining human inhabitants, or from the talk of neighboring towns, that they have passed through Victor.

Outsiders seldom visit Victor anymore. The few signs that pointed to Victor have either been removed or vandalized beyond recognition. Visitors find the scenery pleasant and welcoming during the daylight hours, but find it suddenly and horribly foreboding when darkness casts its veil. The neighboring towns shun it for reasons half-forgotten, although the people of Victor are themselves welcomed as any other native of this country. The few families that stubbornly remain are farming folk, and despite the ill air fastened to the place by others, more than one firstborn son returns to Victor after completing his studies in Seattle or Olympia. A visitor will more than likely find warm lodging and warm hospitality among the locals if he finds himself with little recourse, although one seldom stays long.

The vile rumors of the place are plenty, although they are surprisingly careful not to draw ill attention to its curiously friendly inhabitants. Many natives fear the coyotes’ nocturnal wailing, as they say when they scream in the blackness, it means the soul of a recently passed was taken by the Devil. All other creatures shun the place; save for the occasional scrawny deer that only lingers long enough to nibble the crooked grasses of abandoned pastures. Livestock go missing with great frequency in the night, and others are found torn to pieces in the dawn.

The locals say this to be the work of the Peachalk, which many say is the reason Victor is feared and avoided so. Outsiders dismiss the creature as nonsense, diverting the blame to the plentiful coyotes in the region, although more than one skeptic has been baffled by the nature of the mutilations. Upon examination, it is as if the poor beasts are seized by dozens of misshapen hands and simply pulled apart limb from limb. Many a would-be skeptic has also found himself at a loss when he hears the dreadful, inexplicable wails in the night, clearly not of coyotes, but horribly similar to many pitiful human beings wailing in agony at once.

Although many claim to have glimpsed the beast, they say only Sidney Dalton, the eldest son of the Dalton family, has actually beheld the horror in its entirety. Many inquiring souls come to the Dalton homestead, seeking answers to the mystery of Victor. However, many leave empty handed, for Sidney is now pitifully mad, spending his days whimpering of the horror he beheld, sobbing and inflicting terrible pains upon himself in a vain effort to exorcise the thing from his mind. However, in one rare instance of lucidity, he described the beast in the best detail his tortured mind could muster: “…like…like an urchin…but…with arms instead of spines…and the heads…long necks…like snakes…with those heads…they look so human…but the mouths…like lampreys…screaming! Screaming…the thing…the horrible screaming!”

There is no certain explanation for the origin of the Peachalk, but there is one old story in particular that stands out. It tells of the old Walker family, the latest generations of which still reside in the farms of Victor, as well as several of the surrounding towns. The patriarch, the old Thorgne Walker, had a daughter, Liza, who some said had an unhealthy interest in the eldritch lore that is said to have existed since before man walked the Earth. One night, she gave birth to a child, Thorgne’s first grandson. However, the baby transformed into a monster before Thorgne’s horrified eyes, and slaughtered the midwife attending Liza and several others present at the time.

Proclaiming the monster-spawn to be not of this good earth, Thorgne burned the house down, some say in hopes of burning Liza and her offspring with it. The monster child escaped the inferno, however, and to this day stalks the woods as the Peachalk; the thing in the night, the wailing horror, the spawn of unspeakable gods. Regardless of the story’s truthfulness, people left Victor, never to return. The houses were left to the rats, the fields left to the woods, all left to the lurking thing that scuttles beneath the boughs of Victor…

Other Media
John Schlicht

"The Battle for Joni IV"

Inspired by a tale of Warhammer 40K, by Games Workshop

Captain Koranus wasn’t at all pleased with the situation. How the planetary governor and his cronies managed to miss such a massive Necron tomb complex was beyond his reckoning. Already, the Jonian PDFs were in full rout, unable to hold off the ancient killing machines and their arcane weaponry. He vowed that as soon as this battle was finished, he would see to it that the prominent heads of the planetary bureaucracy would roll, and he didn’t mean it in merely a figurative sense.

It was fortunate that he and his fellow Astartes of the Salamanders chapter were nearby when the Necrons emerged. Any further, and the unpredictable nature of the Warp meant they could have arrived years after the blasphemous machines scourged the planet of life. Still, despite the bumbling incompetence of their leaders, the light and love of the Emperor was still with the Jonians, and for this Koranus gave thanks.

Although the Jonian sun had yet to appear, the first telltale orange threads of light glimmered on the horizon. Below it, however, was a baleful green glow that percolated through the forest before them, signaling the coming of the undying enemy Koranus and his warriors had come to face. They were getting close, close enough for Koranus to see them through the zoom of his bionic eyes.

