Captain Eelenore-Jane's Saga

These are Chronicles of Captain Eelenore-Jane's journeys across her home planet of Contarbar, as she tries relentlessly to escape its desolate grasp.

[eelenorejane-blog]

Captain Eelenore-Jane's Saga - Component 1 - Valve 4 The Vault and The Wings

Often it happens that when you will for something enough that it just occurs, and at this moment that’s what happened to Eelenore. After spotting a small speck on the horizon, she lifted her telescope up to her eye to get a closer look.

"Building ahoy!" Eelenore laughed out heartily.

R. was taken aback by her cry, "What!? No way!" 

Eelenore could feel herself becoming worked up, "Full steam ahead!" 

R. rolled his eyes. "Did you think we are travelling half speed?"

The sandsteamer was forcefully pushing its way across the desert and the cracks in the ground were getting deeper still and were now a lot wider in girth. The sandsteamer may have been big enough to straddle the smaller cracks but by no means was it up to making some of these bigger gaps. R. was beginning to worry. "Captain we have to stop soon. She can’t take the jumps"

"But we are only about 100 miles away! Keep moving"

"NO! You’ll get us killed!" R. pulled on the breaks, all the engines stopped and there was an eerie silence. The sand cloak fell with a silent sprinkle all around the steamer.

A captain’s word is absolute and a captain’s word should not be disobeyed. Eeleonore burst into the cockpit "What the HELL do you think you're doing" she spat at him with outrage, the frustration almost jumping out of her throat "We are so close! I need to find those bastards they have something VERY important!"

"I, captain, just stopped you from killing us. And destroying this lovely ship of ours"

"Oh god. Getting all sentimental...I’m gona have..."

"Going to punish me? Oh that’s a good idea your only pilot. You think you’ll last long with out me at the helm?"

"Don’t back chat me!" Eelenore being no older than 25 herself and had issues with dealing out discipline. R. was her only crew member and a stubborn one at that. He quite obviously thought he was better than Eelenore which at times made him hard to control. Ultimately they were friends with a common goal - trying to escape the arid planet that they had the misfortune to be born upon. So far their journey had been a fruitless endeavour, seven years had passed and they seemed no closer to lifting the sandsteamer off the ground.

Eelenore got up into R's face "Get me to that building R.” She gritted her teeth “I need to get there!" 

R. lent back in his chair and put his hands behind his head "Why don’t you walk." It was less of a suggestion more a sarcastic jibe.

"What across those canyons?"

"Well if that’s the way you want to go..."

"How do you expect me to do that?" She stood up right again still glaring down at R. - although he didn’t care he had his eyes shut and was laughing internally.

"I don’t know but I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I just stay here. Someone has to look after the ship." He paused and sat up again "Why don’t you look in the hanger for something useful" he swivvled his chair round to the broken monitor lent back and put his boots up on the dashboard with his back to Eelenore. He knew she loved to look in the hanger and was probably off the hook.

"You’re a total..." Eelenore started a sentence but R. kicked a switch on the monitor which caused the picture changed and the speakers suddenly roared "TITAN WARS!" which was followed closely by a theme tune. Eelenore threw the nearest thing she could find at him and left the room.

On a ship the size of Captain Eelenore-Jane's it’s easy to get lost, its also easy to loose things. Often Eelenore and R. would loot ships and abandoned towns and shortly after forget what they found and where they put it. Admittedly it was usually broken parts, very rarely anything valuable but Eelenore being who she was was of the "it could come in useful some day" disposition. Whenever the unlikely pair got in a tight fix they always consulted their junk hordes, now and then they would find a fantastic artefact which would help them out. And now seemed like a good time to do just that. 

Eelenore strolled down one of the more damp corridors possibly drawn there by the smell of fresh rust. It’s a horrible metallic smell which most hide from, but to Eelenore it reminded her of home. As she made her way down the hall of seemingly endless ironclad doors, she noticed the leak that was causing the rust, she made a mental note although knew full well she wouldn’t ever bother fixing it. When she finally reached a door she felt like opening she stopped.

