Background

Kerouac’s origins begin almost 500 years ago in good, old Ireland. The son of a grain farmer, Kerouac was tricked into taking a late-night ride on the back of a strange, fire-breathing horse after he got drunk on some mash his father was trying to ferment into whiskey. When he woke up he was surprised to find himself on a hilltop under a tree rather than at his home where the horse had promised to take him.

More surprised than anything else, since he loved a good prank and played them on his friends all the time, the boy searched for the horse that he vaguely remembered had talked to him. “I don’t think you actually talked to me last night, but I do think you got the best of me Mr. Horse,” he said, “it really was a lovely prank you pulled bringing me back here instead of to my home like ye promised.”

The boy picked a pair of apples from a nearby apple tree and offered one to the horse who happily took it.

“Consider this an offering from one prankster to another! May ye find as many gullible drunkards to drop off on that hill as ye desire!”

“Why thank you!”, the horse replied, freezing the boy in his tracks as he was walking away.

The boy stopped and turned to face the horse, “Now I know you didn’t just speak, Mr. Horse,” he said. “Who’s there?”

Nobody responded. The horse just looked at him and continued to chew its apple.

“I know somebody is there! This was really funny, but it’s not funny no more! Show yerself!”

Nobody stepped out.

By this point, the boy was starting to get scared. Someone had talked. Unless it had just been in his head. He did have quite a bit of his father’s mash the night before.

“Well, I’m going home now!”, the boy said as he turned and started walking in the direction of home.

“Could you get me another apple before you go?”, asked the horse.

Again, the boy froze in his tracks. Someone had just said something, but horses don’t speak! He turned to face the horse again.

“Boo!”, said the horse, scaring the bejeezus out of the boy who turned and ran like the wind, not stopping while the horse was still in his sight.

Brohkliem, the king of the Pookas, was quite proud of himself. Nobody would believe the boy’s story, and the look on his face was just priceless before he ran away. However, he was even more surprised when he took on his true Pooka form later that day as the sun went down. His true form was just so much better for using magic to open a way back to the Nevernever!

Thwack! Something hit Brohkliem in the head. Something not quite totally solid, round, and red. An apple? “Who threw this apple at me head?” Brohkliem asked. “Come out, now. I’ve got an apple for you if ye do!”

Thwack! Another expertly-thrown apple struck him in the head. This time from a slightly different angle, but one that gave him a direction. However, looking in that direction gave up nothing of whomever had thrown the crimson projectile.

“Don’t horses like apples?”, a familiar voice asked from a distance. Behind him?

Brohkliem spun in the direction of the voice. Behind a bush? “Do we play hide and seek noi?”

Thwack! A third apple. This time from an entirely different direction! “What? How? How are ye moving around noi? Yer not a wizard apprentice. Are ye?”

The look on Brohkliem’s face must have betrayed his honest bewilderment at his predicament as his assailant’s position was betrayed, not by another taunt, but rather by giggling. “I’ve seen a great horse turn into a furry man, and now I’d not be surprised to find out that one of me neighbors was a wizard. But no, I’m no wizard. Just a boy who knows how to throw apples.”

It was indeed the boy from the night before, who had run away from a talking horse.

Turning back into his horse-form, Brohkliem offered the boy a ride. “I’ll make ye a deal boy-o. Teach me how to throw apples from different directions without magic, and I’ll take ye back home for real.”

“Back home for real? Then a deal’s a deal!”, replied the boy who proceeded to explain to the horse how to put spin onto an apple to get it to curve in mid-flight.

Pooka are known as tricksters and shapeshifters; not as particularly fast horses. However, Brohkliem was true to his word and took the boy back home, only to witness as the boy’s father, drunk and enraged at the boy’s absence for an entire day, beat him within an inch of his life.

Feeling strangely guilty for a trick un-intended, Brohkliem offered the boy a place by his side where his propensity for pranks would serve him well.

…and the boy was never struck by his father again.

Rising Conflict

Kerouac the Pooka first came to the United States in the mid 1840’s from Ireland at the behest of the Summer Queen who had received news of a new city that was being founded on the western edge of the country. A city named “Seattle”.

Kerouac’s mission was simple: The Summer Court had made deals with the Seattle-area Indian tribe in ages past. The tribes would surrender young warriors to Summer every few generations in exchange for favors during times of drought or scarce game. However the impact of the American expansion on the Native American tribes threatened their ability to fulfill their end of the deal, and Summer’s influence in the area began to wane as European influences increased bringing Winter with them. One of those new arrivals was none other than Odianna.

