The Cattlemancer & Friends is a story cycle from Pick-n-Mix Presents that centers around the Cattlemancer, the Kingdom of Inglenook, and various related characters in the Hinterlands during the 1960s to 1980s. Releasing on AO3, Patreon, Tumblr, Reddit, and Neocities (mostly, maybe)!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pick-n-Mix Comix, Yeehawgust - Fandom, The Cattlemancer & Friends, Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Celerifer, Wallbouncer, Wheelbarrow - Character, Foursight, Wally "Wallbouncer" Barrow, Wally "Wheelbarrow" Barrow, Quentin "Foursight" Forsythe, Braindeath
Additional Tags: Yeehawgust, Yeehawgust 2025, Yeehawgust2025, Superheroes, Supervillains, Origin Story, Paralysis, Parallel Universes, Disability, Wheelchairs, Superpowers, speedster, speedsters, History, Lore - Freeform, Lore Post, Worldbuilding, Urban Fantasy, Magical Realism, Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Major Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Original Universe, Original Mythology, Short, Short One Shot, Random & Short
Series: Part 8 of Yeehawgust 2025, Part 9 of The Cattlemancer & Friends, Part 36 of Pick-n-Mix One-Shots & Shorts, Part 79 of Pick-n-Mix Comix Presents โ All Solicitations (Issues + Lists)
Summary:
Speedster Wally Barrow โ known first as Wallbouncer, and then as Wheelbarrow after his fall โ could have gotten his speed anywhere; what he should never have done was turn to the demon Celerifer instead.
Celerifer was a demon; no doubt about that. He was a demon of speed and forward movement, he was a blur who offered those who bonded their souls with him the same ability, for the low price of giving up their soul to a demonic influence, potentially for the rest of their lives.
There were other ways in the Other Realms to gain the power of a swift-speeding runner; the Veil member Scoop gained his from accidentally merging his cells with a perpetual motion device when the Synergy Wave of 1973 bombarded half of the Kingdom of Inglenook with cell-transmutatng synergon particles.
One never, specifically, needed to turn to a demon just to be fast or quick, or for any ability at all.
Wally Barrow turned, anyway, and ended up in a different dimension, with both his legs broken as a result.
****
He started off as the heroic Wallbouncer, whose Celerifer-enhanced abilities let him bounce off every wall and vanish nearly at the speed of sound. It was only when Celerifer kept demanding he use his powers more and more and more often, giving up more of his energy and agency over his own faculties each time, that Wally started questioning what was really going on in their dynamic together.
It was a battle with Braindeath which brought him down. Celerifer pulled his abilities back, more than he ever had before, and Wally kept pushing despite how much more energy Celerifer demanded to provide his abilities and control over speed and movement.
The fight cost all three of them; by all rights, Celerifer's spirit burned itself out, leaving Wallbouncer a paralyzed husk and Braindeath just about as brain-dead as his moniker suggested.
Wally teamed up with an inventor codenamed Foursight โ in truth, Quentin Forsythe โ after that, and he ended up in the wheelchair that carried him for the rest of his career. His own codename, Wallbouncer, had to be changed; he went from Wallbouncer to Wheelbarrow overnight.
His former rival, Braindeath, became his caretaker, vegetative nervous system altered by Foursight to be controllable, like a puppet of flesh, and the two moved to the parallel realm known as the Freelands, which they hoped would be far enough from the demons of Inglenook that they might never risk an encounter with spirits like Celerifer again.
They did end up chasing after the Barn and its various members, but Celerifer never showed up again, and Wally was ultimately able to put his 8 seconds in the saddle of the speedster life far behind him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pick-n-Mix Comix, Original Work, Yeehawgust - Fandom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Korgo the Living Moon, The Mechosians, The Cattlemancer
Additional Tags: Yeehawgust, Yeehawgust 2025, Urban Fantasy, Moon, Weird Moon, Weird Biology, Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Planet, Alien Character(s), Alien Technology, Alien Abduction, Aliens, Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Major Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Original Universe, Original Mythology, Robots, Outer Space, Space Opera, Space Stations, space, Giant Robots, Transformation, Cyborgs, mechanical, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Experiments
Series: Part 7 of Yeehawgust 2025, Part 3 of The Cattlemancer & Friends, Part 30 of Pick-n-Mix One-Shots & Shorts, Part 80 of Pick-n-Mix Comix Presents โ All Solicitations (Issues + Lists)
Summary:
Inglenook's moon is not haunted, in truth โ but there is something different, something alien, hiding beneath the surface, and even alien creatures in subterranean environments can be down in the dumps about things sometimes, right?
