Showing results by author "Nick Aaron" in All Categories

In the clutches of a pervert, Daisy fights back 1967 in Swinging London. The Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park the hippies staged sit-ins to legalise marijuana. And even though she was blind since birth, it did not escape Daisy Hayes’ attention that “The times they are a-changin’…” But just as she reached middle-age and the height of her powers as an artist, Daisy was visited by a ghost from her past. An accomplice in an old story of revenge appeared at the opening of her new sculpture exhibition and made demands ...

The delayed curse of the mark of Cain In 1949 Daisy Hayes had a patient more or less her own age, Odile Speed, with whom she had a good rapport at once, and who told her about a strange kind of duel, interrupted for many years, from a short story by Pushkin. Then on Christmas Eve of 1952 our blind sleuth extraordinaire stumbled on the scene of a murder just being committed. She bumped into the culprit and the victim died in her arms. The police interrogated her at once. But soon it became clear that the testimony of a blind witness was bound to be worthless in a court of law, the results of...

Pension plans and small-town mayhem Chief Inspector Nigel Cockett could have retired at the age of 55, but like a fool he stayed on for that last promotion that would raise his pension just a little more. Unfortunately, just then a corpse turned up in the holding cell of his own police station. Inspector Manson, his young colleague fresh from police college—the chappy that was supposed to succeed him—seemed to think that he, Nigel, was the culprit. Just because he was the only person who had the key to the lock-up in his possession. “This won’t do at all,” the policeman thought, ...

Revisiting the wild passions of youth There is something special about meeting an old acquaintance by chance. A reunion with someone you were close to a long time ago always seems a bit miraculous. But for the blind especially this is a very unlikely occurrence, as you might as well pass one another by without even knowing it. So in 1984, at the age of sixty-one, Daisy Hayes was quite thrilled to encounter her old classmate Janet, blind like her, in her doctor’s waiting room. Then a disturbing fact became clear: Janet did not have such fond memories of our blind sleuth when she was a ...

Seeking Desi's true identity The last days that Daisy Hayes spent in Rome in 1964 were quite exciting. She and Father Contini went back to the crypt and made some disturbing discoveries. Not about Desiderata herself, but about the archaeologist who had investigated the place in the thirties. The quest now led them to the German town of Trier, where they teamed up again in the fall of that same year to continue their research. In AD 67 things were looking good for Desi and the Pomponius family in their beautiful domus: they lived like princes. But as her friends the Christians went through ...

What shenanigans can four gamers possibly get into? Find out as they embark on their journey aboard an airship. Assassins, Dragonborn thugs, strange contraptions. DM Raistlin heads the adventure with his friends Aaron, Bronson, and Nick in this Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition actual play podcast. Welcome to Dice Heist! — Where we roll the dice and see what we can get away with.

She was in on the game but a reluctant player The game started right after Nero’s suicide in AD 68, and his death was part of the game. He’d been tricked by the other players into taking his own life, opening the race, the free-for-all to seize power in Rome. What ensued went down in History as the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’. But from the start the rivals vying for the top prize discovered that Nero had a half-sister, eighteen-year-old Antonia, the daughter of Claudius and Agrippina, and using her as a pawn became part of the game. Only, she didn’t want to be used—or eliminated...

Murder of an early Pope Nerva, the future emperor of Rome, called the Christian faith “Desiderata’s lost cause”. At the time the ‘Universal Church’ counted only a few thousand faithful rather than untold millions, and he didn’t think it would last, as the Second Coming of the Messiah was looking more and more like a no-show. His blind friend Desiderata would demur and argue. Then in AD 76 the first elected Pope was brutally murdered, and Desi realized that the very survival of her faith was at stake. Delegates from all over the empire had come to Rome for the Pope’s ordination...

