Moonlight Over a Ruined Village

Moonlight Over a Kindled Cigar

For tonight’s tale, we follow the newly initiated member of the crew that haunts the village with them boys. They have taken to calling him the professor, as he has a unique talent for looking into the supernatural with his feet planted firmly on the ground. Often when dealing with the unknown, people become so bewitched and bewildered that they lose sight of the ground they were standing on before everything changed. For that is what happened to the crew. They were gravely wounded in what they claimed was an unprovoked attack. They needed the professor to help them find a path to recovery. But to do this, they will have to make a bargain with an old enemy. One who has kept a red eye on them and all they do. For this is the tale of the night when old vendettas were settled and new ones were forged. This tale contains profanity and references to tobacco and people being burned by tobacco. Listener discretion is advised.

State of the Ruin Address for July of 2025

Tonight is the night we look back over the first five episodes of the series. We start with a hapless traveler on his way home that is pursued by a faceless phantom, and we end with a mysterious vigilante assaulting a gang of creeps in a graveyard. In between, we have two sisters learning a new way of life, two brothers preserving their old way of life, a ventriloquist dummy given unholy life by a ruined man, and a doomed soul robbed of all traces of their identity. All the while, the river that cuts through the village is haunted by two lost souls who hoard trash, a tunnel dwelling miscreant who poisons the village around him, and a vengeful Kitsune trying to take his pound of flesh from a world that thought it had escaped him. For tonight is the night we examine where these tales came from, and we speculate where they are going. Because nobody who sets foot in the ruined village ends up where they intended. This episode contains profanity, violence, and references to previous episodes and antisocial behavior. Listener discretion is advised.

Moonlight Over a Shattered Head

For tonight’s tale, we meet Tomisaburo. Some of you may think you are familiar with that name, but you are mistaken. You have yet to meet Tomisaburo, but tonight you will be cured of that. For this is the night that Tomisaburo gets revenge on them boys for attacking him. That never happened, but the rumor is that he tried to tempt them with a haunted shamisen and they beat him for it. Since them boys did nothing to dispel the stories of this incident, the repercussions of it are going to occur. The tale of this incident will replace the false narrative being perpetuated by them boys and their ilk. For in this tale, Tomisaburo reminds them boys and the misfits they keep as pets that the unknown forces that weave their way around us are best left unknown. They can never be known, and it is the epitome of folly to assume any degree of familiarity with them. Tomisaburo will use a glass bottle to do this, and it will hurt like hell. This tale is violent and gruesome. Listener discretion is advised.

Moonlight Over an Oddity in the River

For tonight’s tale, we follow another traveler along the river road.  Though he has no definite destination, he has an aim, he has a purpose, and he has the means and will to obtain them. This is a man who was haunted by denizens from beyond the veil. Lost and desperate, he sought help in the ruined village. While there he found them boys and their crew. They helped him to find his strength. Emboldened, he returned to the River Road, to seek out other denizens from beyond the veil, to show them he was no longer going to live in fear of them. As he travels the road, he contends with the strange, ruined creatures that stalk about the River Road. But when he meets one of the denizens from beyond, all of his plans fail. At a loss, he stares into the darkness. It is there that he receives help from an unlikely source. As they work together to salvage his plan, he is forced to question the purpose of his journey. By the end, he learns that true horror lies not on the other side of the veil, but in the trappings we humans create for ourselves on this side of it. This tale contains profanity, references to previous tales, and excessive descriptions of bureaucracy. Listener discretion is advised.

Moonlight Over a Belligerent Liaison from City Hall

For tonight’s tale, we meet our hapless drunk. He is standing on the street at dusk. He is alone and without his crew, but he is not aimless. For he is there to execute the duties of his office. The hapless drunk has moved up in the world, and he somehow managed to assume the role of liaison to the board of education for the ruined village. At least, that’s the way he remembers it. He is there to confront the teacher who sent a young writer into the next of vipers that is the ruined village. The acting liaison will enact his scheme to teach this cowardly teacher the importance of manners and honesty when one walks the river road. However, this teacher is far from lost, and him and his student came to the ruined village for a reason. This reason may prove greater than even a hapless drunk can imagine. This tale contains profanity, antisocial behavior, references to previous episodes, and references to crime, murder, and mutilation. Listener discretion is advised.

Moonlight Over a Roving Pack of Drunks

For tonight’s tale, we follow our hapless wanderer as the reaches the conclusion of her journey through the darkness at the center of the ruined village. She is pulled from the battle between the two raving jackasses by a strange creature in the form of a ventriloquist dummy. From that point on, it gets a lot weirder.
 For this haunted dummy serves as her only guide through her encounters with an increasingly bizarre succession of unearthly beings. This roving pack of drunks serve as her only hope of finding her way to the end of the River Road. They bravely guide her along the strait road that runs along a river that runs near the bus stop she used to get there in the first place.
Along the way they face the dangers of convenience stores that are willing to sell them alcohol if they shut up and go away. Their mad journey enriches her with valuable life lessons, such as the importance of friendship in the face of adversity, the strength that comes with compassion, and most important of all, the importance of looking up from your God damned phone when you’re in an unfamiliar area.
But the tale takes a dark turn. For as she makes her way back to the real world, she finds the unseen phantoms of the River Road linger about her like smoke from incense offered to the departed. The darkness has found her, it has marked her, and its denizens will forevermore be able to find her.
This tale contains references to the previous episode, so the same warnings apply. Furthermore, this tale deals with irresponsible people in states of inebriation and a great deal of disrespect for public order. Listener discretion is advised.

