Grantblings

I asked last week what I should do next in terms of posting my writing here on my blog. I think it’s going to be editing and posting Time Skippers, but that’s not quite ready to go yet. I want to get my workflow all set so I can post it without interruption.  I was working on getting that set up when another writing idea hit me and took priority, so Time Skippers will have to wait a little longer.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to put out a story I’ve written for The Cauldron of Hate.  Before that though, a primer.

For the past few years I’ve had a bunch of characters rolling around in my head.  A trio of super villains called The Cauldron of Hate.  They have been in my head and I’m not quite sure what to do with them.

I started writing a novel/novella about them and that sort of fizzled out.  I’d like to try a screenplay based on the same story, but I’m a ways off from that.  There was some thought of doing the story as an audio drama podcast but the story focuses on this trio’s interactions with several kids and I do not have the patience to round up kids to play the parts, let alone deal with the parents of the kids.

So, what to do with these characters?  I don’t know.  Sometimes to get my brain going, I’ll write short stories involving the characters and I have a fun one I’d like to publish here on the blog, just for fun.  The problem is, the story sort of assumes the reader is already familiar with the characters and gives no backstory on them at all.  So I figured I’d need to give you a little backstory on them in order to fully understand who they are and what’s going on.  Then, if there’s interest, I’ll publish the short story.

So, The Cauldron of Hate…

The Cauldron of Hate are a trio of supervillains who banded together because they were tired of constantly having their evil plots thwarted by superheroes.  The roster of The Cauldron of Hate consists of The Blinding Skull, The Plant Lady and The Living Lump.

The Blinding Skull is the smartest person in the world.  His brain works at a much higher capacity than any other human, past or present.  In fact, his brain works at such a high rate, it actually gives off heat and glows white hot.  It glows so much that it lights up his skull giving him an eerie appearance of a, well, Blinding Skull.  The light from his cranium fluctuates with how hard he is thinking and, sometimes when he is sleeping or if he gets knocked unconscious, his brain function will revert to normal levels and his true face can been seen.  This is a rare occurrence though.

The Blinding Skull could easily solve most, if not all of the worlds problems if he would focus his incredible IQ on hunger or poverty instead of Death Rays and Earth Axis Disruptors.  His unquenchable thirst for total world domination prevents any of his thoughts to stray towards the good side though.

As smart as he is, none of his plans have ever come to fruition because, although he always gets his calculations correct, he always forgets about the human element.  The world is not a perfectly scientific place and this is The Blinding Skull’s weakness.

The Blinding Skull is joined on his team by The Plant Lady.  The Plant Lady was shunned by the botanical community after she had found a way to genetically speed up plants movements.  Laughed at by her peers, The Plant Lady turned on society, a society more interested in destroying plants than living with them.  Her plant army is an impressive sight to see marching upon a city bank or scientific research institute, but they are just that, plants.  Though they can move faster than non-engineered plants, they aren’t any stronger and even a baby can knock over and unpot a fern.  Like The Blinding Skull all of her dastardly plans up to this point have been foiled, but she continues in her wicked ways.  She is not hungry for power however, she more goes after those who have spurned her and those who would hurt plants.

The final member of this terrible trio is the behemoth known as The Living Lump.  The Living Lump was born with a genetic defect that made him twice as tall and twice as wide as the normal human being should be.  Because of his affliction, which was apparent at the moment of his birth, his parents gave him up for adoption.  By junior high school he was had to sit outside his classrooms and listen at the window because he was so big, he couldn’t comfortably fit inside the building.  Though his studies suffered, his strength grew and he excelled at football, even being offered scholarships until he grew, simply, too big to play for fear he could seriously hurt the other players.  He became so big he found that most people were frightened of him and he shunned the public.

Having no home and no support, and not being too smart, The Living Lump was easily talked into committing crimes by the less scrupulous members of society.  After all, how great was it to have a henchman on your team that could rip a bank’s vault door clear off the hinges?  The Living Lump bounced from supervillain team to supervillain team until meeting The Plant Lady one day.  She instantly saw the gentle giant for what he was and he found a mother figure he could confide in.  The Living Lump is not inherently evil but he does have a chip on his shoulder from the way society has treated him.  He finds comfort in being near The Plant Lady and The Blinding Skull’s brilliance is awe inspiring to Lump, so he is a proud member of The Cauldron of Hate.

So there you have it.  The trio known as The Cauldron of Hate.  Before I publish this story however, there’s a few other things you need to know.

The Cauldron of Hate live in a hideout known as The Hate Pit.  It is cleverly hidden in the middle of the City Dump.  A place no one would ever look.  While you have to hold your nose getting to The Hate Pit, The Blinding Skull has come up with air purifiers on the inside that would lead you to believe you were the farthest place from the dump.  It has several levels, a Lab for The Blinding Skull, a greenhouse for The Plant Lady and a central kitchen with an industrial strength blender that The Living Lump uses to mix up his favorite treat, peanut butter milkshakes.

Finally, I guess I have to tell you about The League of Good.  The League of Good are the city’s resident superheroes.  The team consists of Suprema, The Mighty Ranch Hand and El X-O.  Suprema is a being from another planet who possesses the powers of super strength and flight.  The Mighty Ranch Hand is a rugged cowboy from Texas whose enchanted lasso and bullwhip can stop any villain in their tracks.  El-XO is the world’s more powerful Lucha Libra star who gains all his power from the mystical masks he wears.  These three have no trouble when it comes to stopping any nefarious plan The Cauldron of Hate may come up with.

And that is about it.  That should give you a good starting point of who the characters are so that the story I post next Wednesday is completely out of the blue.  I’d love your thoughts on the characters and the story when it is posted.  As I said, these characters have been in my brain for several years now.  It’s good to get them out into the world, even if they are just dipping their toes into it.

All Characters and scenarios ©2014 Grant Baciocco/Saturday Morning Media