We catch up with Barry X. Vampire in Urqhart, not far from Instabar on the Corsica continent atall. Like anyone who lives long enough, vampires obviously included, Barry has turned to novel writing to try to explain the inner life he sees mirrored in the outer life all around him. Recent killings in Instabar, actually, have planted the seeds for his next inspiration, centered on a *man* named Larch who was at the center of it all. In reading about the deaths in the local newspaper and then researching the guy, Barry X. quickly found out that the lone pick in his profile was the Loch Ness Inn in a Scottish Highland related sim, with the description simply reading, “Old Country.” Sounds like his kind of place. He teleports over…
… only to find lego people living in a stone cottage on a hill overlooking the world famous lock. The inn must have moved, Barry deduced wrongly. He decides to ask one of the composite creatures if they knew of a Mr. Larch. “*The* Larch,” came one of their squeaky voices, and then Barry told them of the murders, which they didn’t know about, this Winfield 5 and his husband-wife Winnie. They said they warned him not to go back and stay here in the Old Country and that one of their “type” would do him in eventually — they saw it in the tea leaves and the cards and several other divining methods down through the years now. “‘Who will do him in?'” Winfield 5 asked dramatically when recreating the scene, painting it in vivid, clown-like colors. “‘One of *you* lot,’ it always said back in its various forms,” he relayed. “So Winnie and I racked our brains and gnashed our teeth about this down through the years, wondering why we — one of us; *both* of us — would have any reason to kill our good and kind and trusted friend Mr. Larch. But: now we have our answer.”
“Yes,” quickly added Winnie by his side, obviously sad at the death of his friend but still greatly relieved to know what the scrying messages were about after all this time.
Barry X. turns to take in the view and think about lego people and creatures in general. A lego monster killed Larch and the rest of his neighborhood watch gang attending that meeting held at DC Universe, he ruminates while watching what he thought might be the Loch Ness monster itself float by the ruins of the castle below him but which turned out to only be a line of porpoises. The meaning to his mystery, he realized, may turn out to be just as elusive.
What was the name of that castle down there? He couldn’t recall right off. It hit too close to home.
Sunklands 