The moon over Inglenook was haunted, some said; that wasn't the case, but paranormal investigators had been wanting to get to it for years, and nome had ever managed.
If they had, they would've found the truth; the moon that wasn't haunted, but was instead the mechanical, stone-covered body of a gigantified Trogaron from the Chasm of Stars.
His name was Korgo, the Living Moon, and he spent his days asleep from sadness, only waking up at night when he could bask in the glow of the Aether's mists โ rainbow and swirling in their nebulous lagoons โ and dream of cracking the shell within which his flesh was trapped and, perhaps, reaching the stars themselves as well.
****
He was around 20 when the Mechosians took him in. They had taken a vessel sent from Trogarus to deliver weight-lifting goods and textiles to the Central Planets, and as far as Korgo could remember, he was the only survivor.
Nowadays, he just watched the humans of the Other Realms โ and the Kingdom of Inglenook specifically โ and wondered what, if anything, they might think of a four-armed, purple-skinned beast of a creature like him.
He also wondered, of course, why the Mechosians had put him there, inside the moon around the Realms, and he was certain that question was never going to have an answer.
What he knew most of all was that the Mechosians โ a race of crystalline socialoids who had just barely finished constructing their own artificial planetoid, the factory-city of Mechos Megrod โ were skilled in these artificial, industrial constructions and could somehow make factories of dust and regrow their own kind from lattice tanks filled with georine and whatever materials it took to surround a lucidite core in the interlacing crystal pieces that comprised a socialoid's body at normal times.
(They could spawn anywhere lucidite was exposed to naturally-occurring georine dust, floating around in the air, meaning even the Kingdom of Inglenook had been home to a few in its time, and would likely be home to more later on too; but the Mechosians were different; they were socialoids who banded together, took exodus from their birthed societies, built their own world and learned how to rebuild themselves to better fit there. They weren't just randomly-grown crystal-people, they were spawned for a purpose and spawned each other to be there, and in turn kept the mechanisms and inner workings of Mechos Megrod functioning like a great timepiece across the vastness of all the stars.)
They were certainly skilled enough to entomb a living being inside of one, almost completely.
But still, Korgo shined, and for all Inglenook knew, was a perfectly normal moon that wasn't haunted whatsoever.
On some days, though, when the Cattlemancer gazed up at it during long nights on the range, he could swear he didn't just see a bunny looking down at him from the darkened plains of the space-rock above his head; on some days, it seemed like an entire face was staring down at him, begging him for help, and hoping one of Inglenook's prized Royal Protectors would one day take notice, venture into the sky on an airship designed for flight, and dismantle the mechanisms that kept Korgo trapped, so the four-armed Trogaron could be free to fly through the Chasm of Stars again, just like he always used to.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pick-n-Mix Comix, Yeehawgust - Fandom, The Cattlemancer & Friends, Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Buck Wilder vs Buffalo Bones
Characters: Buck Wilder, Buffalo Bones, Kanemaker
Additional Tags: Yeehawgust, Yeehawgust 2025, Yeehawgust2025, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Superheroes, Supervillains, Multiverse, Time Travel, Accidental Time Travel, Rivalry, History, Worldbuilding, Lore - Freeform, Lore Post, Western, Country & Western, 1800s, set in the 1800s, Origin Story, Backstory, Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Major Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Original Universe, Original Mythology, Fictional Religion & Theology, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Magical Realism
Series: Part 7 of Yeehawgust 2025, Part 8 of The Cattlemancer & Friends, Part 35 of Pick-n-Mix One-Shots & Shorts, Part 78 of Pick-n-Mix Comix Presents โ All Solicitations (Issues + Lists)
Summary:
Buffalo Bones and Buck Wilder both vanished from the 1800s; one reappeared in K-Town, a realm built from the Alterwilds just beyond the Other Realms, and another reappeared on Idyll Island in the 1930s. Neither of them know where the other are; despite being rivals, somehow, some part of them misses each other just the same.
