JACKAL W.E.R.E.

In response to two particularly evocative posts by Noisms

http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2016/03/cyberwolf-werepunkalypse.html

and

http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-apocalyptic-style-and-spiritual.html

I wrote the following. It borrows liberally from various other sources, but not until I peeped into Scrap Princess’s Noo Futura: 

(https://shop.tuesdayknightgames.com/products/noo-futura)

and heard her hozos hum with endless liability did I understand the greatness and genius of the jackalwere.

https://www.deviantart.com/xtianayuni

So first I scrawled down the following treatise:

The Interurbanet is a series of 57 nodes.

You are a courier between nodes.

There will be interference.

You will be the interference.

Outside the Straight Road it's scary as hell out there.

But, on further reveiw:

The Megacorps are Wolfpacks.

YOU wouldn’t say werewolves. You’d say zombies: the stupid, fast Zak Snyder version. Yeah, I hate those too. That’s what they are though: feral humans, tattered, bodies breaking down from sweets and DA on schedule bar-pushing: the Wolf Mind is running things. They shamble about the shabby cityscape but can MOVE when motivated.

They can talk to you, but it will be gibberish. “I looked over and his eyes were white” kind of thing. They are pretty deep in their heads. But they also know stuff. The interface between fallen man and Corporate Wolfgog.

To get stuff out of them, though, you gotta enter the Wolf Space.

There are terminals. Mostly the packs gather around whatever kind of totem object – usually there’s a hidden PARALLEL that you can patch into a safe distance away. You get really unlucky, they found the parallel and have incorporated it into their outward-facing degenerate “civilization”. This TWISTED PAIR is a pain, but play your cards right you can do some sweet infiltration: better not get caught while you’re in Wolf Space though.

And don’t be in for too long regardless, because the rules change. You lose the door. Different personalities influence how its constituted. All according to the whims of the Moon.

(see Patrick Stewart’s http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2019/06/gackling-moon.html perhaps?)

In any Network Infrastructure, there will be:

The Breeding Pair

Alpha Male – most powerful at the new moon

Alpha Female – most powerful at the full moon

The Pair Apparent

Beta Male – more powerful as moon waxes (Alpha Male’s darkness recedes)

Beta Female – more powerful as moon wanes (Alpha Female’s light recedes)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Inktober/comments/jfbuk3/
monster_manual_inktober_day_21_sleep_jackalwere/

Adolescents

Grubs (Pups). They may or may not actually be children.

The Omega Wolf 

The network administrator. He is still human. The other wolves torment him, and yet they need him. Grizzled but alert. Why does he do it? For the sheer elegance of the system? Terrorized? Lazy, yet driven? Every Omega has a different story.

Dispersers 

Kicked out, looking to form a new pack. Most probably will be killed. Tech Start-Ups. Move fast and break stuff. Look out for these guys. Note that they aren’t a single person: they are an operating PRINCIPLE: gathering a mob until they achieve some sort of stability with another PRINICIPLE or are put down by rivals.

Their Wolf Space is probably pretty wild.

Their Wolf Space might even have more Wolf packs, think of that, hidden away amidst the miasma.

https://www.deviantart.com/mustacheelm

The VCs want to invest in something like that. Mold it to their needs. They need YOU to put in that SEED beans though, get out if you can before the door migrates under the aegis of that silvery satellite. Grow some beanstalks JACK, so that we can get some of that sweet BIOMASS. And further, perhaps even a bit of apotheosis for a derelict humanity:

16 And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. 17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. - Genesis 28

MYRMEKES ME IN ST LOUIS

In the BECMI game I am playing in, while engaged in operations against a demon/ancient ant-god alliance, we recently found out there are 5 of the f&&&ers : One Dead, One Asleep, One Married, One Captured, One a Master, or say the mushroom men to whom such secrets are currency. In a futile attempt to curtail the dark powers of these antisocial aculeates through cross-platform ridicule, I have reimagined them into a sitcom.

STAN RUFA, a man so ordinary he wears pants, is trying to fix his sink, but keeps hitting his head on the top. Finally he gives up, chucking his wrench in disgust. Then he retrieves the wrench and beats the hell out of the poor basin, breaking it. “Honey!” he calls out. “I fixed the sink!” (laughter). He retires to his chair to read the funnies.His wife’s offstage voice is a reedy thing, needling him. “Staaaaanly,” says she, “Did you get the lawnmower sharpened? I swear the grass is higher than a horse.” (laughter). “Staaaaanly, did you pay the water bill? Is our checkbook balanced?” “Staaaaanly, did you do x-y-z-y-x-w?" He does his best to ignore her, finally giving up and trying ineffectually to move some of these projects forward.

“Okay, okay,” he says, toddling toward his workbench, only to be distracted again by whatever little thing.

My Mother the Car

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” says the wife, emerging, to cacophonous cheering. Her steps are thunderous. Stan’s wife is AMBLY BLUE, an ant god! Pan out. Their house is giant! Stan Rufa’s living room that looked like a sitcom set is just a tiny little corner of the greater complex.

Behold the cage constraining MYRMICA GREEN, an ant god! This time she has constructed yet another elaborate and spindly mechanism to extend her reach all the way across the house and snatch a key ring that hangs by the television with the affixed legend No Toukc. A key to fit her cage. Nevermind! Somebody on every occasion will carelessly foil her plans. Stan, perhaps, screwing about in his kitchen. “The pilot light is out again! Where is that matchbook?” and noting an open fire nearby

(a fire that inflates a balloon, that in turn twists the wind-up monkey, whose cymbals spook a rat, who so startled, will rush the wall, in so doing hook the ring on his tinfoil hat, etc., etc.),

Stan employs it to light a rolled-up newspaper torch. And, being a conscientious sort (ha ha), puts out the fire with wild gesticulations

(balloon wilts, monkey-percussion peters out, rushing rat becomes disengaged and goes back to gnawing a nearby recliner cushion instead of entangling the keyring with his paranoia helmet).

Escape thwarted again, Myrmica Green’s resigned exasperation is cruel comedy gold.

The aforementioned recliner at all hours contains CAMPON RED, an ant god! She never wakes up, but participates in all manner of wacky animated dreamscapes where she embodies numerous whacky personas: a pirate captain, a corporate overlord, a trainer of hippopotamus whose charges refuse to leave the wallow to perform a car chase after a purse-snatcher. Her snoring becomes more pronounced when the show remembers she's there.

https://www.deviantart.com/jaaaiiro

And don’t forget the dun, decomposing body of DORYL BLACK, a dead ant god! Or almost dead. She stirs periodically, but then the sun comes out and the giant magnifying glass suspended over her focuses its rays and zaps her all over again (to much hilarity, according to the merciless meter of the laugh track at any rate). Her death jerk foils just as many key-acquisition plots as anybody else’s paroxysms, heartfelt or no.

Today’s episode: Stan is trying to make a X-mas card to send to Santa so he can get a new cordless telephone but it's up to Myrmic Green to Linus-like explain the meaning of the holiday to our beleaguered husband-hero. Green’s command of the religious dogma are, it must be said, idiosyncratic.

https://xaltotun.newgrounds.com/

At every episode’s end, pull out further. The studio audience in fact a single creature straddling the seats, PONERINAE PURPLE, an ant god! Her mandibles move in earie concert to the canned laughter as the credits begin their slow, slow descent, ape from man.