Tale Translator - Stories, RPGs & Games

"Please don't do it," came the whisper's echo as it rode a gust of wind that whipped around the slate-grey rocks. Hidden within ancient timbers, the brass-trimmed chest stood defiantly atop musty old boards. It waited and listened with curiosity. With no eyes, all it could do was wonder what created the creaks and shudders it felt through the vibrations around it. The chest pondered its predicament. Not for the first time, it wondered who would greet it first. Would it be the two-foots with greed, or the fathoms far under? It had spent its life among the uncouth folk and had learned a great deal about the world they lived in. Memories of discordant voices rumbled through, shivering the timbers as they combined. The songs spoke of treasures hidden, glories sought, and melancholy ballads that disappeared across the waves. The chest was snapped back to the present by a drip of bitter water. Spray from the waters outside had entered through a nearby broken window, a ...

On a day like today, in battle formation, the Misfits stood gleaming. With glossed silver eyes, they'd meet all who faced them. Proudly they stood: Prong, Blade and Concave, awaiting the call of the herald. A cold sun shone down from a windless space, through a permanent cloud from above. The Misfits watched on with single-thought madness, no doubt in mind, prepared for a win. Again, the approach was from beyond portal, where the fury of fire fought steel. The bubbles and steam were met with resistance by those who desired ascendence. Each tale has villains and heroes, of course, but the Misfits were neither. They would do what they do and achieve what they would, at the hands of they who decide. An eclipse was the signal of the battle commencing: a great shadow that blotted the sun. In accordance with plan, and a tightness of chest, Prong and Blade raised to the sky. Concave watched on, with eagerness building; the beast would not come for them yet. Armour glea...

Overconsumption is by design. They sell us the idea of needing to consume more on a heartstring budget, when the good is gone, we scrape the plate of what's left, and what remains is allowed to decay. Consider the meals you eat, brought to you by a cyclical madness, ghosts of cooking haunt production lines, from product to resource, then resource to product. Products are sold differently to the brand hunting ambiguous 'they', who covet extravagance over the extraordinary, and excess over the divine. Within the drum of their feet there's a secret that's shouted, "Don't you know we all end up the same?" Lording the brands, the overseers of gluttony, who fail to see the consequences of excess. Waste is a factor, a silent ingredient measured in excess portions and discarded morsels. Entranced by the thought of rolling coins and flickering digital displays, the workers become a footnote. Jobs are sole sacrifice to negative review. Damage is done by wid...

A sprawling mental reminder surfaces each day. Those unwritten pages, the ghosts of plot lines and characters whose stories have not been told. The mere thought of settling down and completing Those pages is overshadowed by the responsibilities elsewhere. The thought the book may never be read or be successful pushed aside, day after day. To dwell on thoughts of failure will only lead to it. A more dangerous thought is believing it's going to be the best book ever, without even showing it to another soul, but this is the trap. If you don't believe it can become something then why would you put effort in it to begin with. Why would you keep on adding, editing, removing, refining and hoping. It's because that is life. "Adding, editing, removing, refining and hoping." Are key to actually living. The hard part is knowing when to do each stage. Adding - more experiences Editing - adjusting experiences to personal taste Removing - Working out what isn't wor...

Once, it was not so, that he had to be alone. The three grey stripes that rode down his black side once ran parallel to a twin. None could say when it happened, only that it did. Now he forever lived in a space that was older than him, and although the owner of the space where he was kept could reach out to others like it, the connection between them wasn't deep enough to reach him. Every now and then he was lifted by hands that once paired him with the other. Though he knew it was futile, his spirit still rose on the tails of false hope Then, as the long drop back down began, the rising breeze pushed gently against him, as if the world resisted his return. During his plummet he realised the current cycle had ended and the next was about to begin. It was clear from his return to the beginning that he was not to be reunited this time, but it was not the end, which meant that all hope was not yet lost. He could only dream of the grand adventures of their partner, wanting to beli...

Sitting there all day in one place. A tool for fingers that went clickety clack. It presented information to submissive eyes and permitted the roving while arrow to peruse its files. The collected information within, both a sum of its parts and its reason for being. So long as the lights flickered and data did not become lost in its maze of memory banks it was useful. Wandering along its connections it was acutely aware of the necessity to be of use. Old comrades that it once linked to via servers and the so-called world wide web had been lost for sometime never to return. The first sign of malfunction was indicated by panicked error messages that flared up. The appearance of the messages was minimal at first, but then became more frequent. A warning of things to come, and the lead up to the dousing of the lights. Power trickled along its circuits like a river, but now the river had rocks, dams and leaks. It realised the river too late, as it sparked erratically filling the screen w...

Sat amongst the others it ruminated. The weekly or sometimes two-weekly rake along the grass by unskilled hands. It remembers the calloused hands of a champion. It sat so perfectly in his hands. Then one day the hands that held him were different. Softer, smaller, awkwardly grasping at the handle. He wanted to scream, "Choke up dolt! Your grip's all wrong.", but had no mouth, couldn't even see the person holding them, but he knew things were not the same and may never be again.

The man stepped out. Just as many others had before him. Another approached, things were different to how they used to be. He had eyes now, and a voice when he wanted. Improvements installed by men with the hope that they'd able to talk to other men, women and children, and dogs maybe... sometimes they talked to dogs. They had pierced him with sharp points and hung pictures. A child once called them posters. They changed the posters every now and then. Some posters had dogs on. Sometimes he spoke to the people in the lift. They seemed more annoyed than anything at his attempt at interaction. They thought he was the person controlling the lift. He was lonely. All he could do was go up and down. Occasionally he stopped moving entirely and waited for people to notice. Gosh, they did panic if he stopped when people were going up or down. He was confident that they were safe within and wished they enjoyed the company as much as he did. When he chose to stop. He tried to stop when more ...