The large bank vault like door was identical to all the others and behind it was an identical room, but every door led to a completely different trove of treasures. With an almighty heave Eelenore pulled open the door using her whole body weight to pull it. She took a look inside, the sight she was greeted with was how you would expect a pile of every item that you lost in your entire life to look. There were broken monitors, a large pile of girders, some wood and hanging from the ceiling seemed to be a set of mismatched chairs. She scanned the room; fire extinguishers, an old mattress, hundreds of old newspapers, a small engine which by the looks of it was leaking, everything was pointless, everything was old. Eelenore sighed and walked into the room, she kicked one of the girders it shook and echoed a loud boom all the way through the hull of the sandsteamer. A thin layer of dust covered everything in the room, and one of the monitors which was cracked along the screen had something inside it. Eelenore noticed this and kicked the rest of the monitor’s glass in until she could get at what was inside. It seemed like a piece of cloth but on further inspection she noticed that it had bones in it - made from bamboo. She unfolded it and it stretched 12 foot across at its widest point and 5 foot lengthways. It resembled a pair of wings perhaps even an early aircraft or a para-glider. The only exception is that the bottom of the wings were reminiscent of an umbrella going out to a point then arcing inward before heading out to another point. The cloth was entirely intact not a hole or even a stitch out of place. “This is a sign” she decided, she needed to get across a vast expanse and she had been given wings. The gods were on her side and it was time for her to fly.

[eelenorejane-blog]

Captain Eeelenore-Janes Saga - Component 1 - Valve 3 - The Bazaar at Pisces

Now I’ve never been approached by a group of men of seedy business men and neither had Eelenore. She thought them most probably respectable workmen types. The tallest and most slimy looking man put his arm around her and offered her a cigar. Eelenore, never the one to look a gift horse in the mouth, graciously accepted. Another of the men, this one more portly than the last lit it for her and proceeded to ask:

"What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this? Looking for something specific no doubt. I bet ya anything we will have what ya need."

A third man, the one the exact mix of the prior two men came over and told Eelenore "Our tent over here has every ware you could possibly imagine."

The portly man snorted, sniffed and then said "Yeah cummon in."

Eelenore being the savvy young woman knew better than to follow them. But something compelled her to head into the tent. Perhaps she caught a glimpse of something shiny or maybe it was the hospitality and the cigar she was smoking, but never the less she headed in. Once she entered the tent she felt how muggy it was the stagnant air felt as if it was clinging to her imploring her to leave. The slimy man followed close behind her into the tent with the other two men in tow.

"So...what is it you are looking for?" The slimy man asked.

Eelenore was quick off the bat and replied; "Hydrogen gas tanks. You gots?"

"Nope...but we have something far more explosive." the slimy man replied and the other two laughed heartily.

It was at that point Eelenore noticed that the cigar in her mouth had almost burnt to a stub despite her not toking it very much at all.

"You’re Eelenore Jane, yes?"

"What’s it to you?"

She went to take the cigar out of her mouth as it started to hiss and throw sparks. The two other men grabbed her arms and held them behind her back.

"Heh. Just needed to make sure"

Eelenore had never smoked before and it turned out to be a very bad time for her to start because at that very moment her cigar exploded into a small cloud of smoke. She dropped to her knees unable to stand her mechanical arm became unresponsive and just as she started to close her eyes the slimy man bent down to her face, lifted her head up to look at him and swiped her hat. After placing it upon his head mockingly he let go of her face and she fell completely to the ground and hit her head hard against the rock floor.

The next moment she woke up she was in a speeding sandskimmer. Racing deep into the desert.

Eelenore knew if she just kept on going she would find them. She didn’t care where they were. She would have justice.

(Next Valve - The Vault and the Wings)

[eelenorejane-blog]

Captain Eeelenore-Janes Saga - Component 1 - Valve 2 - The Sandsteamer Lives

Outside, as the steamer started moving and juddering into life, a large vacuum began sucking up dirt from the ground around it’s base. The structure lurched sluggishly forward and started spraying the vacuum collected dust and grit out of huge trumpet like funnels on it’s side creating a thick veil of sand and rushing air not to dissimilar from a sandstorm. The perfect defense and the perfect disguise.

R. slumped back in his chair checking all the gauges were correct, now and then fiddling with leavers and the dials. The room essentially was made of buttons and rusted aged girders; the ship was obviously hundreds of years old but never the less it was in working order. Back when the ship had been new it had used an autopilot to drive whilst the sand cloak was in action, as the thick sand veil obscures the windscreen. Unfortunately the autopilot had long ago stopped working and was probably somewhere amongst the heaps of computer paraphernalia cluttering up the majority of the cockpit floor. Therefore to drive the sandsteamer safely there needed to be a person above the sandscreen to see where they were going. And for that reason Eelenore and R. had devised a look-out system; Eelenore would climb to the very top of the sandsteamer above the cloud of sand and use her mahogany and gold plated telescope to watch where they were going, relaying everything to R using earpieces they had picked up at a junk yard.

