Got a couple of ghosts here this week because it is… international ghost day? Yeah, that sounds plausible enough.

The Ghost Warden

People who knew him disagreed about whether or not Warden Gagnon was a good man. He was a successful man, a good citizen, but he was cruel. His cruelty, however, was directed at the prisoners of the prison he ran, so many people accepted it. He had no interest in rehabilitation, but loved punishment. He was never willing to kill a prisoner, because dead men don’t learn lessons, but any torture he could devise short of that was fair game. Still, like a large number of people in history, Gagnon died. Perhaps the debate over Gagnon’s goodness carried over into the afterlife, because it seems that neither heaven nor hell accepted the man’s soul.

For more than a century, the Ghost Warden has continued to watch his prison. Escapees are tracked by the righteous spectre and those who dare to attempt to commit murder within its walls are attacked and beaten. It could seem that he is simply carrying on the severe imprisoning techniques of his life, if it weren’t for the fact that any corruption among the guards is met with the same punishment. Could Gagnon be trying to make up for his life choices? And if so, does that mean his soul is now a prisoner in the very prison he once ruled with an iron fist?

The Bleeding Child

The ghost of the Bleeding Child had been seen for years by guests in the hotel. Late at night, when alone in a hallway, hotel guests would feel uneasy, like they were being watched. Looking around, they might catch a glimpse of a young boy. If they investigated any further, it was a regular jump scare situation, with the child lunging at them, his bloody wounds now visible, and suddenly vanishing. This went on for some time, word got out into the types of circles that talk about that sort of thing, and a documentary crew began investigating. They could not find any stories in the hotel’s history that might explain the events. No missing children or tragic cult rituals or anything were on record, or even rumored to be off record. Eventually the investigators just decided to take their cameras into the hotel for a few nights and see what happens. What happened next was a mystery, but maybe someday their footage will be found.

Obviously I’m trying to make a found footage plot here. If I ever told the story for real, I’d go places unexpected and weird, but for now this’ll do.

I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try to give some updates about PDR on this PDR Website.

As I have mentioned, I am done with school for a while, so I’ve been making the most of my time off. Not by going anywhere or doing anything that would involve spending money, oh heavens no, but I’ve been quite relaxed as I am. I am still very broke, as is my usual situation, but it does feel like I am now broke, but improving instead of broke, and getting worse. So that’s a plus.

It should be obvious from the title (“The End”), but the current Secret Government Robots storyline is the last one. This is what the whole thing has been building up to. It’s going to be pretty long, and I am taking my time with it (it involves more drawing than I’d like it to). It is also not the top priority project I have going on right now (the lack of any audience beyond myself allows me to justify that), but I do hope to get it done before the end of this year.

Haiku!

Remember haikus?
No? Yeah? No? I don’t either.
Were they limericks?

One of the things I am currently prioritizing as higher than webcomic making is reading books. Perhaps the biggest drawback to being in school again was that I was unable to read almost ever. I had to read too much for school, so I never had time to read anything in full, and anything I wanted to read for pleasure became something that stole time from schoolwork. But not anymore! In my effort to get back into reading, I have taken fifty novels from my ample Unread Books Pile and broken them into a smaller, less daunting pile that I am working my way through at the maximum pace a PDR can manage.

At this point, I have to admit, I still feel kind of burnt out from schooling. But once I get a few books read, a few pages done, and one or two other projects off my to-do list, I should probably be less overwhelmed and that will only make it easier for me to do more things. Hopefully.

Two characters this week defined by their parents.

Byron G. Rothschild

A strange, powerful, amorphous being from higher dimensions materialized on Earth to satisfy its own curiosity. During that visitation, it met Derek Rothschild and, as the being took a human form, a relationship began and was consummated. The entity left. Imagine Derek’s surprise when, seven years later, the entity returned and informed him of their child. Leaving the child with Derek, the entity left again, never to be seen on Earth again.

The child, now called Byron, doesn’t look entirely human, but luckily his family is rich enough that they can get away with it. When private tutors were brought in to teach the boy, it was discovered that his otherworldly mind could handle data and facts at a level unheard of by even the best computers. It seemed, however, that he did not have emotions, at least not in a way humans can understand. Though the family tried to force Byron into interactions with other kids, hoping he might make friends, Byron only became more aware of his outsider status and withdrew. He rarely left his family estate until, now a teenager, he developed a curiosity like that of his mother. He began sneaking out on his own and, in the process, made some friends more organically. With these other kids, Byron now solves mysteries.

Elsa Geheimnis

Though Elsa lives in the desert city of Kashgar, her father is a German. And he doesn’t even live in Germany, he’s in Thrakodacia serving as the right hand man of the Hateful King. Though her father has no pretensions of being a good person, he wants good things for his daughter. Not least, he wants her to be safe. He knows that his employer would use the presence of a daughter as leverage (though they work together, there is little trust between them), so he sent Elsa off to live with her aunt and uncle in secret. For now, as far as anyone knows, that secret is safe.

Elsa is living as normal a life as she can under those circumstances. Still, her family history being what it is, she has picked up some hints about the occult world. Finding some books that her guardians had hidden, among them her mother’s diary and some manner of spellbook, Elsa has found her mind awakened to strange things. Currently this manifests as an ability to project her mind to an astral plane where she can eavesdrop on meetings of stronger mystics. Perhaps she will learn much from this, but perhaps also she will accidentally draw attention to herself.