Urban fantasy idea;
There's been a rash of disappearances in poor neighborhoods in a few large cities.
Large Urban Mimics have adapted and started mimicking cars with the window down, or keys in the ignition, and the local car thief populations are getting hit HARD.
I'm just picturing a couple of guys eyeing up a shiny yellow Kia parked on some old broken down residential alike;
"Nah man, think about it. Why would THIS car be here? It's WAY too nice! And it's a bright color. You know what the news reports said."
"Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Don't wanna end up like Stevie. Or Eddie. Or Amy. Or–"
"yeah, you don't gotta go down the whole list. Let's go."
They leave and the car sits there for a few more minutes and the whole thing makes a kind of juddery motion, and the whole thing slinks off into the empty street, not quite moving right, less like a thing with wheels and more like a thing with lots and lots of little legs.
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ITEM FILE #6412
ITEM: "Fool's Money"
ITEM HISTORY: Item 6412 is a standard American five (5) dollar bill. Running the serial number shows a mundane origin, but the item was slightly defaced at an unknown point. The inscription 'a fool and his money' (a reference to the adage 'a fool and his money are soon parted') has been written on the front face near former President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln has also had pointed ears drawn onto his depiction. Whether this was merely doodling or a statement of the artist on President Abraham Lincoln's classification remains unknown.
This item was surrendered to Office custody after its previous owner suffered a mental health crisis, citing the bill's adverse extranormal effects. After some testing, it was determined that the bill, when spent, will always return to its designated holder, known colloquially as the "fool." The "fool" can only pass the bill onto another holder permanently if it is stolen, or more likely, if the holder is able to perform a financial "scam" involving the bill. The bill has no other documented adverse effects beyond repeated appearance and the mundane designation of the holder being a "fool."
Office psychometric testing has resulted in a 98.4% certainty that the bill's extranormal effects are of fae origin. Fae advisors have suggested that the bill was part of a 'literal wording' scam. They currently hypothesize that the original holder of the bill traded a significant amount of liquid assets for the ability for "money to return" to them, resulting in the bill in Office custody.
The nature of the bill initially presented a challenge in maintaining custody - though he surrendered the bill, the holder was still "the fool" and thus it returned to him. After researching the bill's effects, a mugging was arranged through a series of double-blind contacts, the bill stolen by a mugger acting, for that day via a thaumo-legal contract, as an agent of Office Accounting. The agent immediately made a business purchase of one (1) box of paperclips using the bill, thereby securing the Office Accounting entity as the "fool" and the bill's custody. It is currently in the OA's petty cash drawer, marked so as to not be spent.
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Picture this: Dragons using their caves to age cheese. Dragon Cheesemakers!!
The dragon coiled his enormous body, completely blocking the entrance of the tunnel that lead to the caves.
“No,” he snarled, smoke pluming from his nose.
The cheesemonger pinched the bridge of her own nose. “Look, I explained this to you at the start,” she tried once more. “I make cheese.”
“Yes,” the agreed, nodding his scaly head.
“Then I bring the cheese here.”
“Yes.”
“Then you store all the cheese in your cave, keeping it at the perfect temperature and humidity.”
“Yes.” He sounded particularly proud of this part.
“And then when the cheese has ripened,” she concluded. “I come to pick the cheese up again.”
A thunderous scowl clouded his maw. “No.”
“But that’s how it works!” she cried in exasperation. “I make the cheese, you store the cheese, I sell the cheese, I make more cheese!” She peered up at him. “You do realise I cannot bring you new cheese until I have sold this cheese.”
The dragon considered this for a moment. “Ah, but what if—” he began. “What if you go and make more cheese. And bring me the cheese. And I put it in my cave, with the rest of the hoard. And then I keep it there forever.”
“No,” she said flatly.
It was remarkable how much a dragon could look like it had just swallowed a lemon.
“You can’t keep cheese forever,” she insisted. “It will spoil and go bad!”
“You said it would get better and better!” the dragon roared indignantly. “And I take good care of them! With the air flow and the humidity and the temperature!”
“And that is great,” she said, trying to smile through her frustration. “But when a cheese is ripe, it’s ripe! Then you should not be kept anymore, it should be eaten.”
The dragon scraped it’s formidable claws against the stony ground and sulked.
“Look…” The cheese mongering business did not tend to require a lot of sweet-talking, but she was making an effort. “I’m sure the cheeses that aged in your cave are the best cheeses people have ever tasted. When they find out how delicious they are they will want us to make loads more. Maybe several caves’ worth!”
The reptilian eyes stared at her with disgruntled, reluctant interest. “Several caves?”
“If we’re lucky! And I could make so much cheese that I could bring you new cheese as soon as I pick up the aged cheese. Your cave would never even be empty!”
This seemed to strike a chord. The dragon lifted his head a little.
“And that would really be much better for the rest of your hoard,” she continued with fresh inspiration. “Because if you leave cheese too long, it might go bad and spoil the cheeses next to it too!”
A nervous ripple went through the beast’s scaly body, but he clearly was not convinced just yet. “But what sort of a hoard is it if I have to give it away,” he complained.
“Well! Cheese is not just any old hoard! It’s a developing creation! And you will have a hoard that is constantly developing too. Constantly changing, but, if we do this right, never shrinking.”
The dragon looked at her solemnly, wavering with uncertainty. Perhaps she shouldn’t hold it against the poor thing, it must be a difficult concept to wrap his head around.
“And I will tell you what,” she said encouragingly. “If business is good, I can start investing in some really good crumbly cheeses. You can keep those in your cave for five whole years!”
“That is quite a long time for humans, is it not?” he said, sounding a little more cheerful.
“Very long. Especially when it comes to cheese. Cheeses that have been aged that long are very expensive.”
In retrospect, she should perhaps have led with that. Gourmand or not, a dragon was still a dragon after all. A glittering, toothy grin appeared on her recalcitrant business partner’s shout and he moved just enough for her to move past him into the mountain.
“Tell me more about this expensive cheese that crumbles.”
She hid a smirk. “If you help me carry some of the current ones out, it would be my pleasure.”
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The urban fantasy show I actually want to see is a hospital drama with a dedicated wing for supernatural illnesses.
Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.
Someone somewhere out there is having their perception of the world irreparably shattered by the knowledge that magic is real, and at the other side is a team of doctors who have to roll their eyes and pull out Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales because some high school kid tried to go Carrie with a cheap spellbook and turn all the kids at prom into frogs, and the doctors have to wrangle a couple dozen teenagers into admitting if they have a true love who can break the spell.
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