Month: April 2021

The Economancer Chapter 12 – Bill the Butcher’s Answer

Previously on The Economancer, my morning commute was hijacked into the Soul of New York City by Boss Tweed, the City’s own personal spirit of greed.  He tricked me into accepting a job to evict Bill the Butcher, the closest thing the City has to a war god, from his home in the memory of the Five Points.  Unfortunately, since he basically kidnapped me, I didn’t have a chance to properly equip myself for the job. 

So now here I am in the Five Points, facing Bill the Butcher with my good luck charm, a gold double-eagle coin from his day, which was worth twenty dollars in his day (which of course bought a lot more than twenty dollars does now), is worth a lot more today, and in my hands is basically a nuke, which is why I carry something that valuable around with me. 

I’ve just given him his eviction notice.  He’s just metaphorically torn it up and thrown it back in my face.

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The Economancer Chapter 11 – Meeting Bill the Butcher

Bill the Butcher’s place was probably something he wanted to have when he was alive.  Powerful ghosts tend to do that to any spiritual real estate they control.  That made me think that the human man William Poole was in there somewhere, and not just the NYC version of a god of war.  He could still want things.

It was huge, the size of a modern warehouse.  Probably too big to exist in the Five Points in the mid-19th century.  It was a combined slaughterhouse and butcher shop, and I don’t think I need to go into any more detail than that.  It neither looked nor smelled pretty. 

Bill is hanging out near the door with a few of his buddies, all sitting on barrels and boxes and rickety wooden chairs.  I don’t need to guess or ask which one of them is Bill the Butcher.  I recognize him the same way I recognized Boss Tweed, which is the same way they recognize me, for that matter: there’s a sense of power that you just can’t mistake for anything else.  Some of the “men” in this group are ghosts, while others are just spirits that cling to a predator like Bill like they were remoras.  Bill doesn’t look any different than the others, just a 19th century working man in a leather apron and a handlebar mustache, but just beneath the surface is a thing made of hate and blades.     

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