395vas - Jinx In Hell - More Memories

Jinx in Hell More Memories Jim Vassilakos ([email protected]) urcas can’t help but grin. “I think I like this mother of yours.” “She had her moments.” “So when she was gone…all you had were your zombies?” “I had myself,” Jinx glares at Furcas. “And I had all the hills to wander, from daybreak to dusk, though always one of them would accompany me. If I was not back by nightfall, all of them would come looking. Somehow, they always knew how to find me. Even when I would jump over this one gorge so as to lose the one who would follow me, they could sense where I had gone.” “No running away from home, eh?” “I remember once…I did leave the tower overnight. It had been a long time since my mother had visited me, and for some reason I thought that if I looked for her toward the land of humans, that I might find her. In any case, I was bored, and I wanted to explore.” “What happened?” “I found some travelers. I could smell their campfire. It was after dusk, and I knew that the zombies would already be on their way toward me, but I didn’t care. I heard a woman’s voice among them, and so thinking that it might be my mother, I snuck in closer to see who they were, so close that I could hear the crackling of their fire, and I could see several of them, but my mother wasn’t among them. As I tried backing out, I must have made a noise, because one of them saw me, and he ran up and grabbed me by my clothes. ‘What a dirty little thing’ he said. Well, I had learned the human tongue well enough to know what that meant, so I swung at him with my dagger, but he took it from me, and before I knew it, I was in the middle of their camp. There were seven of them altogether, three men, three women, and a small boy, although he was probably a year or two older than me.” Furcas grins, “So your mother came along and turned them all into zombies?” “No, no…they were asking me my name when my zombie, the one who had followed me, attacked. He put a sword though the gut of the one whose hands were on me, but they drew their weapons and cut the zombie to pieces. After that, they tried to mend their friend’s wounds, but he was cut deep, and they had no healer, so they finally decided that they had to stay there.” “Did they ask you about the zombie?”

“Oh yes,” Jinx nods. “But I was too afraid to answer,” she grins, remembering vividly how she had cried out for her mother. “I had never been at the mercy of humans before. I thought that they would carve me up and have me for dinner. Finally, one of the women told the men to shut up. She took me in her arms to protect me. Her skin was so warm. It felt good to be there.” “But eventually the rest of your zombies showed up,” Furcas predicts. “Good guess,” Jinx stretches out her arms, arching her back slightly off the couch. “So what about your childhood?” “I grew up in a palace,” he says. “It was situated on a lake of fire and blood, a sort of carnage soup.” “So what of your parents? Were they the king and queen of this palace?” “Oh no,” he smiles. “Hardly. There was one called Beelzebub. My parents would refer to him as ‘Bubba’ when nobody was around to hear them.” “Nobody except you, apparently.” “Indeed. I had learnt to have a way with the darkness, even when I was young, and I could blend myself into shadow so completely that none could discern my presence…not even my mother who knew well of my gift, for she had it herself.” “What was her name?” Furcas’ eyes narrow, looking toward Jinx as one might regard a buzzing insect. “You did not tell me your mother’s name.” “Thanks to this wine, I can’t even remember it,” Jinx retorts. “Hmm…forgive me if I find that rather hard to believe.” “So you’re not going to tell me?” Furcas rolls his eyes, “Alright. Her name was Lilis. And since I expect you will soon get around to asking, my father’s name was Phongor.” “Phongor and Lilis,” Jinx rolls the names from her tongue, their sound strangely familiar to her ears, although she can’t quite recall why. “What did they do at the palace?” “Their jobs? They gathered information, my father as the Grand Inquisitor. As for my mother, she was much more than merely his consort. She would go forth from the palace, sometimes as an emissary of Beelzebub, other times for other purposes. Her ability to move unseen must have accounted for this.” “And what about you?”

