Offensiveness: Relative scale: 5/10, comedic, with some gruesome stuff at the very end. (Based on my writing. 1 is a a daily blog, 10 is slasher porn.)
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 • Haunted Castles Beat Treats, Part One
 • Haunted Castles Beat Treats, Part Two
 • Haunted Castles Beat Treats, Discussion

Haunted Castles Beat Treats was originally posted Halloween 1999 on Diabloii.net, and went on to be a run away best seller in Japan.  Well not really.  It's set on Halloween eve in the Diablo world, but has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot or events of any of the games.  It's just sort of an "inspired by" relationship.

HCBT tells the story of a family, Barbarian father and son, Amazon mother and daughter, out looking for some treats for the children, and their adventures in the dying town or Rottenstone, and then their exploration of a real life haunted castle. (Hence the title.)

This is by far the funniest fantasy tale I've ever written, but it's not silly, or funny in a "oh my god another bad pun" Xanth sort of way.  The humor comes from realistic character dialogue, and I'm not sure why I don't have more of that in my other tales since it's fun to write and I laughed out loud numerous times rereading it now, some years since I wrote it.

Check out the Discussion page after you read it, for info on initial story concepts, discussion of the humor and innocence in parts of it, and much more. You'll also want to read The Dark Lady, which is the sequel to this tale, starring all of the surviving characters.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.