When Odianna of Winter was exiled to the Inland Northwest, she brought a contingent of her own followers with her into exile and carved out a fiefdom of her own; In so doing, she drove off or killed several powerful fey of Summer and negotiated deals with many of the human power groups in the area either as her fey-self, or as one of her assumed human identities. When it was found that one of these deals was with the Seattle-area Indian tribes as an aggregate political force, Summer fully pulled out of the area.

Kerouac spent the next 170-ish years bouncing around between the Nevernever, Ireland, and New York City on the east coast of the United States, always looking for a new deal to make, a new purpose to serve, and a new trick to pull. He did, on occasion, return to the Seattle area. Something about it just keeps drawing him back…

The Story

Story Title: A Cycle, a Mirror, a Deal, a Vengeance
Guest Starring: John and Roy Mullinex

Around 40 years ago, Kerouac was out doing Pooka things in one of his occasional Seattle visits when he encountered a crying young boy. Taking pity on the boy, and seeking an opening to play a prank on someone who deserved it, Kerouac took human form and began to talk to the lad who told Kerouac about his home life.

The boy lived in a foster home run by a pair of very mean foster parents who took in children only for the money the government gave them. The boy told Kerouac how he was kicked out of the house every morning and was only let in at night if he could pay for a bed. The story touched something deep in Kerouac, igniting memories of his own father all those years ago.

As a result, Kerouac and the boy hatched a plan. The boy got himself caught shoplifting from a store, and when the cops were going to call the foster parents the boy’s “father” just happened to show up, actually Kerouac hidden under a glamour. After saying a few almost incriminating things while picking up the boy, a suspicious police officer by the name of John Mullinex decided to investigate further and caught the foster parents in the act of bribing the CPS insider who had been hiding all of their shady dealings and child abuse.

The boy’s revenge complete and the deal closed, the Summer Lady arrived to take the boy to the Nevernever where he got to live the life of adventure he wanted but could never have in the system he was born into. Kerouac, on the other hand, wanted to pay the foster parents one last visit. One last laugh at their expense for reopening old wounds.

When he arrived he saw John questioning the father through the bars of a holding cell. Behind him was a young woman holding a toddler. When John noticed her he turned away from the father and led her back to his desk. It was his wife and his son, and he took a moment to hold his son before asking his wife how her day had been going and taking the dinner she had brought him.

Lusting to see the foster parents suffer, Kerouac saw an opportunity in the father’s eyes. He had seen those eyes before on his own father, years after he joined Summer and became a Pooka. They were the eyes of someone who had been arrested and was desperate enough to do anything for freedom. As John’s wife exited the station with their son, and John wandered into the break room, Kerouac snuck into the holding area and took the form of John’s toddler son, and then wandered up to the holding cell’s bars.

One wave at the foster father was all it took for the man to seize Kerouac and begin demanding to be let go. Kerouac cried for his “daddy” to ham things up a bit, used his glamours to create an illusion of John’s wife screaming for her child that she had just taken her eyes off for “just a second”, and let things play out before using his magic to end it.

Seelie magic caused all of the lightbulbs in the room to glow brightly and explode, and the darkness gave his glamours the cover they needed to do their work. Five hundred years of life experience in the human realm and the far corners of the Nevernever had given Kerouac insights into some of the most horrible fates that can befall anyone, not just humans, and he unleashed visions of all of them upon the unfortunate foster father.

By the time a cop had found their flashlight and illuminated the holding cell, the screaming had stopped, the child and mother were gone, and the foster father was curled in a ball with a thousand-yard stare, under the holding cell’s bench, babbling about “the nightmares”. None of which stopped the police from opening the cell and beating him senseless.

Story Title: A Sheltered Jailbreak
Guest Starring: Hiroko Noshimuri

While on the trail of a fine example of a mouse to leave in one of Fergus’s shoes, Kerouac found himself tail to face with one of his more recent arch-nemesis: A Seattle animal control officer named Harold Gray. Being far too absorbed in his hunt, Kerouac left himself exposed and unexpectedly found the loop of an animal control pole around his neck. Taken in disgrace, Kerouac soon found himself caged in the depths of the foreboding Seattle Animal Shelter.

