Dinh AaronMk — Roleplayer Guild

I have a similar issue with Two Steps from Hell. When I first found them years ago I was so obsessed that now I can't take a lot of their music seriously. Even their newer stuff doesn't jibe well with me. The only song I still love by them is This Must Be The Mothership, but even that's beginning to get old.@R0bE0

Well to be fair Two Steps is like the generic Movie Soundtrack Band. You could literally find something like them from any other internet composer out there with access to digital instrument tools, and the means to rough their stuff up enough to make it all sound like it's an actual orchestra and not something they worked out on a piano keyboard in their bedroom.

Two Steps is that band where you can easily buy the rights to to throw their songs into whatever movie you're making, or cartoon. So they're pretty much everywhere in that respect.

On a similar topic: I can't remember why or how but I've always associated Coldplay's "Clocks" to be "that generic movie trailer" song that I thought I once heard in the trailers for Fly Away Home when you used to watch movies on VHS and stuff and get the movie-trailers for films coming out within a year or so after the movie you were watching was coming out.

Now I'm bugged, so now I got to find out why I think this.

Southern Haiti, the Tiburon

A hot tropical breeze blew through the trees of the crossroads as a village gathered in the shade of an old bent mahogany. The highlands dipped and fall to one side drapped with the meandering course of the red-dusty road like a gentle scarf laid over a sleeping person's body, and the land sleepily sloped through fields and groves of palm that formed a pastoral landscape of plantation farms and fields of grazing animals. Far beyond the soft haze of the Caribbean lay brushed smooth against the northern sky. The weather was clear and heavy tufted clouds meandered across a ceiling of brilliant azure blue as the sounds of drums began beating on the crossroads below.

While one road lead north to connect the city of Port-au-Prince with the far southern coast the other that ran across it was a small vein in the pastoral network of highways that connected the communities and farmsteads of the sedimentary people of the Haitian inland with each other as it burrowed its way across the long spear tip of the Tiburon. Bird song emanated from the roadside groves of mangos and palm bushes as the song rose in intensity around the raised totem driven into the middle of the road like a lone spoke.

At its base, drawn in flower a delicate and intricate pattern lay against the dark red of the soil, its four cross arms pointing north to south and east to west. The ceremony was already well in play and the hougan was already dancing and spinning across the dirt with his company, clasping chickens by their claws they sought to summon Papa Legba, to seek his presence and to request he deliver to the mortals gathered the blessings of the loa. But not for good crops, and safe births; those had already been prayed for. But for the blessings of virtuous reward and glory in a raid. To find wisdom in the spirit's vision on who is the most bountiful.

To Guy Jean-Carel, the answer was obvious as he stood at the edge of the assembly clapping and applauding along to the hougan, a frail old man who in his dance and in the heat was sweating heavily through his thin white cotton shirt, clinging it to his ashen-black back as he twirled and swayed like a man drunk, or rather possessed. It was the same answer every time when the old man's eyes rolled back forward from inside his head and he starred up into the crowd waiting around him. “To America!” he would declare with a shallow breath and dry voice, “To America!”

To Guy, it was becoming a tired answer. He looked over across the ceremonial congregation, where standing among the warriors and raiders stood his daughter. She resembled so much of her father, and was well old enough to have been married off by now. But bitterly, Guy had let her go when the hougan came to his farm house drunk on providence and declared, “Your daughter, she be a powerful warrior! Destined for greatness. The spirits demand her service!”

It had been that moment that Guy had recollected the dowry he had set aside to marry her off, and let her go at the age of thirteen to be trained and remade into a fighter.

She was a tall lady now, much like his father. The two had no difficulties of looking over the heads of the crowd assembled around dancing and singing and the two caught each others' gaze with their own mutual sandy brown gaze. Guy was sharp and disapproving of the whole thing, he wished his nineteen year old daughter would come home and he could find a husband for her, as his sons had like-wise done. They all had grandchildren of their own now. But Flè, she had no husband. She had a ship and a crew under her. She had a bandolier of human teeth that wrapped across her chest from over her shoulder, stark bleached white over a breastplate of hardened and blackened with the sun and the salt of the sea. Her once beautiful long dark hair hidden underneath a crimson red head-wrap.