Recently though they had rigged a periscope to the roof. It was an old video camera which linked into a monitor in the cockpit, the reception was awful, there was a couple of seconds delay and the display had dead pixels and static across 30% of the screen...but it worked its purpose. Despite this Eelenore still insisted on running up to the roof every time the steamer rolled forward. She once told R. it was because she needed to be there in case the periscope stopped working. Her actual words were; "It’s likely to fuck up because we built it outa crap crap and shit". But between you and me the smile that creeps across her face when she rides the steamer’s roof cries out of someone enjoying themselves, not someone who’s there for business.

R. picked up a dirty cloth that was hanging off a soft toy he had been given as a child. It was of 'Lenny', the side kick of a superhero from the show "Titan Wars". He used the rag to clean the visor which he wore - it gave him a heads up display of the ships important intelligence and at the moment everything was fine. He tossed the rag aside and glanced at the monitor feeding from the periscope. It showed the same vacant orange sea of dirt it had been relaying for over an hour now. He stared at it long enough that it started to blur and started to morph into his reflection. He'd been trying to keep himself presentable but his shirt was ripped and coupled with an ugly tie. He sighed in annoyance at his appearance he wanted a shower but they were low on water, and he had even taken to covering up his dirty brown hair with an old deer stalker he had found in their supplies, it didn't properly accommodate his visor and ear piece properly and for that reason it looked a little silly. Placing his hand to his left ear he said "Anything out there capin’?"

There was a short pause and a crackled "Nope...nuttin’" came back.

Now, you may not know this but travelling at 100 miles per hour through an arid wasteland for hours on end be quite boring and certainly for Eelenore and R. as it was very uneventful, yes at first it is exciting to feel the rush of the air and the machine beneath you pulsing like an animal, but soon the monotony leads to bordem. As night began to fall Eelenore had fallen asleep upon the roof in the crows nest. She was awoken by R. shouting in her ear about half an hour into her nap. "Captin! CAPTIN?" She shot up with a start with a wicker basket imprint upon her wind-lashed cheek. The sun had set and the sky was now deep blue and thousands of stars had come to watch them pursue their treasure.

"Yes (ahem) yes R. what?"

"Look ahead and see".

The cracks one sees in the desert planes, usually nothing more than creases in the ground, had been getting increasingly larger and at by this point they were gaping crevasses. Luckily at the moment the steamer was still able to ford them but it was still a strange occurrence, plus, they were still growing in size. Finding herself in a situation she wasn’t expecting Eelenore made a snap decision and ordered R. "Full steam ahead. We'll never find them unless we keep going". She spoke with an element of doubt in her voice which R. didn’t react to kindly to.

"Captin there is nothing out here. This place is gona turn out to be a canyon at worlds end! If we don’t stop well crash."

Eelenore wanted revenge for being left out in the middle of nowhere. It was a despicable act of cowardice not to mention un-chivalrous. She wanted to find the bastards who had mugged her and left her for dead. She had met them whilst in a bazaar in the city of Pisces where the black market thrives; for once she was looking for a legitimate deal to buy some hydrogen tanks to help reconstruct her ship to its former glory. She hadn't long been browsing when a small group of suited men who looked ridiculous due to the dust and mud trailing up their pinstriped trousers approached her.

(Next Valve -   The Bazaar at Pisces)

[eelenorejane-blog]

Captain Eeelenore-Janes Saga - Component 1 - Valve 1 - In the Beginning

Imagine a splintered plank of wood sticking out of the middle of a barren dusty plain. Nobody for miles, nor any other living creature or plant. Not a cloud in the sky and no sign of human interference with the orange vista you are viewing - that is, except the plank of wood.

It reaches seven feet into the sky, jaunty, as if slouching in fatigue because of the blazing heat. You notice that attached to the plank at the top are many different arrows all pointing in various directions and all made from different materials – metal, wood, plastic and so on. The arrows were obviously installed at different times over however long this monument has stood there. When you read the arrows you notice that whilst they may all point in every conceivable direction, they all say the same thing - in different fonts, handwriting, languages and various misspellings, they all say "nowhere".