In K-Town, Buffalo Bones still roamed.
The realm had existed for years before Professor Kanemaker, founder of the Royal Protectorate team known as the Builders of Inglenook, moved in and began establishing his 1800s-themed constructed town project there โ it had started as the beginning seed of what should've been a brand new realm like Inglenook, or Edelmund, or Tamarac, or Carillon, or New Galatรฉe, and still existed as a drifting plain, fresh for new life.
Buffalo Bones had been living there since he vanished from Inglenook in the 1800s and took the buffalo with him, spiriting himself and the species once branded as "Inglenook's workhorse" away to the empty plains of the then-unnamed, raw world yet to be discovered by those in the valley kingdom back home.
****
Meanwhile, in his home realm of Inglenook, Buffalo's old cowboy rival, Buck Wilder, lived and worked hos way through the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, all after vanishing himself from the realm shortly after Buffalo and the namesake herds went their way as well.
After his reappearance in the following century, Buck became a performace cowboy โ whether you believed he was the real Buck Wilder was a different story โ and joined the Idyllville Circus on Idyll Island for a series of shows with the green-suited villain character Grass Mask. They'd play cowboy and gunslinger, one hiding in the bushes and one pursuing him down, and mock-play the same routine over and over for countless audiences every night, to some applaud back in those days.
Of course, their presence there put them in the crosshairs when the Sea Bishop went after the coast of Idyll Island that precious, fateful night in 1940, and got them officiated as founding members of the Idyllville Idols, and Buck lived a strange, adventurous, not-entirely-satisfying life of heroism and stardom after that.
****
Both rivals often wondered if the other was still out there, but neither had the means and motivation to check, so they just carried on, as the decades passed, lost in their separate realms, only to fight again if the threads of fate desperately wanted them to.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pick-n-Mix Comix, Yeehawgust - Fandom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Merit Man, Dr Connector, The Cattlemancer
Additional Tags: Robots, 1980s, Urban Fantasy, Multiverse, Parallel Universes, Technology, Computers, Computer Programming, Superheroes, Superpowers, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Major Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Original Universe, Original Mythology, History, Worldbuilding, Lore Post, Lore - Freeform, Yeehawgust, Yeehawgust 2025, Yeehawgust2025
Series: Part 6 of Yeehawgust 2025, Part 7 of The Cattlemancer & Friends, Part 34 of Pick-n-Mix One-Shots & Shorts, Part 77 of Pick-n-Mix Comix Presents โ All Solicitations (Issues + Lists)
Summary:
Merit Man, the robotic hero of Tamarac! Watch, as his "Ability Button" sash belt activates his wide range of powers at the simple press of a badge-shaped button!
Merit Man was not a man in the sense that the Cattlemancer was a man; he was a mechanical, computational creation from the world of Tamarac, an Other Realm adjacent to the Kingdom of Inglenook's home domain where practical, functional technology took cultural precedence over magic or aesthetic or anything else.
While normally, the people of the People's Republic of Tamarac used computational technology imported from their neighboring nation, the Morishima Corporation, Merit Man was the first native-designed piece of equipment the Tamarackers themselves had innovated. He could do a wide variety of special, programmable tasks, all activated at the push of a button, which were displayed in bright colors and circular emblems on a sash-like device around his shoulder, each of which activated a different ability โ some could make him dance, or spiral his torso like a tornado, or survive underwater, or split his limbs into different segments โ others activated preprogrammed lines of dialogue, although he was also able to speak independently despite which buttons were pressed.
He was a product of a conglomerate that operated in multiple nations and realms, called Axiom Multinational, and was their first major design of their own creation. It was a competitive move against the Morishima Corporation โ who, until then, had been the primary purveyors of computered technology in Morishima, Tamarac, and the Other Realms as a whole โ to be sure, but the Merit Man units were designed to be the first in a wide line of products meant to be adopted by the home and find utility amongst the people of the Other Realms at large.
