Well, once again, everything's coming up France. Wyrdrune and the Wizard crew are venturing to the City of Light where there's kidnapping afoot. The title promises either a murderous orangutan or an Iron Maiden appearance, but I doubt we'll get either. This Friday, 5pm eastern, tune in for the 58th edition of The Book Cage: Simon Hawke's The Wizard of Rue Morgue.
@Brockway Pin this, or join the bones of the guillotine's victims
GASP! Might the Dark Ones' army be werewolves?!
Im so on board for tanned, redhead titty sorceress.
I'm inundated by France
Oh, Flippant, if this is your first Hawke book, you are in for a ride
Neat!
This is so Hawke it hurts
Check out gellaho's website if you get a chance. The Hawke books are this weird balancing act of horny, rad, and trash
There are always big titty redheads
Except the Reluctant Sorcerer series. That was just trash with an amazing conclusion
Gracias
Yeah, I have no idea who that is. I guess we'll find out
Looks like Sindel before her hair went gray
I wonder if we'll get the series heroes or some other people as the real protagonists?
History suggests the latter
Coming up on the hour, it's Simon Hawke's The Wizard of Rue Morgue. Here's the magical preview
Already promising. Naming your Dark One Pascal is one step above "Mervin, Lord of the Underworld and King of Hell's Legions"
Time to begin
We begin in sewage
As all Parisian trips do
Magic sewage treatment
Oooh a Les Mis reference, classy.
Magic sewage and a "kids these days don't know Les Mis"!
Wizards shit their robes and magic it away, confirmed, JK.
It's taking everything Simon has to not say "tatterdemalion"
It's post apocalyptic, but random cultural references are well known
An elderly tatterdemalion is merely a tramp.
Also, hi, @FlippantSausage ! Hi, @Brendanonymous ! Hi, @LyraV 42Dukes !
Searching thru the garbage, magically.
When the real magic came, who cried for the stage magicians, illusionists, and mind freaks?
The homeless guy is still French, so he's a total snob about the garbage quality
"Zeez baguettes are stale! LOW QUALITY! BAH!"
What series was it where magic being real made stage magic so much more amazing? Because it was like watching somebody do the same stuff without the crutch.
"Aye wood not peez in zees pees"
That's this one, I think
I know zatanna works classical onstage, generally.
We joked about it, iirc
Jacque's only options were eating fire and eating garbage.
Simon really wants you to know just how shitty it is for Jacques
Hi, @Shark Puke Fetishist GDC !
Hiding in the niches. As one does.
Scrofula AND Tuberculosis! The two most Old French Diseases.
Because Syphilis would be breaking immersion.
Jacques, the octogenarian Parisian acrobat hobo
Jacques is drawn to the most spooky and ancient sewage
"Sure. I have no questions."
Triple check the redhead box
Ohhh, these people. The same ones from the end of the last book
Yeah because the first person youd ask to do anything is a smelly old French dude who lives in the sewers.
Don't be afraid of the seizure I'm about to give you, old man
So this is what it's like when I steal peoples souls with my hair? I've always wondered.
Boogie Fever. Stage 4
Well, in the last book it was a brother and sister dark one. The girl one turned into a dragon and got stabbed to death
This is the part where they slip him a combo of PCP and toad venom and beat the shit out of him while taking turns fucking each other, right?
Otherwise this is the worst Eyes Wide Shut party ever.
Options are limited in a sewer
Yeah, nothing at all to be afraid of here
Yeah just your standard brain melting.
Normal shit in Wizard Paris.
At least he's led a full life
Yeah standard redhead stuff, that's how we manufacture freckles.
The young and sexy spell is the most dangerous of the dark magics
"And the filthy old hobo's cock grew three sizes that day."
Peoples' jaws go bad as they age?
They do when you have bad enough scrofula.
I like that youth means he's been working out
I don't know how he's going to deal with these hormones
A desperate longing for the devil woman in the sewer
HAH! Now the Eyes Wide Shut stuff!
See, get too horny and the ladies will breath red-hot steam down your throat
That's just how it goes when you fuck a turtle dragon.
Basic Monster Manual shit right there.
The change is really continuing at this point
He breaks out in acne and starts feeling put upon.
The other other change.