If you're feeling a kind of fear combined with wonder at the thought of this sight, imagine how Captain Eelenore-Jane felt when she was tossed out of the back of a speeding sand-skimmer to roll though the dusty wake it left. She hit her head on the signpost at full speed causing an arrow to fall into her lap.

Whatever your reaction may have been to this situation Eelenore's was most probably different because, after reading the dry rotted wood which had fallen across her legs, she leapt to her feet and reattached her hydraulic arm via the leather strap which held it to her right shoulder. She continued to clench it into a fist and wave it at the now distant sand-skimmer.

"DAMNIT!" was the first thing she shouted as she kicked at the dirt, causing a small cloud of dust to rise up. She rubbed her head and noticed her trusty hat was gone then bent over and picked up the broken arrow, stared at it for a couple of moments, and with frustration threw it hard into the sky. It soared up high and became a black silhouette against the sun, inexplicably hanging there for a short while. Instead of plummeting back down to the ground, the wooden slab spun slightly and started heading back the way it had been thrown. The sun suddenly became a duller shade of yellow and the overwhelming silence across the plain changed to a rustling which transcended into a loud howl. Eelenore did not have luck on her side...

Now, I need you to take the time imagine being upon this still wasteland - lost, annoyed and sweltering hot. You feel the kiss of a light breeze upon your cheek. You might be relieved. But not Eelenore, she knew the desert plains of Contarbar and they were not her friends. A kiss from the wind was a kiss of death; anyone who had lived a day upon this barren planet would know that being outside during a sandstorm would be akin to begging for death from the gods.

So now you have all the information. You're stranded in the middle of a boundless wasteland and coming from an easterly direction you can see grit starting to flare up. The sun grows a dark hue of orange and fades toward brown as the air becomes thicker. Panic.

For Eelenore this was an event for which she was prepared, and as she muttered "bloody hell this is all I fucking need.”, she calmly reached for the large brass goggles on her head and pulled them over her eyes. By now her hair, long and purple, flew behind her like the tail of a bird in flight billowing persistently as the wind tore at it with seemingly endless force. Her second manoeuvre was to stand with her feet apart facing the wind. She raised her hydraulic right arm to her chest and began pulling pushing and twisting different parts of it.

Her hydraulic arm had once been brass plated, and used to look like a human arm, but after constant battering, several upgrades and bolt ons it looked more like a mechanical bird's talon. The inner framework was visible as a steel bar which had several large tubes entwined round it pumping water to various other parts of the structure, the rest was made up of a menagerie of cogs, bolts and screws. The arm was capable of doing a lot of things - many of which Eelenore was uneven aware of yet. It was operated by the stump of her right arm transmitting what she needed it to do via an electric diode placed in the end.

The sandstorm was now only a few hundred metres away. Eelenore sped up what she was doing. After she had finished fiddling with the arm she shook it and a large piece of metal fell off, or to be pedantic, unfolded. As it hit the ground. there was a moment of nothing and then, with a loud hiss and a metallic creaking, the metal unfolded some more to the right and left and slightly upward creating a shield in front of her - slightly rusted and dented in places, but adequate protection nevertheless. With the storm now upon her, she braced herself. She could see the sand whirling viciously. Fearing for her life, she felt the shield shaking and the noise of the scraping sand, magnified by the metal drum she'd created around her. Terrified that her shield would give way to the horrendous winds she started to speak to herself "C'mon Eelenore. Stand strong. Only a couple of minutes". She stopped... she had heard herself speak. The Contarbarian sand storms are so deafening that hearing anything other than the winds' nauseating flurry is impossible, Eelenore retracted her shield, noticing all the scratching had stopped. Her arm ricocheted up into the air as if she were celebrating, but she was far from doing so, because in front of her was a sand steamer, slave-trade class, and it had stopped directly in front of her as if looking for a new piece of merchandise.

At seventy feet tall, the behemoth of a ship loomed over her casting a shadow even longer than it was in height. It ran on treadmills which pulled it along the sand causing a lot of noise. Ships like these were capable of holding over seven-million slaves whilst still having adequate room for a full crew to live in and a food store to last them 2 years. Although this sand-steamer was huge, it looked old and overused. Eelenore stood perfectly still in the vain attempt to become invisible, something that wearing a pink blouse and purple tie doesn’t really allow for when in the desert.

