"What Madness Is This?" Volume II: Prophecies in the Dark
- Thread starter Napoleon53
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I really hope my "Cassius Clay as RUMP Supreme Chief" idea becomes canon.
"Float like an aeroship, sting like a grinder gun!"- RUMP Supreme Chief Cassius Clay before punching an absinthe smuggler to death probably.
"Float like an aeroship, sting like a grinder gun!"- RUMP Supreme Chief Cassius Clay before punching an absinthe smuggler to death probably.
Light skin might not matter too much as long as the mixing went way back. Sort of a one drop versus majority blood issue. I imagine they're very few in number anyway. For instance, if your mom and dad are mixed, no good. But if it's 1938 and your family has lighter skin because ancestors back in the 1700's and 1800's were raped by their enslavers, but no mixing has occurred since, they're not going to care. At least, that seems reasonable.
@Napoleon53, if I may, I'd suggest you use "Holy Ghost" instead of "Holy Spirt." If my memory serves me right, the former is the older name for the same being, but it feels tonally more aligned with the insanity of Reverend-Colonel H. P. Lovecraft and the uncaring, omnipotent, older version of the Hebrew god known as Jehovah.
Also, excellent work so far!
Also, excellent work so far!
I'm sure the theologically-correct term is the METATRON (always in caps), and it's just shortened colloquially for convenience.
What was, will be again; what is, will be no more.
Depending on who you ask, the Metatron is either an Archangel or Enoch after being Translated to Heaven without dying.
Or both. Some say say both.
That Metatron is Enoch who became an Archangel after being Translated.
There was an idea bounced around way back that people born from mixed Pinnacle Blood relationships existing a secondary class between Better and Inferior, that while looked down upon by those considered "pure" Pinnacle Blood, they were still considered far superior to Inferiors and were directed towards stuff like military service to reclaim the perceived dishonour of mixed Fluids.
Also Napo has said that the further we move away from the POD, the less and less OTL people will be cropping up. There might be people who share similar names or looks but are almost nothing like them genetically or in any other regard. So while there might be somebody who looks like Samuel Battle or Cassius Clay cropping up, they'll be completely different people for who they were OTL
In what theology? This little known mysterious biblical stories are kind of curious.
RISE OF THE SECOND PROPHET: DUSTBOWLS, SKY PIRATES, AND OUTLAWS
RISE OF THE SECOND PROPHET:
DUSTBOWLS, SKY PIRATES, AND OUTLAWS
The Reverend Graham speaks before the adoring masses in Boston, with the Apostle Andrew to the left (1942)
It was all so simple. It was just me and Billy Graham. I could never have guessed what was about to happen to our lives. Every day was a challenge, an adventure, and a very real chance to die. But I fought on with Billy and we started a revolution. A revolution based on lies, drugs, and delusions, though I convinced myself otherwise at the time in an apocalyptic frenzy of excitement. If I could go back and stop the whole thing, I would."
- Andrew Philips, the so-called Apostle of the Second Prophet
- AN INTRODUCTION TO BILLY GRAHAM AND THE APOSTLE ANDREW -
June 27, 1937, was the day Andrew Philips got the call from his father's old ranch hand, Mark Marlboro. Mark told him his father was really sick and that law and order in New Canaan was breaking down thanks to the Black Bliss Sootstorms (although they had no idea of what caused the storms). The hardy old Great War veteran told Andrew that they were keeping his old man as comfortable as they could, but it was not looking good. Andrew was just a 21 year-old kid studying at the Waxahachie Bible Institute in the great state of Texas. Above all else he desired to live a good clean life, marry a pretty Pinnacle-blooded woman, and enter the clergy. He enjoyed helping on his father's Circle P Ranch as a child and always thought that one day him and his little brother Shadrach might divide it between the two of them and keep it proudly in the family. He was surely blessed in life... and then Marlboro's phone call came. Despite his protestations, Andrew told him he would be on the next train to Metropolis--the capital of New Canaan and the city nearest to the Circle P--that very night. He told Andrew to bring a gun. The ministerial student rushed back to his humble little two-person dormitory to pack up, his heart pounding and anxiety raging.