It was certainly a hit, at least in the Kingdom of Inglenook, Tamarac's neighboring realm; where, within juat the first few weeks of the Merit Man unit's operation and initial production runs in 1984, over half the teams of Royal Protectors there had their own Merit Man unit, or sometimes several. There was a Merit Man inducted as a member of the Veil. There was a Merit Man in the Hinterlands, where he adventured alongside the Cattlemancer. There were Merit Man units in Dr Connector's various laboratories, sometimes several, even though he had protested adopting the thing in the first place.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pick-n-Mix Comix, Yeehawgust - Fandom, Original Work, The Cattlemancer & Friends
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Buffalo Bones
Additional Tags: Yeehawgust, Yeehawgust 2025, Yeehawgust2025, Buffalo, Cattle, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Cowboys, cowboy, Superheroes, Supervillain, Western, Wild West, Weird West, 1800s, set in the 1800s, Urban Fantasy, Magical Realism, Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Major Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Original Universe, Original Mythology, History, Lore - Freeform, Lore Post, Worldbuilding, Fictional Religion & Theology, Short, Short & Sweet, American History, Inspired by Real Events
Series: Part 5 of Yeehawgust 2025, Part 6 of The Cattlemancer & Friends, Part 33 of Pick-n-Mix One-Shots & Shorts, Part 76 of Pick-n-Mix Comix Presents โ All Solicitations (Issues + Lists)
Summary:
Buffalo Bones once terrorized the Hinterlands in the 1800s, only to disappear as the century wrapped up.
Buffalo Bones was the wildest wrangler in the west, once upon a time.
In another time and another place, just after the Enlightenment ended and sorcery was relegalized in the Kingdom of Inglenook, and for years thereafter, he troubled the entire Hinterlands with his brand of cattle thievery โ making cattle disappear, practically forcing farmers to use the buffalo flocks he wanted them to use, or else risk their villages burning down or their women disappearing, or worse โ and, since Inglenook's farmers relied so heavily on the buffalo population in those days, they were forced to either rely on what Buffalo provided or figure their own means of keeping livestock out.
The end of the Enlightenment brought with it too an end to the feudalism system that had once dominated the territory of Inglenook, where manor houses owned by Silvani families gobbled up plots of land and put the peasants to work for them farming, or mining, or drilling for scale oil, or whatever needed to be done then, really. After the Enlightenment, things switched to a more colonial sense of development, villages popping up throughout the Hinterlands, plots of land owned in equal portions by equal members of society.
But the downfall of feudalism meant folks like Buffalo could rise up. The animals he protected were, naturally, buffalo, which had for many centuries been Inglenook's top choice in livestock, at least where the Hinterlands were concerned. After Buffalo stepped in, though, it seemed like the nation's reliance on their sturdy workhorse had come to a forced end, as Buffalo seemed to have a deep-seated need almost to "liberate" the creatures from the farmers' hands.
Then one day, Buffalo just vanished โ after years of duels with sorcerers and cowboys like the showman Buck Wilder, Buffalo himself disappeared, and took with him all the buffalo in Inglenook just as well.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Yeehawgust - Fandom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Relationships: Whitney Martin & Felicity Ryder, Whitney "Whitemare" Martin & Felicity Ryder, Whitemare & Felicity Ryder, Deacon Walker/Prudence Ryder
Characters: Whitemare, Whitney "Whitemare" Martin, Felicity Ryder, Prudence Ryder, Deacon Walker, The Cattlemancer, Oscar Martin, Whitney Martin, Oscar "The Cattlemancer" Martin
Additional Tags: Yeehawgust, Yeehawgust 2025, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Horses, horse ranch, ranch, Unicorns, Animals, Animal Husbandry, Magic, Magical Realism, Magic-Users, glamour, glamours, Urban Fantasy, Fantasy, Spells & Enchantments, Demons, Kobolds, Grief/Mourning, Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Death, Temporary Character Death, Past Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Not Really Character Death, legacy, Legacy Character, Horsemen, Animal Transformation, Spirits, Spirit Animals, Possession, Justice, 1980s, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Major Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Original Universe, POV Original Female Character, Original Mythology, Minor Original Character(s)
Series: Part 3 of Yeehawgust 2025, Part 4 of The Cattlemancer & Friends, Part 31 of Pick-n-Mix One-Shots & Shorts, Part 72 of Pick-n-Mix Comix Presents โ All Solicitations (Issues + Lists)
Summary:
In 1989, Whitemare visits unicorn-rancher Felicity Ryder โ a close friend and ally of the Cattlemancer and his friends โ to announce the Cattlemancer's unfortunate passing. Unicorns graze. A hero mourns, and another is mourned.
