SEA LION PRESS

By Matthew Kresal. Part Two: Chain of Circumstance 19th of October, 1962. Fridays were never Chris Bennefield’s favorite day of the week. There were numerous reasons for that, some having to do with recovering from the events of the four days proceeding it. It was also because it was the one day of the week he was guaranteed to have to see his editor because of the Sunday edition. “What the hell is going on across the river?” Chuck Eidel sighed from behind the stack of papers

By Matthew Kresal. Part One: A Pretty Bad Fix 19th of October, 1962. Silence hung over the Cabinet Room for a moment. The white walls that had seen much history over the previous six decades bore witness to it all. A silence that drove home that another historical decision might be imminent. Or would be if the son of a bitch would make one. Curtis LeMay, four-star general in the United States Air Force, raised his left hand, putting his burning cigar between his teeth. In th

By Paul Leone. The Doloire’s crew were perhaps still dazed from the encounter with the ætherokhelone. Its roar was legendarily and literally deafening, even to those men cursed with manning the cannons, themselves hardly whispering weapons. Or perhaps they did not expect the smaller, less heavily armed ship to swing about and come straight towards them. Whatever the case might have been, it took a few seconds for the pirate ship to react when the Tranquilla did just that. The

By Paul Leone. The Doloire fired first, but with Fortune’s bane upon her. The subtle currents of the æther could be overcome by captains and creatures, but had a way of hindering inanimate objects such as cannonballs. And the Tranquilla’s hull was painted midnight black. It was a liability in combat by day, but at night, it served to hinder enemy aim. (The aquamarine crystals on the masts were another matter, but had the advantage of being slender targets unless the foe was a

By Paul Leone. Captain’s Log April 23, AD 1529 It is Saint George’s Day today. Friar Mateo marked the occasion with Mass and a thoughtful lecture on the glorious crown of martyrdom. It was perhaps not a topic I would have chosen for a crew likely to meet battle soon enough, but I am not a preacher. The men seemed roused by his words, and I am glad for that. There is a certain monotony to long æthereal voyages, especially during the daylight hours when so little can be seen th

By Paul Leone. The Tranquilla was, by the ever-rising standards of worldships, a humble vessel. Its design was that of the sea-going caravel, adapted to the great golden ocean of the æther, and it had a crew of twenty-five odd souls. One of those odd souls was in the captain’s quarters some hours after the affair with the sirens had concluded. Rosy evening light shone through the three large portholes, casting a warm glow through the captain’s room. There, unbothered by the s

By Paul Leone. Captain’s Log March 17, AD 1529 We are now five days out of Port Vitruvius and making steady time through the æther. The mist had a particularly fine and thin quality today, with a rose hue at dawn brightening to a golden color by the eighth hour. The Orrery indicates we should be approaching Vulcan’s wake soon and will reach the world by morning: just on schedule. Commendations to Mr. Yim, as usual. It – A sequence of yells on deck interrupted Captain Letizia

By Ryan Fleming. The ground shook violently as the Renaissance continued to follow the man calling himself ‘Arry Bell towards a promised escape from this strange new world. ‘Arry held aloft a bronze disc he had taken from a font in an alcove beneath some grotesque idol carved into a stone wall. The bronze disc had immediately created two changes in the situation faced by he and the Renaissance. First, the part-human, part-fish creatures that looked ready to tear them to shred

By Ryan Fleming. The Renaissance regarded the new arrival who had suddenly appeared on the beach of the strange new world where they found themselves stranded. He was a young man in a merchant navy seaman’s uniform, a uniform so caked with mud and torn that it looked as though it been through some ordeal recently. That same wear and damage did not extend to the man that had introduced himself as Harry Bell. For someone who had been trapped there for a number of days, he looke

By Ryan Fleming. The Renaissance had at last made it to the strange new world that had seemingly appeared from thin air in the South Pacific several days before – shipwrecked, exhausted, and having narrowly escaped death by both armed freebooters and tentacled monstrosities. Their situation had not improved upon landfall, where a momentary distraction had allowed the form of some piscine abomination of a man to attack their meagre camp. It let out a guttural roar as it towere