He would never forget this moment as the start of a great unexpected journey, a grand, bloody adventure that would end up shaping the modern world. He heard the bathroom faucet turn off and his young roommate stepped out into the living quarters. His name was Billy Graham, one day soon to be known as the Reverend Billy, and eventually as the Second Prophet of Manifest Destiny. But no one had any idea about any of that then, and couldn't have imagined it if they had tried. They were just two students, like any other. Billy eyeballed Andrew with a confused expression and inquired as to what he was doing causing such a commotion and packing a suitcase. Andrew told him that there were huge sandstorms ravaging his family estate and that he needed to board the next train to Metropolis as soon as possible. When Graham realized the magnitude of the situation, he selflessly proclaimed "I'm coming with you." He sincerely cared for Andrew and the Philips family, customary of his typical forthright character.
Philips was one of the few people on campus that treated Billy Graham with the respect he very much deserved, at least at that point. The future Prophet was not born an American citizen at all. In fact, at this point he had spent a large portion of his life outside of the Republican Union. He had been born on November 7, 1918, in the Confederation of the Carolinas, America's oldest ally and the only remaining foreign power in North America, with the exception of Russian Alyaska in the far, frozen north. According to his own later testimony, he had been born in the cradle of the Johns River Gorge, near the small town of Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Also according to the man himself, the night he had been born his humble hamlet saw a comet streak across the sky and the local hillbillies said this was a sign of great things to come for the newborn infant. Although when Andrew first met him this story was strangely absent, a later addition to his personal mythos he would create out of thin air as the "greatest smooth-talker in history." His parents, Mr. William Franklin Graham, Sr., and Morrow Coffey, were newly-wedded Scotch-blooded Presbyterian farming stock just striking out in the world, and they welcomed their one and only child with the greatest of aplomb, showering him with attention and as many gifts as they could afford. From everything history has shown, the Grahams seemed to be quite lovely and kind folks. Billy would wind up an only child, as his mother suffered a series of miscarriages that left her broken and depressed. She would die when Billy was only 9 years old of unknown causes.
With just himself and his boy, William Graham the First pressed on as well as he could with life, trying to turn whatever profit he could from the small farm and suffering from acute depression and a growing doubt in the existence of God. He was truly shattered and broken. When young Billy came home one day from playing in the fields to discover a woman preparing a meal in the tiny kitchen area of their house, he was very confused, then angry when he realized his father was trying to bring someone else into the family, "to replace my mama." He said later on that, "I was so jealous. I loved my late mother dearly and now here was this strumpet, thinking she could waltz in here and take my pops. I hated it. I hated her. But there are none so blind as those who will not see, and thankfully Jehovah opened my eyes and heart to this wonderful woman." Indeed, Billy would always say it was this new woman, Susan Grant, that would lead him to God. For Susan was not just any Cokie woman: she was a devout and radical follower of American Fundamentalism. A raven-haired former witch from a long line of such eldritch persons who had dwelled in the foothills since the days of the Puritans, she had viewed the Great World War and the American victory that ensued as a message from the ethereal plane. She viewed Fundamentalism as the strongest of all faiths and the one most in contact with the spirit realm, and she was ready to adopt its ways as her own. In her own words, "I saw the light. I forsaw the coming of the New Jerusalem, and I knew I had best make myself right with Jehovah and Prophet before it was too late."
When Billy was 11, in 1929, his father and Miss Grant married and his father declared himself a Fundamentalist. Despite the alliance between Chancellor Johnny Gamble's Confederation and the Union, this did not make them popular figures in the Blowing Rock area, or really anywhere in the Confederation of the Carolinas. They were treated as second-class citizens or even traitors and were often abused and mistreated, sometimes physically assaulted. The new Misses Graham was proclaimed a sorceress and was the subject of numerous threats from superstitious hillbilly locals, perhaps rightfully so, including a slap-dash attempt at assembling a posse to kidnap and burn her at the stake. Clearly, this current set-up could not last forever. In 1931, the Grahams loaded up their beat-up old truck, the make of which has never been clear to historians, and ran for the border, begging to take up American citizenship. This would be granted by ORRA and the family, for a while, took up residence at a Church ward in Atlanta. The year or so spent in Atlanta saw little of import happen save for the conversion of one Billy Graham, age 13. The way his parents were treated and taken care of by the AFC Church touched him and showed him what he would like to call, "the Better side of humanity." William the Elder would soon find himself working a steady job as a bus driver and Susan earned some income as a waitress at a local diner. Billy became a tremendous reader at this time, thanks to his step-mother working with him to memorize the Bible and the Books of Manifest Destiny. He would devour any and all books and magazines placed before him, but he particularly enjoyed biographies of famous Christians and cowboy and detective adventure serials, something which certainly foreshadowed how he would later live his life.