Luck was a rollercoaster that night as Kerouac was first notified, in the child-like voice that people claim they love animals with, of his scheduled neutering in the morning. Oh HELL NO! This meant war! This meant suffering! His wrath would be biblical! …though he would spare the messenger. She had these amazing long nails and gave the best head scratches…

The second blow came when the lights went out and the night shift came in. Kerouac immediately caught the whiff of something dead or dying along with the scent of wet fur and was horrified to see the night guard pull an orange tabby out of a cage down the row from him, only for the guard’s mouth to grossly distend and the cat to disappear with a wet crunch. As the guard went and pulled the cat out of the next cage, Kerouac knew he had to get out now.

Unfortunately for Kerouac, other than the plastic floor, his cage was entirely made up of the bane meaning he was stuck and now doomed to become this fat maw’s night-time snack making for the completion of a one, two, three-punch of bad luck as things went from bad to worse. With the amount of the bane around, he couldn’t even use his glamours or make a veil that would last long enough to be useful. However, finally lady luck decided that a rollercoaster that did nothing but fall was no fun and in through a window came a shadowy, lithe figure.

Kerouac watched as the figure quietly approached the guard from behind, drawing a dark-bladed sword from a sheath she somehow kept low-key. However quiet she managed to be, something must have given her away as the rotting guard spun with supernatural speed to snap at her with his distended, grotesque jaws.

With a grace that fit her form, the young woman side-stepped and countered with a slash of her sword, catching the guard on his arm which fell to the floor with a wet slap. Black ooze poured from the stump as the creature growled and whined.

Growled and whined like a dog…a dog! How embarrassing!

The two circled one another for a hot minute, taking jabs and feints at one another, each looking for an opening. Kerouac thought the young woman had the fight in the bag when the guard actually howled, being joined by a half-breed Akiba in a nearby kennel. Kerouac had heard of vile dog spirits from Japan before but had never really paid them much heed.

Inugami-or-something.

The woman seemed to be familiar with the creature, which made sense since with his cat-eyes he could see clearly in the darkness and she was obviously of Japanese descent and named it not only an Inugami but also a “Voracious Eater” or whatever that was. Obviously, the guard had an eating problem as no fewer than three cats had found out the hard way!

Suddenly, the Akiba-mutt somehow managed to break out of his cage and jump the woman from behind, taking her to the ground with his jaws firmly clamped on her forearm and her sword clattering across the floor. As the Akiba began to worry the arm the Inugami approached the helpless woman, its maw distending.

The blade that flashed out seemed to come from nowhere, cutting deep into the guard’s face and a skillful kick sent the Shiba flying. The black blade glinted in the faint light that came in through one of the windows and both the fallen woman and the form of the sword that had clanged across the floor disappeared. Nothing more than a minor glamour, and all that Kerouac could manage with that much iron surrounding him.

Unsure about continuing the fight, and badly injured, the Guard retreated as the woman entered a defensive stance, running out into the Seattle night.

As the unfortunate Mutt breathed and whined, whatever effect the guard had over him faded, and the mad light that had been in his eyes left leaving the woman alone in an animal shelter that was going insane with the racket the animals were making.

“QUIET!”, the woman shouted once, with authority, and the various animals…obeyed!

“Very impressive! Miss? …I didn’t get your name.”

“Who’s there? Who spoke?”, the woman challenged with a hint of a Hawaiian accent.

“I did.”, Kerouac replied. “And I’d like to offer you a deal. You let me out, and I tell you a very important secret!”

“Wait…why is a cat talking to me? Why should I trust a talking cat?”

“Because this talking cat had your back during that little scuffle, and unless you want Seattle’s finest up in your business for breaking and entering a city property with a deadly weapon, I’d take the deal.”, Kerouac stated while motioning at the cameras with his head.

“Oh…[swearing in Japanese]… Fine.”

The woman opened the cage. “The name’s Hiroko.”

“Kerouac. Now please, before we get on with things, could you say ‘Fine’ two more times?”

Story Title: The Book Return
Starring: Virgil Gugasian
Guest Starring: Jack Youngblood, Fergus Mac Cormaic, Kerouac

When Virgil came around asking Jack and Fergus to assist him in a heist for Monoc, Kerouac couldn’t help but laugh out loud. How fate had drawn them back together, he would never know.

Kerouac immediately volunteered to run interference for the heist in exchange for a simple favor to be named later, knowing that Virgil knew what he meant when he said “simple”.