She was a strong woman, and sharp and cruel. She had come to believe in the Loa and show down her father's pensive worry and disdainful cynicism. The two's gaze separated and Guy returned to watching the priest, now seizing in the gentle arms of his flock as he was saddled by Papa Legba. In his ears the words of the messenger spirit would be whispered into his open ears and the target made and drawn up.

As  the furor of the drums rose and the fanatic zeal of the chanting did so, the old hougan stopped his spasms and rose immediately on invisible strings. He staggered light on his feet, a marionette to another power as he rose his hands and a eerie silence befell the group. The drums stopped, and the chanting ceased. His blank whited eyes stared out over the crowds beholding their attentive silence as only the birds sang and the broad leaves of palms sighed softly in the warm motherly breeze.

Finally he took a deep breath and his back tightened. His eyes rolled back and he staggered forward, caught by his disciple before he could hit the ground.

“To the north!” he shouted with a wispy breath. His long curly hair fell about his head in loose strands of mostly metallic silver, though light pepper gray also hung there. A young man rushed over, handing the old priest his straw hat and he fitted it on his head and stood up as his cane – which had been unceremoniously abandoned to the side earlier in the ritual – was returned to his long weathered hands. “The north our warrior shall lead her hounds, there she shall seek treasures. Upon the shores of the lands known as the Carol Lines!”

There was an approving cheer from the crowd and from across Guy watched as Flè and her crew hoisted above their heads machetes, spears, and short pistol-like fire-arms above their heads. The drums beat a ceremonial pulse and victorious chanting rolled from the mouths of the people as they flocked to their newly departing warriors. There wasn't any expectation on what they shall bring home, but no one cared; in the end if the Loa willed it, so it would be done. Those who followed the Loa's wills would be richly rewarded with foreign, exotic treasures and prizes.

As the crowd filtered past the ceremonial ground, Guy loitered a little to watch the village hougan stumble to the tree, where he was given a large bottle of rich golden rum. He took a deep swig of the drink, before turning to follow the departing warriors.

They did go far, merely reaching the corner of a coffee field and the forty-strong body of warriors, pirates, and raiders marched north to Port-au-Prince. There wasn't much in ceremony to see his own daughter leave, and the sight of seeing her taken away so quickly, and without so much of a goodbye hurt the old farmer as much as it stung him to give her up years ago. The sting had not ebbed to a tolerable soreness as some said it would, but it remained as strong as a fresh knife wound to the chest. Perhaps sometime there would be a moment he could catch up on all the goodbyes, not just the passing greetings before she left for the village to divide up the wealth among the people, and to give the hougan his repayment in tobacco and “soft-drinks”.

“Your daughter is a strong woman!” the hougan exclaimed, catch up to Guy. He wore a wide smile as the warrior group marched and whooped and hollered back to Port-au-Prince. The rest of the village had filtered passed to home and work.

“You stole her from me.” Guy remarked bitterly, “I wanted to see a happy married woman, with grand-children. But you took her.” he was sour, and he hardly offered the hougan a glance in his direction.

“It was not I, if it was all up to me I would not have. But it was the loa who said I should, in a dream!” he explained, laughing a little, “It is safer to abide by their requests, than to loose a strong woman in child-birth.” he cast a hand towards the departing Flè, “But she is promised to live long, strong, and wealthy. More than any fisherman's son you would have given her to!”

Guy harumph'd dismissively. What did a man who had never bore no children but bastards he had rejected known above paternal love. He dismissed him coldly as he continued to watch the warrior group that his daughter lead off.

Dinh AaronMk Member

my beloved (french coded)

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