“I learned from them both,” Furcas admits, “although my ability to lurk unseen often allowed me to learn from others as well.” “To lurk in the shadows?” “To become like a shadow,” he corrects. “For within shadows, there is the greatest truth. For my mother, it was from shadow where she heard the most secret whispers. For my father, it was the shadowy layer of the soul which interested him most, for there is concealed one’s darkest, truest self.” “These things interested you?” “No…they fascinated me, for most think of shadow only as a place of death or the absence of light, but it is so much more. I think it is the very reason my parents came to the Hells, although they did not know it at the time.” “I don’t understand.” “Your mother never told you the tale of the first GodsWar?” “I doubt she even told me her name,” Jinx replies, still trying to bring it to mind. “It was a rebellion long ago executed by the elder gods and their minions against the one they call the Light, who was their father.” “Was it successful?” “We are here, are we not? One of the Light’s sons, some would say his favorite, was named Lucifer. It was he who led my parents among others to the Hells.” Furcas blinks at the last of his words, as though his mind were suddenly flooded by an overwhelming rush of memories. “So how did this Beelzebub end up in charge of everything?” “He had overthrown Lucifer before I was born, imprisoned his essence and tapped it to magnify his own powers.”1 “Why did this rebellion happen in the first place?” “The Light was a tyrant in disguise. He preached harmony but would tolerate nothing save complete obedience. To test this obedience, he set his offspring against one another, all the while telling them to play nicely. Apparently he seemed to do this for his own amusement, although to Lucifer he professed it to be for a higher purpose.” 1

Jinx’s memory of this conversation is later psychically edited, and what she is made to remember of this sentence is as follows: “He had overthrown Lucifer before I was born, cast him from the Hells entirely, and left him as a nomad amongst the planes.” “Did he go back to his father to seek redemption?” “I don’t know,” he replies. “Neither did my parents. Now that I think about it, I doubt that even Beelzebub knew the answer to that one.” This is, however, a lie, and it is done because Lucifer’s imprisonment is a state secret.

“What purpose?” “Look into that shadow and tell me what you see,” Furcas says, pointing to the shifting shadow of his own arm against the lights dancing above. “I don’t understand.” “Look at it. What do you see?” “I see…the shadow of your arm. It is darker than the rest of the table. So what?” “As the shadow to the light, so you are to me, or so the Light said to Lucifer.” Jinx ponders this for a moment, not quite knowing what to make of it. “I don’t get it.” “Neither did he. He thought that the Light was mocking him, calling him, at best, an insubstantial nothing, worth nothing and signifying nothing. Some years after the rebellion, before I was born, my father had formed an alternate hypothesis, but by then, of course, the time for mentioning it had passed.” “What sort of hypothesis?” “Within shadow there is the greatest truth,” Furcas repeats. “Just as my shadow is an aspect of myself, a perspective if you will, so too were the Light’s sons and daughters to him. By examining their character, he was learning his own…or so goes the theory.” “Your father’s theory?” “He told me that Lucifer’s mind descended into madness, like a stone plummeting to the bottom of a great ocean. He became the very tyrant that he had once accused the Light of being. Thus it was that Beelzebub came to power, because Lucifer’s former followers had enough of it and could stand no more.” Jinx ponders the story for a long moment, the gulf of silence widening to the corners of the room until the only sound she can hear is the steady rhythm of her heart. “It’s an odd story,” she finally surmises. “Yes,” Furcas grins, “you tell me about a few humans getting whacked by some zombies, and in exchange, I tell you the history of the multiverse. This hardly seems to me a fair game that we are playing. It is your turn to talk now, and you shall continue talking until what I have heard equals what you have heard.” “You order me around like I am your consort.” “Perhaps you are,” Furcas smiles, his eyes lingering on her somewhat hopefully. “If I were, I think we would sense it.” “Instead of talking so much about the present, of which we know nothing, tell me more about your past. The present, I think, will come to us in its own time.”