Despite their good fortune in Atlanta, it had never been the goal of the Grahams to stay there forever. They yearned for something wide-open and where they could really put down roots, where the air was pure and the game plentiful. They wanted a farm, a real farm, and to save up enough money to one day send young Billy to college. What better place, they thought, than to move way out west, where land was cheap and the living was honest. They bought train tickets to Texas, about thirty miles from Waxahachie, Lewisiana, home of one of the most famous and prestigious Bible colleges in the world. The Bible Institute there had produced some of the finest young ministers of the post-War era, and the Grahams had high-hopes for young Billy to one day take up the shepherd's rod there and heard the next generation of sheep. He would do this,with far more prowess than they could ever imagine. In 1936, at the tender age of 18, Billy Graham began his training at the Institute, the same year Andrew Philips also joined the ranks of the that prestigious and hallowed hall of learning.
His first thoughts upon meeting Billy was that he was truly someone worth getting to know. He was somewhat tall, and his square-jawed face had an air of almost Presidential nobility to it. His sandy brown hair was a bit wild at the time, always combed up into an elaborate pompadour that would make Joe Steele's look positively uninspired. Piercing hazel eyes stared you down in every conversation, as he was never one to break eye contact. He once told Philips that his step-mother had taught him that "You can devour another man's essence, read his whole character, by staring him down right in the eyes, the windows to the soul." Despite his good looks and his calm demeanor, he was hardly popular on campus. In fact, due to his foreign heritage and somewhat creepy, off-putting conversational habits, young Philips was really the only friend he had at Waxahachie. His bold and brash demeanor suited his new Texas home quite well, but further served to alienate him from his fellow students who saw him as a foreign-born mimic, merely adopting Texas while they had been born in and molded by it. Despite their opinions, Billy was a great Texan and a good man at this point, though he was not far away from that horrible descent into insanity and sorcery that would forge him into one of the most important and feared figures in history. He never fooled around with women and he never drank or partied. He always attended Sunday services and he could handle a rattlesnake like it was a worm, heaving it above his head while speaking in tongues, fire in his eyes. But this was not so unusual for a campus full of promising young ministers.
When Philips and Graham showed up at the Waxahachie Train Station and asked for two tickets to Metropolis, little did they know they were making history. Billy Graham, not yet twenty years of age, was on his way to become the Second Prophet of Manifest Destiny.
And behold the Prophet Graham, Second Prophet of the One True Church, descended from the Waxahachie Bible Institute in the year of our Lord Nineteen-hundred and thirty-seven, with the noble Apostle Andrew and a mighty iron on his hip, and the name of the iron was Judgement. And the Lord was with them.
- The Book of Graham, Verse 1
- THE STORY OF CANDY JOHNSON AND BUCKSHOT SETTLE -
"The Outlaw Angels," Candy Johnson (left) and Buckshot Settle (right) pose for a picture at the Prophet Graham's Birthday Ball in Philadelphia, 1965
"They traded their black hats for snowy white."
- The Book of Graham, Verse 1
- THE STORY OF CANDY JOHNSON AND BUCKSHOT SETTLE -
"The Outlaw Angels," Candy Johnson (left) and Buckshot Settle (right) pose for a picture at the Prophet Graham's Birthday Ball in Philadelphia, 1965
"They traded their black hats for snowy white."
Billy Graham would have been nothing without the various cutthroats, scoundrels, little people, and bastards that would help propel him to a national and global spotlight. While the Apostle Andrew would receive a lion's share of the credit and would be the one who would eventually type up the first draft of the Book of Graham, their adventures would never have happened without the long and storied career of Candy Johnson, a drug-addicted, bowlegged, washed-up conman. Candy Johnson has been called many things by many people, and his life sounds like something out of one of the western serials young Billy Graham so enjoyed, but one thing is certain: Candy Johnson would ride off into the sunset as an American legend and a key figure to a religious movement that would sweep Old Mexico during the Black Bliss Sootstorms of Operation Manifest Climax.
