Lots of new characters! Lots of new info!

Jedau Sagsun: I think he's 19, he's an American student from the Deep South who appears reliably and without warning most nights; his main contribution is wit and conversation.

Nivalis Capistrum: The board and site administrator; termed by some as The Worst Administrator Ever, but they're full of crap anyway. I'm the second oldest on the board, and he's the oldest. A writer who also has a account.

Mel: Boisterous British 14 year-old (known on as Freyarule); writer, artist, and obsessed with AJ.

AJ: 15 year-old Canadian detail nut who is also obsessed with Mel.

Robshi: 16 yearl-old wee English lad (kidding, Rob!); writer and occasional artist. He has an account here on and is the only reliable reviewer of my stories. I made him faceless because none of us on the board knows what he looks like.

Eudemic: An 18 year-old American who lives on a sailboat and is going to enter the merchant marine.

Saddam: Bears no resemblance to Hussein. He's an American, though I don't know his age or much else about him.

Br: I forget how old he is or where he's from, but he's an artist and animator. Thus, his specialty in necromancy! Get it? RE-animation? Ha ha!

Allen Clearwater: 16 (or is it 17?) Canadian guy who writes sometimes, considers himself a Star Wars guru, and does some web developing. Is co-admin of the RoER's companion RPG site, FFIXR.

FCS Founding, Chapter Four

Meanwhile, on the bridge of the RoER . . .

Things were not going quite so well. The captain (who bore a passing resemblance to a Burmecian Freddy Mercury, with a moustache) was short several crew members, and would soon be facing a Spammer fleet of unprecedented size and unknown intentions. "Jedau," he began . . . but the scruffy nezumi was nowhere to be seen. "Jedau?"

"I'm right here, Boss," Jedau announced - from his chair in the middle of the room. He had a habit of escaping notice, and appearing when least expected. And of startling everyone wherever he did finally appear.

After everyone in the room jumped about three feet straight up, the Captain continued. "Would you play the Spammer's message again?"

"Coming up, Niv . . ." Jedau pressed a completely innocuous button on his console, and the raspy, altered voice of T3# m4D 1337 sP4Mz0r issued forth from the bulkhead-mounted speakers.

"ur prolly al liek lol wut r teh spamzorz due to uss but lemme tel yuo – U R GUNNA PAY!1111 come 2 tha darkside u kno u wan2!"

"Damn!" Nivalis spat. "Who can understand that gibberish?"

"Um, I have a friend who speaks it . . ." ventured a normally boisterous young nezumi with long, wavy hair the approximate color of kiwi fruit skin.

"It's okay, Mel," AJ assured her, patting her arm. "We all know that you once practiced the Dark Arts of spamming . . ."

"Did not! It was Lotti – and she repented, remember?"

"Can you translate it?" the captain interrupted.

"Yeah. They think we're underestimating them, and are threatening to make us pay if we don't do as they ask." Everyone gasped, and the stench of urine wrinkled more than one nose. "Sparky!" Mel chastised, and the ship's dog trotted away to finish his business elsewhere.

"Are Wilson and Declan back yet?"

"No," Robshi mysteriously answered from the shadows.

"Eudemic, are there any weird maelstroms nearby?"

"If you're thinking of us luring them into one, you can forget it. They aren't stupid, just maddeningly annoying."

"That wasn't what I was thinking of. I thought Willy Wonka's Wacky Whirlpool was somewhere nearby."

Eudemic opened his mouth to say it wasn't, but something he noticed while glancing at his charts made him do a double-take. "Actually, it is! But what good does it do us?"

"No idea! Have a lot of ships gotten sucked in there?"

"Yeah."

"Perfect." He outlined his plan; which was, quite naturally, completely insane.

"Nivalis, you're completely insane," Eudemic reaffirmed.

"I know! Isn't it great? Contact the FFIXR and let them know what's happening. With any luck, they'll cover us."

"Oh, shoot!" Allen exclaimed. "I have to get back over there!" He dashed from the room, presumably to commandeer one of the RoER's numerous launches (a launch being a small boat, for those not of a nautical inclination).