The Ryder Preserve โ on the outskirts of Fielding County โ was the number one community of protected, endangered unicorns in all of the Kingdom of Inglenook.
No one knew that except for the Ryder family themselves, who owned and operated the place.
By the 80s, Prudence Ryder โ Felicity's daughter โ had already left with her troubled mage partner, Deacon Walker, to hunt for demons in the Lone Barrens, leaving Felicity plenty of time to sit on her own in the Preserve's main house's front porch. She would watch the unicorns, glamoured as they were to those outside the know, and the sun going down or coming over the wide Hinterlands plains and all the farmland between her porch and the horizon beyond her view, and she'd tend to her business as best she could while the world outsude seemed as though it wanted to crumble in on itself sometimes.
She sat there through the chaos of the Miasment in 1984, the kobold invasion in 1985, the Pandemonic Legion her own daughter was fighting in the east, and so many more cases of villainy and trouble, but there on her porch, the cycle of one day into the next seemed to let it all fade away.
In 1989, the Cattlemancer died, and Whitemare came to pay a visit.
****
"The spirit of justice lives eternal," Whitemare's ghostly figure said, bulky and pure white and glowing in the dusky light, "but the Cattlemancer often does not. It was just his time to go, it seems."
Felicity nodded, squinting up at him from her chair on the porch. "What can we do now?"
"There'll be another one in a few years, if the legacy holds true," Whitemare said. "Things will be rocky. There's always another to take up the mantle, but it's up to us to fill in the gaps. I should know that better than any of us."
"I'll let you know if the Firebottle Gang or anyone else starts up again," Felicity said. "Don't want those poachers back with no 'mancer to help me fight 'em. You can't fight 'em, right?" She stared at Whitemare for his answer.
"Unicorns aren't of this realm," he said. "They might have been horses once, but they're Fae now, through and through. I can't affect what affects the Fae. My justice serves Inglenook and Inglenook's blood alone. The Cattlemancer can help with the Fae, or Tombstoner, or Hexcellence, if you can track them down."
"Of course," she said, "I'll do that. So, what can we do now?"
"The sun goes down," Whitemare said, easing up just so. "And it comes back up. I'll seek my justice. I know where to find it. There'll be another one, eventually."
Over the porch, the unicorns pranced, and grazed on hay, and were too busy being horses and unicorns to notice when a woman's form replaced that of Whitemare's on the porch and collapsed into Felicity's arms for comfort. With her brother gone, Felicity was all Whitney had left, and it was just like that as to how they spent the rest of the evening when the Cattlemancer officially died.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pick-n-Mix Comix, Original Work, Yeehawgust - Fandom, The Cattlemancer & Friends
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Whitemare, Whitney "Whitemare" Martin, Whitney Martin, Hoopsnake the Shepherd
Additional Tags: Horses, Wolves, Running, Superheroes, Supervillains, Yeehawgust, Yeehawgust 2025, Yeehawgust2025, Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Major Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Original Universe, Original Mythology, Spirits, Spirit Animals, Animals, Animal Motifs, Animal Traits, Animalistic, Animal Transformation, Transformation, Possession, Ghosts, Furry, Furry Characters, Anthropomorphic, Anthro/Human Relationships, Inspired by ghost rider, Inspired by the spectre, inspired by comics, Inspired by The DC Universe, Inspired by Marvel, Mythology, Mythology References, Cryptids, Folklore, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Tall Tales, Fearsome Critters, Snakes, ouroboros
Series: Part 4 of Yeehawgust 2025, Part 5 of The Cattlemancer & Friends, Part 32 of Pick-n-Mix One-Shots & Shorts, Part 75 of Pick-n-Mix Comix Presents โ All Solicitations (Issues + Lists)
Summary:
Hinterlands spirit of justice Whitemare pursues a villain called Hoopsnake the Shepherd, and receives companionship from the wolves of the plain along the way.