Wizard Mom and Dad just don't understand reverse puberty.
Wiry hair going back into the ass.
Angry French artist? Now I've heard everything
He's yelling at a bowl of fruit
Horny Hawke is with us tonight
A bowl of fruit name Joelle.
A whiny bowl of fruit.
But Max, I'm le tired.
That he's fucking.
Because thats how nasty Wizard Paris is.
Or she's just an alcoholic
You turn bowls of fruit into sapient human women and fuck them.
Also: Paint me like one of your French girls.
Inconsiderate dick yells at his freelancer instead of trying to have sex with her.
If she had known sex wasn't on the table she never would have taken this job!
I'm pretty sure that's not what a black velvet painting is supposed to be
Like how the narrator calls Joelle out for being a lazy bitch too as "the pose is not difficult to hold", like tell me you are divorced without saying so.
She's le horny
Like a real artist cares about age, this is France.
Wizard France!
They have a song IN REAL LIFE about fucking your daughter. By a guy and his daughter.
My immersion is dangerously close to being punctured here.
"Why does everyone want to have sex with me?"
We appear to have a misunderstanding. You are treating me like a professional model. I came here to get lit and clean your brushes.
She better turn into a werewolf soon or I'm going to think Simon forgot his plot
He needs to be more polite, because he seems really really impatient with this woman who wants to fuck him.
Start typing with both hands again, Simon.
"Do you think I'm beautiful?" asks the lady whose job is to be beautiful
"Why do people want to buy my nude paintings so much?"
"Yes goddammit, now shut your French snail hole and let me PAINT, Woman.
Ohhhhh.......okay..........its emphasizing how manly this guy is........I get it.
Ugh he did not drag Dali into this ego trip.
The rare reverse failed painter
The Legend of the Italian Jew doesn't play very well in some parts of Europe
Only Alejandro Jodorowsky is allowed to do that!
Ah yes, famous French painters Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali
Columbus isn't very popular here either.
Also who fails at Wizard school and decides "Well art is easy. Ill do that."
A sob story works better if the fallback job isn't "world famous artist"
Well it's the wizard to fascist pipeline. You fall wizardry, become an artist, fail that become a dictator. Very tragic.
I feel like if Hitler had the ability to paint nude women so good they all wanted to fuck him, we wouldn't have that trope.
20-year-olds threw themselves at him. Men fought him for the honor of hearing their names cursed colorfully in his victory roar. His nudes were incandescent in the salons. He could house a box of wine. But goddammit, he would die a failure, knowing he could never make doves appear with a clap.
Max muses on the nude that got away
Oh hes out for that cougar pussy, okay.
The Most Dangerous Dick Game.
I'm assuming he's thinking about the French cougar that was in the past books
Sounds like Annie Lenox is still out here being cool as fuck.
Jacqueline, the magic thief who hangs out with a 300 lbs fairy
Hey, I was right!
Oooh she hangs out with Wizard Laurence Fishburne!
Maybe Max is Cypher's new ID
I'm actually kind of surprised magic hasn't made sexy painters as obsolete as fire eaters.
'You can call me JMLdCM for short'
Every organization has Thaumaturgy in its name because no one wants another "Industrial Light and Magic" lawsuit
Oopsie. The model he sent home got murdered
Whoopsie
If only he'd had sex with her instead of doing his job
Well, that doesn't look great
Oh nooooooo how could they murder that poor bowl of fruit-I mean girl!
Also how bad of a temper do you have to be for being suspected of murdering someone so they STOP wanting to fuck you?
"Wouldn't you rather have sex with me?"
"Lady, I'm trying to murder you. You're making this weird."
I think the cops suspect he hit on her and got mad when she turned him down.
Of course he was
Honestly the truth isn't very believable
THey know about his temper but not how Joelle is horny.
She was new!
Giacomo Siegal
Reputations take time
"Hon hon hon, zees croissant is excellent wit mah coffee! I shall deep it!"
Keep it in your pants, Inspector
"The constabularie eez all up my ass about theez!"
goddammit, Hawke. Always with the "she had the figure of a woman in her twenties"
A body like Arnold with a Denzel face.
Literally every time he's introduced her in these books, we get that line
"Legal enough so that pumping her full of box wine is only ONE crime."