Caught in a deadly trap In AD 79 the emperor Vespasian was dying and some prophetess was announcing the end of the world. Meanwhile Desiderata had to deal with a fresh criminal plot from her old enemy Numa. You’d think that things couldn’t get any worse, but that was counting without Mount Vesuvius literally blowing its top above Pompeii. What on earth were our blind ‘seeker of justice’, her deaf husband Simplex, and uncle Balbus doing there that summer, a true case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? It’s a complicated story, but as it happened, they had not one, but ...

Solving a cold case after two hundred years When Daisy heard about a mysterious skeleton that had been dug up in a forest clearing, she was all fired up with curiosity. But there was no way she would ever get involved in finding its identity and explaining how it had come to be there. Until, that is, the young vicar of Bottomleigh came to see her about an entirely different affair. Everyone knew about the vicar’s interest in history; it was no surprise that he wanted an 18th century grave in a far corner of his churchyard to be opened; he had some doubts about the death of the man buried ...

A corpse found floating in the ocean In 1960 Daisy Hayes was asked to replace a physiotherapist on an ocean liner, for just one round trip to New York, at very short notice. Before she knew it she was sailing on the RMS Histria, in the thick of the life on board. With the intrigues and love triangles going on around her, she marveled at the potential for murderous plots on such a voyage. “It’s a good thing,” she told the ship’s detective, “that a liner at sea is the worst place for killing someone. Too confined to do it undetected, and you can’t get away afterwards.” Then one ...

Death falls out of the sky While Daisy and Darren roamed the countryside around Bottomleigh House in their faithful little car, they chanced upon a small airfield called Gremian Hill, which caught their fancy at once. They were told by members of the local parachuting club that a blind person or a paraplegic too could skydive, and they became regulars to find out more. But soon tragedy struck, a parachute failed to open and one of their new friends fell to her death under suspicious circumstances. What’s more, the chutes were kept under lock and key in a special shed, so sabotage seemed ...

It all started with a scream in the night Then there were blood splatters on the rug. There was a murder, it seemed, but no corpse. And two of the hotel’s guests went missing. Which one was the victim, and which one the killer? In the absence of a dead body, could the whole thing be a hoax? Especially as the Manor Hotel was hosting the ‘Murder Convention’, a periodic gathering of mystery writers. So was this a macabre game or... the perfect crime? No shortage of candidates to tackle the case, with some guests putting their oar in according to their own pet theories; the police in the ...

Welcome to Finding Neutral, the hardest part about motorcycle riding! Join us on our podcasting journey and hear us ramble on about motorcycles and our riding stories, all with a comedic twist.

Nur aus großen Konflikten können wahre Helden hervorgehen. Die Galaxis steht in Flammen und ein Krieg unvorstellbaren Ausmaßes zerreißt das Imperium. Die Champions des Licht und der Dunkelheit betreten das Schlachtfeld, um für ihre Herren zu kämpfen. Sie bitten nicht um Gedenken oder Ehren – sie wollen sich einfach nur in ihr Schicksal stürzen, denn nur so können sie erfahren, was die unbekannte Zukunft für sie bereithält.

Auf Befehl des Kriegsherrn Horus brennt die gesamte Galaxis und jeden Tag verlieren Millionen Menschen ihr Leben. Doch einst stand der Titel des Kriegsherrn für Ehre, Loyalität und den grimmigen Stolz auf die Stärke der Space-Marine-Legionen. Vielleicht lässt sich etwas Licht in dieses Dunkel bringen, indem man den unzähligen Fäden des Schicksals und des Widerstands folgt, die sich schon immer um die Primarchen und ihre Söhne rankten. Vielleicht lässt sich so die Bitterkeit verstehen, die selbst an der standhaftesten Seele nagt.

Die Vision einer strahlenden Zukunft, die der Imperator für die Menschheit hatte, liegt in Schutt und Asche. Horus’ Rebellion breitet sich in die hintersten Winkel des Imperiums aus und erfasst beinahe täglich neue Welten und Systeme. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird die Frage laut: Waren die Zeichen schon immer da? Nur eines ist sicher - die Galaxis wird nie wieder Frieden kennen, weder in diesem Zeitalter noch in tausend anderen...