The man known to history as "Candy" Johnson was born Malcolm Conrad Johnson in Custer City, Texas, on May 4, 1882. Son of GAR cavalryman John "Jack"Johnson and his wife Cindy-May (nee Brown) Johnson, Candy's childhood would be a chaotic one. His father participated in the Immolation of Mexico in the 1886, as well as the ensuing genocide of the ethnic Mexican and Native American peoples there. For his service and troubles, Jack Johnson would be awarded a thirty-acre farm near Emancipation City, state of Brown (formerly Sonora), and a lifetime of post-traumatic stress, then called shell-shock. Jack would have frequent night terrors, waking up in the middle of the night screaming about boxcars and mountains of corpses. Jack Johnson was not an ORRA man or a Zealot, but a simple Army man. During the Immolation, though, he had born witness to the endless slaughter of unarmed men, women, and children out in the desert, where the ORRA grinders never fell silent. This deeply bothered the man to the point of near-insanity, and their new family farm was soon going belly-up as Jack spent all of his waking hours with a bottle.
Candy would say of his father, "The devil done got to him. He always had a bottle in his right hand and a belt in the left, and my mother suffered the former and I suffered the latter. Jack would become domestically abusive around 1890, beating his wife and son for the slightest of offenses and experiencing increasingly horrible night terrors. In 1893, Jack would walk out to the barn, turn the electric sawmill on, and flung himself upon the blade while intoxicated. Cindy-May was officially done with the farming life and saw the farm as cursed and "built upon ancient heathen sacrifice altars." She would sell the farm just to pay off her husband's extensive credit bills, and only some of them at that. Land in Old Mexico during the period was readily available that it could sell for as low as ten dollars an acre, depending on the region and state. Cindy-May took young Candy to live in Emancipation City, Brown, freshly built on the ruins of Old Hermosillo. The new city was representative of post-Immolation Mexico, with constant construction, veterans and soldiers staking their claims, miners trying to strike it rich, and city slickers from the East Coast plotting their next business venture. Candy loved it.
In 1895, tragedy struck once more when Cindy-May was sickened with cholera and passed away. This left thirteen year-old Candy an orphan, in the care of a local Fundamentalist Church. A kindly woman named Sarah Clinton, who worked as a choir mistress at the church, would try to teach him the Words of Christ and Prophet but he was much more interested in older girls and learning poker tips from soldiers in the nearby bars than he was in religion. "Sister Sarah tried. She really did. But I didn't want to hear what was good for me. I just wanted to raise hell." By the age of 14, Candy was mastering the art of pick-pocketing and fencing small stolen items for quick cash... cash that he would then go and gamble away at the tavern. He was already six feet tall and was known by the other street urchins as "Big Malcolm," a name he despised. But he would acquire his much more famous sobriquet soon enough. "Candy" would become his nickname at the age of 16 for habit of chewing cocaine lozenges.
Despite his lack of interest in religion, he was nonetheless very fond of Sister Sarah, and he wanted to make her happy. In 1898, he would go out into the countryside with a chum named Billy "Buckshot" Settle to "find Sister Sarah a birthday gift." Together, he and his friend robbed a small ranch of two mules. What was supposed to be an easy steal went wrong when the farmer, an old NCO and veteran of the Immolation, opened fire with an old belt-fed M1885 grinder from the loft of his barn as they were riding away. The bullets struck Billy in the back, sending him and his mule crashing down onto the desert floor. The farmer ordered Candy to get off his mule and put his hands behind his back. A quick telegraph to the city some ten miles away summoned RUMP Rangers to the ranch. Billy was patched up and would live and both were placed under arrest for rustling, a capital offense. The two teens were booked at the Emancipation City Jail on October 1, 1898. Sister Sarah was furious that they would do something so brazenly illegal and serious, but she begged the local judge and MDP Party Bannerman to let the young boys off the hook. Her wishes would be partially granted thanks to her respected name and Candy and Billy were spared the noose. However, according to the same judge who stayed their execution, "Rustlers of any age don't have any place in Emancipation City and Mr. Johnson and Mr. Settle are no longer welcome here. " Candy and Billy were banned from ever returning to the state. While possibly keeping them from re-offending in Brown, this by no means halted their criminal careers, which only blossomed into a gin-soaked flower.