It was as if an army of blackened skeletons had risen from their tombs, eldritch energies glowing a sickly green through their eyes and ribs. However, Koranus knew this was no horde of the dead. These skeletons were made of steel, and clearly bore the mark of the ancient machine. Some of the antediluvian automatons were integrated into hover units, which replaced where their legs would have been. All carried one form or another of the dreaded weaponry of the Necrons, which would strip a man from armor to bone in seconds, leaving only dry ash.

Koranus quickly inspected the ranks of his enemy, and within little time he found his target. The necron lord stood out conspicuously from the rank and file, its shoulders and mantle a dulled gold that still marked the unit as the master of the warriors. In one hand was a bladed staff, shimmering green with necron energies, in the other an orb of green material, the purpose of which Koranus failed to guess.

Bolter fire erupted from somewhere to the left. The sounds told him one of his squads of battle-brothers had engaged the enemy. Koranus signaled his Terminator bodyguard to begin their advance, power claws shimmering with destructive energy. Withdrawing his own power sword, Koranus strode just behind his guard towards the necron lord.

Crackling green bolts of flaying energy responded to a torrent of armor-piercing bolter fire. A series of sharp, rapid BOOM signaled to Koranus his Predator tanks had begun to bombard the necrons with autocannon fire. Already clusters of metal killing machines were scattered and rent by space marine firepower, while the necron attack seemed to have little impact in return.

Koranus and his bodyguard quickly closed with the necron lord. Before the ancient machine could react, the Terminators had quickly laid ruin to it, dashing its torn metal body to the earth. The baleful energies that powered it began to flicker and fade.

Victory was in Koranus’ grasp. As his bodyguard stood to finish the task, however, an explosion of terrible energy struck at their feet. One Terminator was vaporized, two others blasted into charred corpses in melted armor. The others struggled to lift themselves, dazed from the sudden explosion. Koranus found himself on his back, his artificer armor smoldering and crackling with energy.

Before his eyes was perhaps the most terrible visage he had ever witnessed. A great floating machine, resembling something like a pyramid, glowed intensely with murderous power. Cannons on all sides of the thing began sowing death with their lethal green bolts, burning space marines to ash with each salvo.

Materializing from a strange portal on the front of the great destroying machine was a force of strange humanoid machine-warriors, each wielding a thrumming bladed staff. Without pause, they set upon the Terminators, their fell weapons parting the legendary armor as if it were a jest, to rend terrible ruin upon the warriors within. Soon, the slaughterers became the slaughtered.

Dazed, Koranus reached for his power sword, which lay within reach. As his hand clasped the blade’s hilt, a metal foot stomped down upon it, crunching armor and bone. The space marine captain looked up and glared into the eyes of the fallen necron lord, or what he foolishly believed was a fallen necron lord. The thing, although still rent in places, had somehow repaired the worst of the damage, and stared hatefully at Koranus for a moment.

The last thing Koranus saw before eternal darkness claimed him was the necron’s bladed staff come down upon his head…

To John.

First of all, I am obsolutly delighted to see a fellow Wahammer 40K fan. I really enjoyed reading “The Battle for Joni IV” not just because I am a Warhammer series fan, but because of how you really captured the characteristic of both Space Marines and Necrons. While it crushed me to see Space Marines dying by Necron hands, I really think you’ve done good job visualizing what it was like to face Necrons in battlefield. Unlike Orks and Tyranids which are feared because they always tend to overwhelm their opponents in number. Necrons are feared because even if they die, they can come back and blast your behind. For that reason, I always thought of Necrons as further robot zombies, and your story has really shown me that you too understand why Necrons are considered the most feared army in Warhammer universe. Another thing that I liked about this piece is how you described the surroundings and the characters in details. My favorite part was when you described the merging Necron army in fourth and fifth paragraphs. Although I think having the knowledge of what they look like already did help made it easier for me to visualize this scene, but I really enjoy reading the detailed descriptions about their physical forms. The part when the Necron Monolith came in to the scene was also one of my favorites.

-kevin-

Ekphrastic
“I Remember Paul Bunyan…” By John Schlicht

“I remember Paul Bunyan. There wasn’t no man as big a man as he! He was a hero among us lumberjacks, a true king of the woods! However, I feel compelled to correct a few of the myths that these tall tales of him are going about. True, he did a lot of great things as one of us, and I’m not inclined to belittle him, but I think he’d be somewhat embarrassed about the exaggerations folks lay at his feet.

“Now, first off, Paul never cut down one entire forest. That’s complete bull! He was a damn good fellow with an axe, but even he couldn’t cut down that many trees by his lonesome. That, and he’d think it be downright wasteful, too. He appreciated the land, and never took advantage of it. “A man should only take what he needs,” he said. “He takes too much, and soon he’ll find himself wanting…”

“Second, he was a big man, and I say a mighty big man, but for the Almighty’s sake he wasn’t as tall as a tree. Although, to us he may as well have been, since he stood a good half-man above us in height. I digress, though! Besides, a lumberjack earns his fare, and his repute, by chopping down trees bigger than he is, not vice versa…

“…and another thing that gets my goat; ol’ Paul could never heat a mountain of flapjacks in a single sittin’! He had a mighty appetite, mind you, but he never ate a lot of flapjacks. They didn’t serve ‘em much at our camp, since we were always short on flour. He liked meat an’ eggs more! We always had plenty of that!

