Celesta University: Degrees of Depravity... I LOVE that subtitle!
I bet you’ve been wondering what happened, where I’ve been? Well to be honest, other than a few days away in the New Forrest area immediately after Easter (when it’s cheaper) which was nice, if a little uneventful, I can safely say I have never had so many things go wrong at once and had so many complications spring up, from the kids being at home throughout the school holidays (they’re usually down at their gran’s), to an Internet service provider changeover which was supposed to have occurred ‘seamlessly’ while I was away (ha! Ha! haha!!..Sorry!) and which went wrong and which is still rumbling along in the background even as we speak. I even managed to contract food poisoning at one point (I suspected campylobacter jejuni at the time coz I’ve had that before and know what it feels like – though now it seems more likely to have been some kind of virus, since lots of other folk have had it apparently).
For a more detailed picture of my woes since Easter take a squint at the comment I made at the bottom of the comments page for my blog post last time which I uploaded from my phone while on my way home from a weekend away yesterday – and lucky I did, since upon my arrival I was confronted (yet again) with a flashing router lamp and no Internet at all. So what you are about to encounter Vis-à-vis my SelectaCorp commission was actually produced Friday, but I had no way to upload it until now. It is a matter of great frustration to me that practically no sooner had I received the commission to come up with a few ideas, criticisms and so on from the minds behind SelectaCorp – or at least made a start on it (I did at least get a list of suggestions and comments off to the writers before Easter, which is something) - than all this kicked off. OK, as I say in the aforementioned comments, timing played a role, with Easter fast approaching at the time, but I don’t GET that many commissions and I like to think of myself as a chap of integrity, who has a professional outlook on deadlines and the like and hate letting anybody down.
Celesta University - Degrees of Depravity
Well, that’s my grovelling done with. So, what is this new SelectaCorp role playing game all about and in what ways does it fit in with the kind of things I usually write about? Well it’s a story best split into at least two parts, of which this is the first (obviously) and deals with the basic premise and introduction.
The basic premise is that SelectaCorp - a wealthy, covert female slave trading network or cartel with a world-wide reach and safeguarded by many influential backers - has developed something of a supply chain problem. They have been searching for a reliable method to source and recruit the raw material from which to form and mould the kind of upmarket ‘merchandise’ their highly selective clientele desires and is willing to pay a massive premium for – i.e. young impressionable girls, preferably from the higher echelons of life. While doing so the organisation has uncovered a promising target for subversion in the guise of a residential college for young women wherein a surprisingly large number of staff have been identified as possessing weaknesses and ‘skeletons in the cupboard’ of various kinds leaving them open to the kind of compromise and manipulation SelectaCorp operatives excel in, and their institution suitably ripe for corruption and control. As SelectaCorp see it: “a prime incubator for the highest value product in the market.”
As the player, you become “a seasoned operative” about to undertake a mission likely to prove “one of the most challenging [SelecataCorp has] ever faced” . But it is a mission which is “also potentially the most rewarding” both to the SelectaCorp organisation as a whole and to the operative concerned as he (or she – why not?) gradually subverts more and more staff members by blackmail or other means. Gradually working their way up the university hierarchy, gradually gaining ever greater influence and control along the way, the operative seizes control, first of individual elements and departments within the university, then of the running of the university as a whole, the SelectaCorp influence in the guise of the operative insidiously creeping over everything, radiating, spreading like the filaments of a fungus or mould, like dry rot eating away at the institution’s integrity from the inside until what is left is little more than a thinly-veiled female slave training camp, complete with auctions to the highest bidder .
Already at this stage of the game - as the game opens – SelectaCorp have paved the way for the insertion of their operative. The premise is that SelectaCorp, having made “a generous endowment” ,have already managed to be invited on to the Board of Trustees, being clearly the kind of philanthropic organisation whose motives are surely “as pure as the driven snow.” Already the rot has set in!
More next time, including some suggestions I have made. It might turn out to be a couple of days though, as I have to put aside at least a day to get one of my books out: my money is fast running out now and my income from LULU (such as it was) has all but dried up (£25 this past month. So I have to get something out fast now, just to keep going, even if it means putting something out in several instalments.
A hell of a lot of what it comes down to is having spent the best part of eighteen months of my life - pretty much futilely, as now seems likely - working on the Roger Benson art project, creating new 'Bensons' from elements of several of his others; that's painstaking work; and time-consuming work too!
A hell of a lot of what it comes down to is having spent the best part of eighteen months of my life - pretty much futilely, as now seems likely - working on the Roger Benson art project, creating new 'Bensons' from elements of several of his others; that's painstaking work; and time-consuming work too!