By 1900, the two men were roaming Texas, Arnold, and New Canaan, committing a string of robberies and cattle rustling crimes that earned their faces on every telegraph pole between Metropolis and Trinity City. By 1911, they were experienced at card sharking, confidence games, and swindling, adding those cons to their repertoire. In that same year, they would plot their most ridiculous scam yet. Cocaine was becoming enormously popular in the Union at the time, largely thanks to George Washington Carver's Sweet Victory Company. Johnson and Settle created new identities for themselves as "Mr. Hiram Goldberg and his assistant Mr. Levi Thorne" and bought train tickets to New York City to perpetrate one of the most insane crimes of all time. Dressed in white "Texas Tuxedos" (western style suits with ten gallon hats), they asked for a meeting with Carver himself. Carver was a polite, trusting man who saw the best in people, so he did not consider for a moment that Goldberg and Thorne were anything but what they said. Their ruddy complexions and calloused hands only served to back up the idea that they were hard-working farmers rising to the top. "Yessir, Mr. Carver," said Settle in an exaggerated drawl, "My associate here Mr. Goldberg owns 5,000 acres of prime Oxacre co-caine growin' soil. And he would like to sell it all to you for the steal of a lifetime, yessir."
Carver was eager to make the deal and was ready to sign the papers right then and there, only stopped from doing so by his personal secretary Wallace Hampton. Hampton wasn't so much suspicious as just generally wary of any large deals. He told Carver that it would be smart to actually come see the property first before signing. After all, he said, Carver had been wanting to cut out Caribbean cocaine growers because of the prohibitive shipping costs. If they could build a Sweet Victory railroad line to supply all the factories and bottling plants across the country, dividends would grow like crazy. But Carver should first go see the 5,000 acres and strategize the construction of a railway if the land was what was promised. This was very much NOT what Johnson and Settle desired. But rather than pull out now and risk blowing their cover and totally wasting the trip, they agreed to accompany Carver on his personal airship, the Century Falcon (that he won playing poker), and survey the supposed property, located on the Old Yucatan Peninsula, now called the Oxacre Peninsula.
This was the start of a long and painful trip, and the more that Hampton was around the "Goldberg and Thorne," the more he began to suspect them of not being on the up and up. When they docked for refueling at Custer City, this would prove to be the moment when everything went wrong. While grabbing a drink at a local bar with a few airship crewmen, they noticed wanted posters for Johnson and Settle, and remarked on how similar they looked to Goldberg and Thorne. In seconds, they were rushing out the swinging doors and back to the airship to alert Carver, who remained on board the Century Falcon with his "Jewish friends." When Hampton finally reached the ship he had a posse of some twenty lawmen riding behind him. Johnson and Settle were up in the observation suite enjoying some whiskey with Carver when they realized the jig was up. Sighing and saying "I had a bad feeling about this," Johnson pulled a revolver out from under his suit jacket and pointed it squarely at the stunned Carver. Settle pulled his own pistol out of his cowboy boot and fired several shots through the observation window, breaking the glass and sending bullets zipping down into the dirt below. Worried they could damage the ship irreparably or hurt Carver, the lawmen and Hampton held their fire, desperately riding after the Century Falcon as it slowly rose into the air, Carver ordering the small remaining crew to follow Johnson's commands. Before they knew it, they were some 1,500 feet in the air and on course to move out over the Main and head to South America, where Johnson and Settle thought they could escape into the jungles and mountains.
Kidnapping one of the most famous industrialists in American history was probably not the smartest decision to be made if they had any desire to escape, never mind the rest of the whole cocaine adventure. But they treated Carver with immense respect, as he was pretty much their only surefire way to know they couldn't be blasted out of the sky. By the next day, ORRA, RUMP, the GAR, and the Navy were out in force looking for the Century Falcon. Newspapers all over the country told the story of Carver being kidnapped by "sky pirates." When the aeroship drifted over a small, seemingly uninhabited Caribbean island a few days later, it would be the mistake that would end their misadventure. The island's only structure was a small observation post belonging to the Navy. Before long, several aeroships and two aeroship tenders were dispatched from Point Pierce and on their way to cut the Century Falcon off. On the morning of September 1, 1911, talkiebox transmission gave away the pursuit and alerted Johnson and Settle. Desperate for an escape and knowing a fight would be suicidal, Johnson and Settle ordered Carver to show them how to operate the escape biplane, a new design Carver had purchased from the military. Bidding Carver a final farewell, they deployed the escape plane and made for the coast of Cuba, only barely reachable with their limited fuel supply. Carver quickly took control of the Century Falcon once more and talkieboxed the authorities that he was now safe and heading back to Texas.