By Ryan Fleming. The Renaissance were aboard their launch speeding towards the shore of the strange new world that had captivated the imaginations, and greed, of the entire world. They were two hundred yards out and closing. Closing in upon them were the long, trunk-like tentacles of some unseen monstrosity. Another fifty yards closer to the share, but still the tentacles closed upon them. The colour had drained from Eileen Wong’s knuckles from how tightly she gripped the hel

By Ryan Fleming. Not for the first time, not even the first time that day, Charles Chance found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. As ever, the latest time could be the last time. “I should have done this when I had the chance.” The hissed words of Frank Slate, first mate of the Visigoth and the man at the other end of that gun. His knuckles were white on the handle as his index finger twitched. Chance blinked at the sound of a gunshot. Slate fell backwards. Could not

By Ryan Fleming. Frank Slate was practically giddy to have the famed Renaissance Man, Charles Chance, on the business end of his revolver. He had never cared much for the do-gooder or his ilk that the press and swell types fawned over. Even at his end of society the sheer number of people inclined to like him annoyed Slate. Who would they regard as the more impressive figure now, he wondered. The Renaissance Man? Or the one who had control over his life or death? He could gla

By Ryan Fleming. Harry Bell had not slept in days. He was the sole survivor of the Brunswick, whose discovery of an unidentified continent in the South Pacific had meant quick (Harry hoped) death for all his shipmates, whether they had remained aboard or been in the first party ashore. Harry had survived, and he intended to keep it that way. It was that intent that kept him from sleeping. He had seen enough from what lurked on the island to never let his guard down. One membe

By Ryan Fleming. A gaggle of newly joined candy stripers, the more mobile patients, and even a few resident doctors all tried to sneak a look at the Renaissance Man when they heard he would be calling at their Bellevue Hospital that night. Charles Chance, the Renaissance Man himself, was all smiles and handshakes punctuated by the odd pithy one-liner or wink when he and his entourage arrived. A moving scrum developed around the Renaissance Man as he made his way from the entr

By Ryan Fleming. On the steps outside the Main Branch of the New York Public Library, a quiet man with his right arm in a sling drew with his left hand a revolver from the pocket of his raincoat. His unfamiliar aim drew at a pair walking down those steps having recently exited the library. The pair were Reginald Cullen and Annie Thomas, two members of the Renaissance. Seeing the drawn weapon, Cullen raised his arm in front of Annie and reached for his own concealed weapon. It

By Ryan Fleming. In the docklands of New York City, a gang of armed ruffians approached Eileen Wong and Benjamin Williams with felonious intent. An eight-foot chain fence topped with barbed wire blocked their escape to the busy streets of the metropolis. Each of the five ruffians carried a weapon, but whether brass knuckles, a chain, axe handle, or a longshoreman’s hook, the implement would mean bad news for the two members of the Renaissance. Their options limited, Williams

By Ryan Fleming. In the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from where there should be any land, Harry Bell and his shipmates stepped tenderly from their launch onto the shore of the mysterious land Harry had spotted the night before. The ground was soft underfoot, in some spots the landing party’s boots sank into the mud all the way to the top and the men had to be pulled out their shipmates. They soon began moving in a file by pairs, led by Chief Officer Chapman. There had bee

By Ryan Fleming. Outside a familiar brownstone in Manhattan, a quiet man stood on its stoop. He held a package in his hands, and a pistol in his pocket. Inside that same familiar brownstone, Charles Chance was brought up to speed by his partners on the appearance of a strange new world in the Pacific Ocean. “Speculation of dragons and gold and all sorts,” Annie Thomas was concluding, “but despite such embellishments, it does appear that the actual reports of a vast new contin

By Ryan Fleming. Outside the Midtown brownstone, the assembled press of New York City was aflutter with excitement that the reports of a strange new world coming from the Pacific were being investigated by the legendary Renaissance Man. Inside the brownstone, on the other hand, Charles Chance, a name he had adopted long before the moniker of the Renaissance Man, was slumped against the heavy door that marked the demarcation point for that persona. Outside the brownstone, Char