So, the painter dude became friends with the lady after she just showed up in his apartment and asked him to paint her face. That's why she's here
As all women do
Sure, what 40-something woman doesn't dream of being able to secure a spot in a nightclub chorus?
I want to know if Simon is aware that women past 29 can still exercise and stay in shape?
"Oh, he's NOT a killer, you say?"
"Well did we fuck up."
"If only we had known."
HIs descriptions are so weirdly polite for a pervert.
Too bad they already guillotined him.
I often approach a lone female at the social imbibement zone and say, "My dear..." pause for eye contact and a slow, wry smile, "Although you are past optimal birthing age and would likely produce progeny with Down's syndrome, you have the figure of a much more desirable woman...would you care to model for me....IN NAKED?"
Well, I know I'm turned on
"Mademoiselle, we are not in ze habit of telling people the lack of evidenze zat we have, but"
The print was damaged. Therefore, murder
All I'm hearing is "She went to work for a dick boss and then turned up dead after hours."
That's why I try to never be the last person to see anyone alive. I'm like, "Look over there! It's Santa!" and then dive into the bushes.
"Our evidence is that he failed out of magic school"
So they can't text their friends. "Date with Brendan went well, not coming home yet."
This is why you paint nude women with a CCTV
So the Italian Jew from Brooklyn is suspected because he coulda been a contender?
The Vice Presidential Method
I just hide cameras in the toilet so it proves they were alive after they finished sitting for me.
I love how this random wizard secret agent is finding all sorts of holes in this case, where the dudes lawyer presumably couldn't.
"These are probably things you should have heard about. There was a black sabbath ritual in Cinderella's Castle in Disneyland"
"I'm not sure how you didn't hear about that"
Sure. That's why.
Inspector Blood, continuing being the spin-off character we want but never get
Ran into IP disputes with DC comics.
Billy Slade, Cockney Punk and part-time Merlin, is having Merlin nightmares
Thirty pages before main characters if you were wondering
Just our heroes, staring at a child sleeping
None of those people qualified as main characters? Cool,.
And Hawke isn't trying with the cockney transcribing
Hawke doesn't seem to get that he can have stories in the same universe without the characters from the first book
Also, Billy is Merlin's last living descendant, so Merlin's soul lives in his body since Merlin's body was destroyed
The nightmares are a result of Billy receiving Gorlois's ring after Thanatos died. So now he has multiple old people in his head
Oh right. And a badass eldritch defense attorney from LA is in his head now too
"There's too many colors! Turn down that music!" is his mental landscape now.
Family is hard
Poor lad, its getting crowded in there.
Oh my god he must have given up jerking off.
You'd think so, but Hawke may have other ideas
Spoke too soon
There's the Hawke work ethic I know!
Like he noticed some missing apostrophes and had to fill his quota or he doesn't get his extra Yoshi coin at the end of the level.
Hawke will go into impressive detail about things that don't matter. I think in this series, he's funneling that energy into the accents
He needs to go full Yangus and tell someone porkies, and make them brown bread.
Skipping over several pages of recap, onto France
I keep forgetting about the Yiddish broom
If this doesn't involve a magic throat slitting orangutan at some point I will riot.
You are invoking Chekhovs ape with all that Rue Morgue talk.
Meanwhile, Suzanne Muset (sister of the deceased) is dealing with finding her sister's dead body
Also what rue, that word just means street!
Aw poor Gabby, thats the last thing you want when you show for the menage a trois.
Bold move, Max
crap, I need to run off. Work issue. Have a fun night, everybody!
Ooof Max is just really bad at looking like Not A Murderer.
I see where all that talent for wizard shit went.
Because that has to be a supernatural feat.
Well, that was a good use of time
Ooooof, did Max cold cock Stefan? Now he's going back to jail.
Neo will have to break him out.
Meanwhile, our heroes watch the movie made during the last book
You'd think an in flight movie would just be like a full Holodeck\mind palace thing in a magical universe.
Modred enjoys a fictional version of his conception
okay but fuck you for saying "lesbian stormtrooper" like that isn't cool.
Captain Phasma is a gay icon, according to at least one of my friends.
His mother had something like 10 kids, so I'm pretty sure he's entitled to think it's a weird bit.