Whitemare took off at a steady gallop, the ghostly white form of his suit a pale specter against the sun-tanned soil of the Hinterlands plains. A spirit of justice, Whitemare only came out when justice needed to be pursued; normally, he was a perfectly normal girl of Inglish-Hesperian descent named Whitney Martin.
Whitney's consciousness was, effectively, dormant as Whitemare galloped. She could feel what he felt and remember what he did, but it was Whitemare in control, their physical form transformed into the bipedal horse-man who glowed across the Hinterlands that night, and many other nights like it.
And what of their justice? What needed fighting that night, what enemies needed pursuing?
It was a thief named Hoopsnake. Hoopsnake the Shepherd, who made his career off the theft of lambs and other woolen-furred creatures from their pastures. Joining Whitemare's quest briefly, as if knowing the irony of their actions to save rather than hunt, a pack of Hinterlands wolves โ grey, skinny, but eager in their pursuit at the ghostly horseโman's side.
Eventually, they would catch up, and the rattlin' shepherd would be doomed, either to the wolves or to Whitemare's ethereal justice โ not vengeance, or violence, but justice from the other side of existence โ the small cost of thieving in the Hinterlands.
Internally, Whitney's consciousness shuddered. Whitemare had the capability to transform Hoopsnake into a literal hoop-snake, an ouroboros of scaled flesh, rotating across the plains into eternity; it wasn't often a pleasant sight, and though Whitney's consciousness was dormant and ineffectual at determining what Whitemare did while active, it still retained the memories of those actions as though it had been up-front the entire time.
On the outside, Whitemare grinned, his bulky form galloping across the plain, traipsing across the soil, and seemed all too eager to catch up with the target in need of his justice.
The wolves bayed and growled as they neared their prey, and just like that, their hunting party commenced, canine and equine, side by side for the pursuit of righteousness in their eyes.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pick-n-Mix Comix, Original Work, Yeehawgust - Fandom, The Cattlemancer & Friends
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: The Cattlemancer, Matrona Celestia, Celestia
Additional Tags: Yeehawgust, Yeehawgust2025, Yeehawgust 2025, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Cowboy Hats, cowboy, Western, Country & Western, Plains, Stars, Late Night Conversations, Late at Night, Short, Short One Shot, Short & Sweet, Anthology, Midnight, Fictional Religion & Theology, Deities, Hallucinations, Hallucinogens, Drug Use, Recreational Drug Use, Superheroes, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Major Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Original Universe, Original Mythology
Series: Part 1 of Yeehawgust 2025, Part 1 of The Cattlemancer & Friends, Part 29 of Pick-n-Mix One-Shots & Shorts, Part 71 of Pick-n-Mix Comix Presents โ All Solicitations (Issues + Lists)
Summary:
The Cattlemancer โ and a hallucination of the Matrona Celestia, Great Matron of the stars and sky โ sit under the night and wonder what their place in all this is.
The Cattlemancer and Celestia sat out beneath the stars. It was 1978, two years before the 80s, 6 after the end of the 'Lonum Wars, and Celestia was a hallucination brought on by too much aetheric phorium inhaled just at that moment โ a nice companion to have, though, and a haunting one.
In theory, by all rights, there was no Celestia; she was an idea, concocted by the Matronites, who believed in the Great Matrons and the Matrona Grandiosa who split herself into fractured ideas just to watch over different aspects of Inglish culture, then codified by the Asterists in the 1700s to explain why that girl in Silverton blew those Crucians all to hell with her bursts of deadly, divine light.
They all thought it was Celestia herself, the Great Matron of the stars and sky, who placed the brightest souls in the night forever upon their deaths.
In truth, it was more likely to have been an angel, and likelier still to have been a demon.
Most, though, preferred the Celestia story.
The Cattlemancer, for what it was worth, was at that moment far too high to care.
****
"You ever look at the stars?" he asked of the hallucination.