“Babe the Blue Ox? She was only blue when we found her in the storm. She turned a healthy shade of gray as she grew up. She was a big’un, all right. At least the part about her being the size of a mountain was half-true. Might touchy though, but Paul never seemed to have problems with ‘er. She’d obey his every command, but the rest of us, she could care less about.

“Now, I’m not trying to belittle big Paul! A man tries to set some facts straight, and everyone gets on his case! No, sir! I think he was a great hero to us Western folk. He certainly was to me, when I started lumberjacking. I was barely a man, then, and hadn’t a dime to my name. Still kind of don’t, but I got a fortune in wisdom, they say!

“I personally met Mr. Bunyan when we were loggin’ in the Rockies. I forgets whereabouts. Age does that to you. Well, anyway, Paul stomped into the bunkhouse late in the afternoon, when it was pourin’ down rain outside and bitter cold. He was a mighty furious that the chains he was using to pull timber with Babe had come off, and he needed someone to look after her while he got everything back in order.

“Next thing I know, I’m nominated. So, I spent the next two hours in the rain, saying sweet nothings to Babe like she likes, while Paul struggled with the logs. After those two hours of fightin’ an’ cursin’ with the chains he finally got everything going again. He still needed me to watch the chains while he led Babe to the loggin’ wagons. It passed without incident, and just as we finished up the rain stopped falling. Paul walked up to me, slapped me on the back, and said I dun a god’un. I felt mighty proud hearing those words.

“For the next twenty-odd years, Paul and we logged the woods of the West. Then the machines came, and Paul wasn’t too happy about it. It wasn’t ‘cause they’d cut down all the trees, mind you. He was upset that we’d all lose our jobs. By the time he got used to them a few years later, his time had come to retire. Loggin’s rough work, and it takes a nasty toll on you, even if you’re as big and strong as Paul Bunyan.

“We said our goodbyes, parted ways, and I never heard from him again. Last story I heard of him, he had retired to the great redwoods of California, where the machines had yet to come. As for me, well, I kept on loggin’ until I too was too old and stiff to swing an axe. I retired, moved here, and been here ever since. Now, I think I’ve said enough on Big Paul. I’m getting tired, and I think he’d call this work a good’un…”

Sequel/Prequel
"The Terrible Colors" By John Schlicht

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s  The Colour out of Space 

I, Maxwell Walker, hereby recount the events of April 7th, 2010, that occurred on a rural farm near the town of Allyn. By no means are any elements of this story exaggerated, imagined, or in any way false. What I witnessed will be written and described exactly as I had witnessed them. After reading what I have recounted of that incident, you will understand there isn’t really a need for garnishments. Also, I write this account with a clear, sane mind, or at the very least the closest facsimile I could bring myself to, especially whilst being forced to remember the horror of what I survived to tell you this story…

It all began sometime during the first weekend of April. It was early enough in the morning that the sun had yet to make its regular appearance. I, and all those who I considered friend and family, were awakened by a terrible roar which seemed to pass through the sky, accompanied by a brilliant yellow glow. At first we had believed it to be a passenger jet that had come to grief, until we observed it come down within the property of a farmer known throughout the neighborhood as “Mr. Ferguson”.

I and two friends, siblings named Sidney and Rynna Dalton, made our way to the site where the object came down, which wasn’t far from Mr. Ferguson’s homestead. The sojourn itself took nearly an hour and a half through As we approached, we were assaulted by a distinctively offensive, yet utterly indescribable odor, which made it much difficult to approach Mr. Ferguson’s house.

When we arrived at the farm, we were shocked and thoroughly horrified to discover that the object had struck the homestead itself, leaving a large, glowing crater in its stead. Indescribable, and wholly alien colors seemed to rise from the site, as if they were a living entity guided by a strange and malignant consciousness. Tendrils of the “thing” reached everywhere, and our terror was magnified as we watched every living thing it touched turn grey and shriveled until the essence was totally drained, at which point the victim would crumble into colorless gray dust.

However, the true horror would was yet to come. With a terrible groaning and shrieking, a shapeless, crawling thing emerged from the colors within the crater, uttering a keening wail as it crested the crater’s rim. One of us reacted with a wail of his or her own, and that was our cue to make a hasty exit.

We ran the whole way through the dark and treacherous woods, made more so by the alien colors that soon began to creep through the sky above the treetops, as if it were pursuing us. Roots seemed to rise from the ground to trip us, and branches reached out to snag or lash us as we fled, but despite the terrible stinging and throbbing pain we would not stop. Not until we had reached the Daltons’ residence, stumbling quickly inside and barricading the front door behind us.