It's troubling for young men to realize their mom likes dick, but he's had a thousand years to get over it.
Max is just having one of those days
Shit, I'm almost convinced he is the murderer.
This version of Mordred is rather saner than usual, so maybe he's sublimated his rage and hatred into homophobia.
And this is just that occasionally popping to the surface.
I like how the super secret squirrel agent Jaqueline has yet to posit that maybe someone is framing Max and is following him and doing murders.
But if she did that we wouldn't have a plot.
Jacques is learning that leaving the sewers isn't all it's cracked up to be
On the other hand, not sewers.
Suddenly Garth Marenghi is ghost writing.
He's got the murder boner
Jaques never suspected that the mysterious cloaked horny sewer wizards might be bad people!
"Not a fraction of what I'm going to do" is code.
It means a cheeky finger up his butt.
Jacques is not very bright.
I guess they didn't de-age his brain.
I think we should congratulate him on being able to tie his shoelaces and climb stairs.
Poor bastard, all he thought he was going to get was pegged by a hot lady in a sewer. Instead its murder.
A leader of a small gang meets the Dark Ones and gets turned in to a werewolf
Actually fairly rad.
While Michel kills his gang, the dark ones absorb the life force weirdly
Their plan is to make their breasts bigger?
Look, it beats silicone.
I figured magic would do that without stealing life force but whatever.
I didnt graduate from Wizard school.
Then again maybe neither did they?
Wyrdrune and Kira have a great relationship
They are ancient evil beings from beyond recorded history, so probably not
See, that's the problem. They didn't think about the really important things, like making breasts bigger.
They are also the two dude ones, so it seems like a weird way to go
The lady one is busy making out with the old/young man
Sometimes when you are an ageless evil, you decide you want a pair of righteous knockers.
And not having a PHD in Wizard means you don't know all the modern techniques for it.
Isn't Gorlois an ancient evil from beyond recorded history?
Magic runestones make investigation very easy
"No, shut up, its not like in those Batman games!"
That shouldn't stand up in court.
I demand at least one more magical stone to confirm it.
Yeah I feel like testimony from a spirit of a dead Arthurian is inadmissable.
Shut-in writer Stefan Rienzi moistens his lips
Do they explain why this version of Mordred isn't a cackling villain who schemes to murder half of the good guys, then triggers two wars to kill the remainder? I missed that book.
Are you asking if his character might have changed over a thousand years?
Moistly moistens his moist lips.
"Are you cops?" "It's complicated" is the last exchange so many people hear.
All I'm saying is I'd want more than his sayso if I was going to bring him into court on matters of crimes.
Trust, but verify.
I guess there are a couple of things. This isn't really an official investigation, they did break in
It seems more like they are gonna black bag him and dump his body in a sewer anyway, the way this conversation is going already.
Terrible fake Italian names: a Hawke tradition like no other
Alfredo Ricotta.
But fair enough. It's not an important point, just one I consistently find interesting in these books.
This is also the fourth book, so I think they can trust him by this point. He had become an international assassin, but then he met up with his mom again, and got a magic stone embedded in his chest, fought an ancient evil. Then his mom died. Then he met his mother's lover, Thanatos. Then Thanatos died. He's been through a lot
I let Holly get away with being bored of craziness after ten million years, I can let Mordred decide he's not evil after a thousand.
That's fair.
Rienzi gets the jedi treatment
I'm sure more blank spaces in his memory will help absolve him of those violent murders.
"Where we're you today"
"Im-a eating da gabagool"
"Never seen who?"
Take that, book learnin' boy
They send Wyrdrune's sentient broom on a guided tour
Inherited from the Old One Alec Guinness.
What a confusing day to be a tour guide.
Cos I assume sapient brooms aren't a commonplace thing from his reaction.
Maybe in five minutes a trunk with legs eats him tho.
They go to a night club which turns into a magic show? Doesn't seem like the dance crowd would be into that, but sure
Wyrdrune is not impressed by the gifts of the Dark Ones
Alec Guinness could tell me to do anything he wants and I'd do it.
I can feel the author straining to not call the club "Danse Macabre"
Lol
Lmao he succumbed.
You don't say, Kira
Pascal's performance is a little too good