"I am the stars," the fake Matron responded.
"I know," the Cattlemancer said, his knees to his chest, his fingers toying with dead grass, his eyes poring over the horizon and the sky and the Aether and stars. "But have you ever looked at them?"
"No," she said, and looked up, then back at the Cattlemancer. "I don't see stars, Oscar. I see souls. I see the brightness of all humanity, and the heights you can reach when you try to pull yourselves up to them."
"Most people don't," the Cattlemancer said.
"True," Celestia replied.
"Most people who ended up following the stars became religious dictators or totalitarian cultists, though," the Cattlemancer continued. "Are their souls still bright? Just because they followed you, are they the stars we see in the sky at night?"
"Oscar, I think you might just be high," Celestia replied, settling down next to him. "It's not merely belief that determines the brightness or darkness of a person's spirit, you know. Just because someone is an Asterist doesn't make them a totalitarian cultist by default. Just because someone doesn't believe doesn't make them anything other than someone who doesn't believe, either."
"What, then?" he asked, glancing at the lights of the town of Wheaton in the distance, across the Hinterlands farmland from the open field where he was sitting.
"It just means they believe in one thing or another," she said. "What brightens or darkens a person's soul is what they do, not what they believe. Being a totalitarian cultist makes them a totalitarian cultist. Living a bright life and full of light keeps their soul bright. There's no good or evil in the stars, either, Oscar, they're just stars."
She paused, and stroked his hair just under his hat, or at least, he felt like her hallucinated hand probably did do that.
"Stars don't know of the nature of morality," she said, "they just burn, and when they don't or can't and stop burning after so long, they go out, and the night time comes no matter how bright they shone. It's inevitable. No one can escape that darkness and shadow of the night."
"Why does anyone try?" he asked.
She looked at him, and he felt almost a glow from a nearby sun touch against his flesh. "Because you're looking at them while they shine," she said, "and you'll know them, and think how nice they were to see, how bright they shone above you while you looked. Why not try? Why wouldn't anyone try?"
He looked at her, and at the stars, and the night faded away, and at some point, so did he.
Howdy, folks! Yeehawgust officially kicks off tomorrow, so here are some rapid fire things to note for this year.
The yearly giveaway will return! Be on the lookout for that round the middle of August.
Posts featuring last yearโs prompts thatโve been posted in the last few months will be sprinkled in with new posts from this year.
I always recommend checking out the Q&A over yonder, but some highlights that are new as of last year: AI generated content will not be reblogged. Artistic dishonesty (art theft, claiming AI generated content is handmade) will result in a blacklist from being reblogged by this blog. Any artistic medium you create yourself is great, and all skill levels are welcome, but the point is creating something yourself, pardners!
Over on Instagram, since tags can no longer be viewed sequentially, just toss a tag to yeehawgustprompts to have your work featured in stories.
Yeehawgust 2024, Day 31 โ Cowboys Never Die (Part 2)
Did anyone think it wasn't going to happen?
This is comics. No one's ever really dead in comics.
The Necromancer, because why not? The Cattlemancer's death is canon, just not in this way, as depicted here. We never see the Necromancer's eyes, it's always covered by the brim of his hat; that's canon for sure.
Yeehawgust 2024, Day 31 โ Cowboys Never Die (Part 1)
That's another year. Another year of this. I wish I had done more. This feels like the last one. I don't know why '24 feels like the last one, but it does.
Yeehawgust 2024, Day 19 โ Barbie Horse Adventures
I didn't know what to do for "Cactus Blossoms", since there aren't any in the Hinterlands, per se, so I just stole last year's prompt for the 19th instead.
Here's Hexcellence, a 90s-themed pastel witch girl, toying around with the Silver Stallion. This is Barbie Horse Adventures, and this Barbie is a powerful magical practitioner frozen in time for 30 years. (Despite the timeline differences, the original iteration of Hexcellence was for a story set in 2012, so...maybe this version is that version, but she's been sent back in time to the 80s instead. Who knows. It's pastel witch girl time, and that matters more than petty things like sense or logic.)