Moonlight Over a Lost Dog

Tonight’s tale will be told in two parts. For the first part, we follow a young woman as she ventures into the village. The fires of her curiosity were undoubtedly stoked by the villages growing reputation for being infested with thugs, drunks, assholes, and the pedantic creeps who broke them. Her curiosity leads her to the infamous doll museum, and her better judgment leads her to leave it almost immediately. This leads her to the river road, where sleepy houses are overshadowed by trees that sway in the seer winds from the ghoul haunted forests and mountains that surround it. The road is gentle during the day, attracting families, children, and dog owners. However, the sun soon sets and the darkness descends. With the darkness come the predators, and the gentle town folk become their prey. The first victim is a small dog that goes missing. The loss of the dog sends all of them into a panic, and they are soon reminded that ownership of the river road changes when the sun is no longer there to watch over it. Once the moon holds court, the denizens of the night creep from the shadows with brazen audacity. Bewitched and bewildered by the darkness, she cannot find the way out. Enraged ghosts find her, eager to bring fresh blood into their endless conflict. Caught in a hellish maelstrom, she is pulled away. She is pulled into the cold, silent shadows by an otherworldly creature. Helpless and at a loss, she follows the strange creature deeper into the shadows. Her only hope is that she chose the lesser of evils as darkness engulfs her. This tale contains references to crime and mutilation, animals and humans in states of distress, references to dolls, and a greater than reasonable amount of profanity. Listener discretion is advised.

Moonlight Over Exposed Bone

For tonight’s tale, we follow our solitary thug as he makes his way through the tunnels that run beneath our ruined village. He was sent there by a mysterious figure. Some call him the bird man, others call him the dirt spider. Our hapless thug is being pursued by an unimaginable horror that has just received a name, and that name is the Rook. The birdman informs our solitary thug that the Rook is coming for him and he will steal the bones from his body. He tells him that his only hope lies in the center of the tunnels. Yet the path our hapless thug thinks will lead to his last hope drops him straight into a Hell worse than he could ever imagine. This tale is dark, bleak, scary, and it may disturb sensitive listeners. It contains themes of violence, medical horror, mutilation, and despair.  Listener discretion is advised.

Moonlight Over an Errant Shoe

For tonight’s tale, we meet a man embarking on a quest. Our pilgrim, a young man who is being relentlessly haunted by an unquiet spirit, has decided he can no longer endure the ice cold touch of the restless dead that pokes him in the eye every Thursday night. He seeks aid from one who is learned in the ways of the dead. Yet our hero finds that the learned make claims to knowledge they can never possess, and they are in no position to stand between the living and the dead. Abandoned by the learned, he must seek out help from a band of fools who gladly rush forward where the wizened fear to tread.  This band of fools lead our pilgrim on a rampage through the heart of polite society, and they do whatever it takes to punish the decadent powers that be, appease the unquiet dead, and evade the franticly clutching claws of madness. This tale contains profanity and excessive references to alcohol and tobacco consumption. As a general rule with these tales, listener discretion is advised.

Moonlight Over Desecrated Wine

For tonight’s tale, we find Tomisaburo, the mysterious Kitsune who acts as the demon lord of the ruined village, curled up in a hole he dug in the ground. He is lying there so he does not have to show his face to the moonlight. As he contemplates his place in the world of the living, a world in which he received that savage ass whoopin from them boys, he hears a strange voice. Intrigued by the level of venomous pride and arrogance in the voice, he follows it to its source, a mysterious figure known for now as the dirt spider. The dirt spider is the master of the web that forms the technical mainframe that forms the cultural center of the disaffected youths of the area.
That means he works at the local second hand store and has a part time at the game center next door. Who is this mysterious dirt spider? He’s the birdman from previous episodes. The guy who made that boy shove those chicken bones into the gutter. He’s that guy. Whoever gave us this story either got his name wrong, or the guy who gave us the chicken bone story got the name wrong. As a general rule, the people who give us these stories are unreliable, and I’m not much better for passing them along to you.
Nevertheless, Tomisaburo, the demon lord of this ruined village seeks to form an alliance with the dirt spider. Their plan is to exact revenge on them boys and to hasten them along to their final, bitter reward. With them boys gone, them and their unholy cabal of damned souls will be unopposed as they feast upon the blood, bones, and marrow of the ruined villages miserable inmates. This tale contains blood, violence, pain, turmoil, horrific themes, and profanity. In addition, there are references to grave desecration and alcohol consumption. Listener discretion is advised.