It was just when Eelenore was about to faint that a loud, echoing voice boomed. "Alright captain? You actually wanna come aboard? Or are you gonna stand there all day?".

Eelenore looked stunned, bent slowly to the left and saw that a hatch had been opened. "Ah. it's my ship." she whispered embarrassedly to herself. Forgetting your own ship is a strange state of affairs I agree – and so did the ships pilot, R.

When Eelenore was reunited with him in the ship's cockpit, their conversation went along the lines of this;

R.: "How the hell did you not recognise your own ship?"

Eelenore: "Maybe, just maybe, I thought it wasn't my ship... because it approached me with it's sand-cloak on!"

R.: "Haha, you know full well ours is stuck in the on position. Can't turn it off!"

Eelenore: "Besides, I told you not to come after me!"

R.: "Good job I did! Not gonna say thanks?"

Eelenore: "Do I ever?"

R.: "You know, one day I'm just gonna leave ya for dead."

Eleenore: "I did tell you to."

R.: "You stubborn idiot... did you get the goods?"

Eelenore: "Does it look to you like I got the goods?"

R.: "Well, maybe they're awaiting collection?"

Eelenore: "Oh yeah, that's a good business plan. ‘Yeah come pick them up tomorrow I'll give you a lift home... to the middle of nowhere.’"

R.: "Well if you don't get hydrogen tanks, there's no way we are ever going to get this thing airborne."

Eelenore: "I know! It is my plan after all."

Eelenore and R. were the only two inhabitants of this particular sandsteamer. They both had a common goal in which they were working towards and that was that they were both fed up of Contarbar. Its inhabitants: villains and scum, its food: tastless and dry, its cities: fascist and few and far between, not to mention the lack of water supplies. They wanted off. Their latest plan had been to bargain for hydrogen to power large balloons to float themselves right off the planet. The sandsteamer was huge though so they would need a lot of fule.

R. conceded his place in this heat discussion and began anew "Well... what's the next line of action then, captain?"

"Well." Eelenore leaned toward the massive glass window that made up the front of the cockpit and scoured it for a sign of which way the sand-skimmer went. There was nothing. The sand was identical no matter where you looked. The only thing for miles was the signpost with the now missing "nowhere" sign. "Ah-HA that way, R." Eelenore's arm creaked as she pointed "I hit the sign post on that side! 'Cause look, the sign fell off!"

"So we are following the guys who left you here?" R. rolled his eyes is disbelief.

"Of course! They said they didn’t have hydrogen. But they have something else very important. If we follow them...we might just find out where they keep it.", Eelenore had taken a sudden urgent tone, and was giving R. the look she gave him when she wanted something done.

"Alright! Tally Ho! HOLD ON BECAUSE ITS GONA BE A BUMPY RIDE" The pilot of the ex-slave ship jumped back into his custom made leather seat swivelled round to a massive faux-wooden steering wheel. He had started shouting because the noise of what sounded like a thousand lawnmowers all starting at once had begun to drown out his voice. He swung the wheel to the right throwing Eelenore off balance and causing her to fall the floor. With a hearty laugh she pulled herself to her feet and started climbing the nearest ladder to the roof.

Next Vavle - Friday 25th May 2012 - Vavle 2 The Sandsteamer Lives

[eelenorejane-blog]

This is R. obstinate and clever, he is the first member of Eelenore's crew and as her one and only pilot (and crew member) he often plays up and goes against her wishes. Much of his past is shrouded in mystery as well but Eelenore is aware that he used to belong to the most notorious gang in the whole of the large deserts that make up the surface of Contarbar.

He also wishes to leave Contarbar and make a living elsewhere in galaxy. He is a technical expert learning most of his trade when he was part of the gang and although he feels quite close to Eelenore they have never quite made that emotional jump and thus still seem a bit like strangers around each other.

[eelenorejane-blog]

This is Captain Eelenore-Jane leader of the motley crew upon the Sandsteamer.

She has a tenacious attitude and a sunny out look on life. Her crew know very little about her past and she hasn't even disclosed how she lost her right arm to her closest crew member R.

She likes to where her trusty hat which has been through a lot with her, strangely though she is reckless with her mechanical arm not caring for its welfare.

Although she lets her crew get away with most things and doesn't keep a tight reign, she knows when to take charge and can command a situation despite her young age. She is wise beyond her years and people respect her even if they don't show it or even know it themselves.

This is her story.