It was not until well after dawn that a family friend of the Daltons arrived, inquiring as to their well-being in light of the previous night’s events. After helping us restore a facsimile of sanity, we learned the Ferguson farm had been left a grey, barren waste. Everything living within a mile of the place was killed by the strange color that had come from the sky. Other than the wasted land, the only evidence that remained was a gaping hole where the entity arrived. When we inquired as to whether anyone had found a creature like the one we witnessed emerging from the colors, they mentioned the discovery of bizarre tracks making their way from the site into the woods.

Soon after, the Daltons and I packed up and left. Rynna Dalton and I married a month after the event, and I have kept in touch with her brother Sidney. To this day, rumors and stories trickle from our old neighborhood of people sighting a strange, shapeless, multi-limbed creature scampering and stalking about the forests. Nobody has been able to explain the destruction of the Ferguson farm and the surrounding wilderness, and more people have been leaving since then than moving in.

I cannot blame them. We will never return there. The horror we witnessed was just to much for us to find the courage to face again. I will also warn you not to go there. Even today, when Rynna and I pass through that neighborhood, we feel the thing still lingering…waiting…

Personal
Cold By John Schlicht

It is actually somewhat difficult for me pin down an defining moment of experiencing near-hypothermia. Cold is no stranger to me. I get up every morning, even in winter's worst, to do my daily chores. There have been times I've put on two or three layers of clothing, but still felt the teeth of cold bite into me. I've lived in a house with a wood stove when wood was difficult enough to come by, much less come by cheap.

I've waded knee-deep in half-frozen snowpack. I've done chores at the homes of family friends while icicles hung from the trees like little crystal swords of Damocles. I've swam in lakes that drained the color from my skin and the sensation from my extremities. I've nearly died once from exposure walking home during a snowy and frigid cold winter evening. For reasons lost to me, I've even sat in the shower ran like glacial meltwater.

Yes, I am very familiar with cold. Where I live isn't the coldest place in the world, but Washington is damn close at times. Just ask those who decide to visit from warmer climes.

Memorization
A Shadow out of Time, by H.P. Lovecraft

Had I, in full, hideous fact, been drawn back to a pre-human world of a hundred and fifty million years ago in those dark, baffling days of the amnesia? Had my present body been the vehicle of a frightful alien consciousness from palaeogean gulfs of time?

Had I, as the captive mind of those shambling horrors, indeed known that accursed city of stone in its primordial heyday, and wriggled down those familiar corridors in the loathsome shape of my captor? Were those tormenting dreams of more than twenty years the offspring of stark, monstrous memories?

Had I once veritably talked with minds from reachless corners of time and space, learned the universe's secrets, past and to come, and written the annals of my own world for the metal cases of those titan archives? And were those others - those shocking elder things of the mad winds and daemon pipings - in truth a lingering, lurking menace, waiting and slowly weakening in black abysses while varied shapes of life drag out their multimillennial courses on the planet's age-racked surface?

I do not know. If that abyss and what I held were real, there is no hope. Then, all too truly, there lies upon this world of man a mocking and incredible shadow out of time. But, mercifully, there is no proof that these things are other than fresh phases of my myth-born dreams. I did not bring back the metal case that would have been a proof, and so far those subterrene corridors have not been found.

If the laws of the universe are kind, they will never be found. But I must tell my son what I saw or thought I saw, and let him use his judgment as a psychologist in gauging the reality of my experience, and communicating this account to others.

I have said that the awful truth behind my tortured years of dreaming hinges absolutely upon the actuality of what I thought I saw in those Cyclopean, buried ruins. It has been hard for me, literally, to set down that crucial revelation, though no reader can have failed to guess it. Of course, it lay in that book within the metal case - the case which I pried out of its lair amidst the dust of a million centuries.

No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since the advent of man to this planet. And yet, when I flashed my torch upon it in that frightful abyss, I saw that the queerly pigmented letters on the brittle, aeon-browned cellulose pages were not indeed any nameless hieroglyphs of earth's youth. They were, instead, the letters of our familiar alphabet, spelling out the words of the English language in my own handwriting.

Self Assessment
I have learned that it is actually quite challenging to write. For one with such a fickle attention span, such as myself, it is actually all the more difficult. I feel I have met the expectations of this class, and more, but yet I still feel as though I could have done better. It is that nagging feeling I get at the end of each quarter, "did I do my best?", "could I have done better?", "was it really that meaningful?"

In the end, I can only hope that I can leave with a sense that I did all that I could and it was enough, at least for me. The feeling of doubt always haunts me eventually, and many a black depression I have brooded over it. However, like all the others, I feel this one will eventually pass, too...