The plane, as it turned out, was quite unreliable in its fuel estimation. The plane went down in the Caribbean, luckily just a few miles from an island. The island, as it would turn out, was one of the Florida Keys. They were back in the Republican Union by sheer bungling luck and were miles off in their understanding of where they were. But the bad news was that they were also the most wanted men in the country. But just ten days later, the Great World War erupted, plunging the globe into chaos. For Candy Johnson and Buckshot Settle, now hiding in the swamplands of southern Florida, this couldn't have happened at a better time. They enlisted as cargo train employees pushing out ammunition to the Californian Front in early 1912, the world seemingly forgetting all about their unbelievable exploits just months earlier. Their wanted posters came down and the propaganda posters went up.
The next few years were a haze of wartime civilian service for the two men, but when the war ended and the Steele era began, they quit their job and returned back to their old stomping grounds in New Canaan, running small cons that wouldn't draw too much attention. By 1925, the seedier parts of Metropolis knew the name of Candy Johnson as a gangster and "last of the old outlaws." He now ran an outfit that kept him out of the limelight, hiring younger swindlers and petty criminals to do his job for him. Buckshot Settle, though, was captured and saw service in the Redemption Legions, finally being honorably discharged in 1935 and retiring to a life of peace and quiet on a small farm outside of Metropolis, not far from the Circle P of Apostle Andrew fame.
When the Black Bliss Sootstorms came through in 1937 and wiped out the farms in much of Old Mexico, Settle's was included. He fled just in time in his beat up autocarriage, making it to a Metropolis now plunging into chaos and lawlessness. And in the midst of the riots and unrest was his old comrade Candy Johnson. Johnson and Settle were reunited amidst the carnage of the moment and were sincerely glad to see each other. They had each other's backs during the worst of the rioting, about the same time as Andrew and Graham arrived in Metropolis after a very tumultuous stop in nearby Willoughby. Bonds were about to be forged, adultery committed, backs stabbed, drugs taken, and a wild, crazy, religious movement was about to begin in the midst of one of the most chaotic and bloody wars in history....
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Sky pirates? What are the inspirations for those... One Piece?
Great work, Napoleon53
Great work, Napoleon53
Johnson and Settle seem...surprisingly nonhomicidally zany for Madnessverse characters. . Can't wait to see what atrocities they end up getting into.
Nope, not familiar, lol. Steampunk, Dieselpunk, Star Wars, and the original Wild, Wild West had a lot more to do with it. lol
"Why you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler. You've got a lot of guts coming here to this revival, after what you pulled."
Flamboyant cocaine and snackfood magnate George Washington Carver meets Candy Johnson for the first time since the hijacking of the Century Falcon. They would later have some Sweet Victory and sort out their differences. (colorized 1940)
Now I'm imagining Cokie dignitaries arriving to some white-tie formal event in full-on Nudie suits.
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Next up on "Most insane word salads about Billy Graham:"
Billy Graham bangs an asthmatic trophy wife during the Dust Bowl.
You wouldn't be imagining wrong, sir.
Jacksonland Governor Rupert Harris (1970)
Absolutely disgusting. This man needs to get his butt back in some seersucker, the chosen fabric of the Carolinas.
Also, what the fuck is up with the gun on that car? Is it real? Decorative? Loaded?
It's a non-canon in most denominations text called "The Book of Enoch" or "1 Enoch".
(There's actually three, generally known as 1, 2, & 3 Enoch, though they do each have their own names.)
The only denomination in which all 3 are canon is the Ethiopic Orthodox Church, and one of the three is only still existant in its entirety in Ge'ez as a result of it being canon there.
Now this would be a movie! Of course with some rewrites you understand.