I've since decided Hexcellence is a time-traveller, and also has been a Silvani elf since this iteration of her, but I think her pastel, toyish uniform is one of my favorite designs I've worked with so far.
Well. HeroForge doesn't really have fence-related assets, so I had to pull some cheeky edits out like I did with the Fool's Gold entry. Those ones were just for fun, but obviously this one doesn't make much sense without some sort of fence or barrier in it, so here we are.
"I'm just saying, it'd be nice if you weren't so silvery and shiny ALL the time," the Cattlemancer said. "You know I can't do that. It's not fair you get all the attention when I'm the Cattlemancer."
The owl โ who was normally his youthful sidekick, Kid Booker โ said nothing. The fire crackled. "You're just jealous because I can turn into an owl whenever I want to, and you can't."
"Shut up," the Cattlemancer said. "It's not my fault. I don't have extradimensional silver plasma in my blood. I'm just some guy."
"Jealous," the owl teased. "You'll be awesome like me someday. You just gotta believe, and wish really hard."
The Cattlemancer and Kid Booker have a heart-to-heart over a campfire one night. I didn't think it'd turn out quite in this direction, but it came together how it came together. And yes, the silver plasma lets Kid Booker take basically any shape he wants, it'll just always be silvery and mercurial. So, sometimes he's an owl, or a table lamp, or whatever other shape he wants to be.
Fleetfoot could've done it too, technically, but Kid Booker has a different and more intimate connection with the Silver Space than Fleetfoot did, so he can do weirder stuff with it than his predecessor could figure out how to do. And yes, he lets it get to his head sometimes. It happens.
In a demonstration of his affinity for taking on the forms of different animals, Kid Booker uses his silver plasma to turn into an owl and tease the Cattlemancer around the fire one night.
(This was the first time I decided on Kid Booker's animal thing, and where I really started to apply the plasma force concept as having a connection to Kid Booker and Fleetfoot too!)
The Cattlemancer's only been dealing with his Merit Man unit for a few days, and the poor lad's already discovered the joys of mysterious drinks. Robots aren't even supposed to be able to ingest liquids, but this one found a way.
Yeah, it's a...liberal interpretation of the idea, but I wanted something a little sillier to play off of it with. Also gives me a chance to start incorporating Merit Man into the lore of other characters; I already have an issue or two of Dr Connector's solo serial for AO3 planned out featuring Merit Man, and the ways he adjusts to being Dr Connector's assistant, so what if there's one for Cattlemancer too?
Maybe they end up adjusting and changing based on their roles and the jobs they end up performing, so each unit is a little bit different. For instance, this one and his drink discovery. That'd be pretty cute and fun, I think.
Grace Morgan encounters the Blue Rose Institute while living in the Hinterlands in her late 20s. She'll never remember this moment, but the loss of her memories will continue to haunt her; she'll always feel a little more forgotten every time she sees this exact color of blue, as if something was taken from her and never returned.
Yeehawgust 2024, Day 15 โ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
I've been looking forward to this one! Bit different from the normal Cattlemancer posts, but I've had the Blue Rose Institute as a concept for nearly as long as the franchise has existed and still struggle to get them right sometimes, so it helps to have some visual inspiration for what an encounter with them might be like.
Grace's favorite roses are black roses, of course, but there was a time when blue roses were much more important to the franchise's aesthetic. The Institute, known as Rosie Blue for short, are based around that โ and the symbol of lost memories, liminal spaces, and forgotten imagery from hazy histories, as well as every strange thing you're still not sure you actually saw.
In this depiction, as in canon, the Blue Rose agent is wearing the navy blue coat and rose crown habitually worn by their agents, but they're also depicted in hazy, slate grey with an obscured face โ because if you can't remember someone's face, did they even steal your memories in the first place?
The Blue Rose Institute has been part of Inglenook lore for many years, and so has Grace, so it fit to do a feature about this probably non-canon incident between the two for day 15.
(Although this might not be canon, there is an official Pick-n-Mix Comix appearance from a Blue Rose agent in the story "Alien", which was featured in the AO3 posting of The Other Realms #3, and also features an alien race called the Vaconians and some lore about other aliens known to the Other Realms from the Chasm of Stars. Go check it out!)