"Hey, Cap!" Sagsun the Jedau called out. "Seems the LCAC ran into a little trouble. Three Spammer corvettes. Declan apparently demolished one, but the other two are in pursuit and the LCAC is damaged. Wilson said he would've gone back for another attack run, but that tilt-rotor's about as consistent as a bowlful of soggy Cheerios on a hot day."

"Not much we can do about that at the moment, except to put my plan in motion! Saddam, Robshi, go forth; Eudemic, you've got the ship 'till I get back; Mel and AJ, come topside with me."

Meanwhile, on board the LCAC. . .

Before Sera had finished picking the broken glass out of her fuzz, the two remaining Spammer corvettes had closed to within spamming distance. The precise moment they came within range was obvious, since the small radar display was suddenly proclaiming that LZ could win a FREE iPOD NANO if he could only move the cursor and shoot the poorly animated monochrome Brahne moving across it.

Shiva launched another missile, this time scoring a hit on the same corvette that Kabra had blasted earlier. Her missile homed in on the Spam Generator, its five-pound frag warhead blasting the mast-mounted generator into oblivion. The distinctive iboom-screech/i of Kabra's cannon echoed across the LCAC's deck, and a geyser of steam erupted from the water a few yards away from the damaged Spammer vessel. Mike hurriedly traded Jana's overheated dual 12.7mm machine guns for the spare 40mm grenade launcher, and Dan struggled to reload the unwieldy Spam Blocker.

Unfortunately, Declan couldn't turn back into the Magma Dragoon again quite yet, and there were no spare weapons. There wasn't even a chunk of metal that he could transform into a weapon, so he helped Dan with the Spam Blocker.

Meanwhile, on board the RoER . . .

The ship's cavernous hold, designed to hold as many as four LCACs, had been subdivided into work and practice areas since it had been acquired by Nivalis some years earlier. Robshi hurried into the darkest subdivision, paying no mind to the lack of illumination . . . for he was a shadowy figure, himself. Through narrow, bone-strewn corridors he ran, paying no heed to the warnings of abnormally large spiders and floating skulls.

"Yer soul is forfeit if ye dare advance beyond this doorway," warned a zombie pirate stationed in the final corridor of the subdivision. "An' I'll carve yer face like a jack-o-lantern, besides!" Growling menacingly, he held his rusty cutlass up to bar Rob's passage.

In reply, Robshi pulled back his hood with gloved hands to reveal . . . nothing. There was a misty blackness where his face would be, and two glowing eyes at approximately the correct location. "I have no face," he explained to the pirate, "And if you try to take my soul, I will get angry. You won't like me when I'm angry. I turn into a crazy hybrid who eats dead people when I get angry." Well, it's mostly the truth . . . Rob thought to himself. The zombie pirate apparently sensed enough truth in that statement (staring at the Faceless One, naturally), since he stepped aside and lowered his sword.

Rob simply grunted and said, "That's better."

When the door was opened, a slice of Darkness was revealed - for the main room of the Shadow Subdivision was a necromancer's paradise. Mounds of dirt barely concealed dozens of coffins, and a sarcophagus took up most of one corner. Books were stacked inside of one empty coffin, and in the middle of a chalked-in symbol on the floor stood another faceless Burmecian. This one, however, had eyes that glowed a somehow chilling green, and before him danced a skeleton that moved in time with the motion of the necromancer's own glowing hands.

"Hey, Br," Robshi called out to the figure.

"Yeeessss?" the dark wizard replied, his voice as toneless and eerie as a cold December breeze whistling through an open crypt.

"The Boss wants you topside."

"Juuusst onnne moooment . . . I must finish animating these old bones . . ."

"Alright." Robshi turned to leave, but stopped himself short of the door. "Hey, you're still making cupcakes tonight, right?"

"Oof cooorrpse. Ha, ha. Seriously, though, I'm making cupcakes. The kind with those little pink frosting roses on top, and strawberry pieces inside."

"Yay!" Robshi danced a happy little jig with the zombie pirate before continuing back to the bridge.

So, whaddya think? Will our intrepid heroes survive the coming onslaught, OR WILL THEY ALL PERISH IN UNFATHOMABLE AGONY? Tune in next time!

:b

For the curious, the sort of vessel I imagine the RoER to be is a Whidbey Island-class amphibious assault ship. G00gle it, and thou shalt see.