Comments on A&E #394:

Myles Corcoran: Thanks for mentioning http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/al ttext/2008/06/alttext_0618. It was even more fun than all the soft-core porn you courteously included. Lee Gold: ryct Marco re you telling Barry that he didn’t have the right to die: Now, that’s love.  Since you mentioned the LASFS website (in your comment to Brian Misiaszek), I had to have a peek and happened across the photo of one Lee Klingstein. What’s that on your shoulder? Brian Misiaszek: Good description in your WFRP write-up. Great dialogue between the characters. I think I mentioned something last issue about not having a strong sense of people’s campaigns, but now I have to eat my words, as this is an excellent writeup. Well done. However, as for the “mechanical advantage” pulley trick with the rope, I think I would have had them take a luck roll to see if the rope would break. Nonetheless, being on the outside, Anita could have used her sword to either break or pry off the door’s hinges. Just a thought for next time, as it might be amusing to see how the party reacts when their well thought-out plan comes to naught. Also, you call Daniel’s hunter Rivendill in the character list and, at one point, Rivendell in the actual write-up, but this is a minor nit. Just thought I’d call your attention to it. Perhaps the reason it caught my eye was that it reminded me of Tolkein’s Rivendell. Possibly it wasn’t the best choice as a character name.2 Finally, about Tomaz’s outburst at Gerhard, at first it appeared to me to be something of one character trying to rub-it-in-the-nose of another, and I suppose it still does, at least on a superficial level, however, I was forced to remind myself that Tomaz was, of course, correct. What happened happened as a result of his actions. However, Tomaz could have presumably reached out and stopped Gerhard from conducting himself as he did in the incident in question. But he apparently chose not to, decided it wasn’t worth his effort, or otherwise floundered his opportunity. Hence, his outburst does seem a bit of after-the-fact “I told you so, even though I did so only barely.” But having said that, I think it is true that people, back in the day, got upset at each other over what to us may seem fairly trivial matters, such as somebody stealing a loaf of bread or someone stepping on a stick and thus scaring away the deer. Today, we more or 2

A choice which I assume is attributable to the player of the character in question. Now, if the character had been named Imladris or Karningul, we would have a different situation entirely.

less drink beers and laugh3, but back then, even the high crime of stepping on a stick could carry a severe penalty: starvation. Nature herself, it seems, our common mother, so to speak, is merciless. And hence, it would seem that Tomaz’s outburst at Gerhard is justified, for any action, however small, that can destroy us must be dealt with.4 But by not dealing with it forcefully from the very beginning, by physically stopping Gerhard or by at least extenuating his objection, Tomaz betrays his uncertainty, and thus his forceful words at the end seem just a tad overwrought. I recall that somewhere in the Bloody Ardy rules, it seems to me that there’s a calendar day where the unburied dead rise from where they lay upon the earth, envious of the living, enraged at the torment of their existence, their souls bound to rotting corpses, their hunger unknowable. At least, that’s my personal take. I’m to understand from somewhere that the Latins of old, the Romans, used to believe something like this.5 Now, I don’t know much about Warhammer, but if I were GMing, and they just left the corpse out there at the suggestion of a particular party member, I might roll some luck dice and see if it decided to rise sometime later to take vengeance before the final rest. All in all, this is the sort of stuff that I prefer to read in A&E, although inserting a map of the area would have also helped. If I had an Ethereal Familiar for Excellence in Roleplaying, I’d consider bestowing one upon you.6 Lisa Padol: re your comment “Jinx categorizes Cedric as someone who doesn’t matter”: Both true and false. To Jinx, Cedric is your run-of-the-mill mage, one who has grown old and overly-cautious and is thus difficult to motivate. She’s met more then a few during her storied career, and while she doesn’t harbor ill-will toward such personalities, she tends to view them as “has-beens”. Nonetheless, notice that she respects Cedric enough not to lie to him. In fact, she was practically doing cartwheels in order to avoid lying, and as Cedric, I was doing everything I could to pin her down…in essence, to force her to lie. I found it interesting to see 3

I wonder when was the last time someone was actually, literally prosecuted for stealing a loaf of bread. 4 This, it seems to me, is perhaps why it is in the nature of some people to become angry over political speech with which they disagree. It is because “stupid” voters, or rather simply improperly-focused tribe-members, are an impediment to one’s survival, which, of course, was Heinlein’s point, as it seems to be Louis’, although they would each go about achieving a solution to this problem by different means. Ah, but I digress. 5 Clarification, anyone? 6 Perhaps someone should establish just such a prize.

how Jinx’s player navigated the scene, as what Cedric was asking for, simply to converse with his niece, seemed perfectly within reason. He would be remiss to insist upon anything less. Jinx, however, didn’t want this to happen…and for reasons that should be fairly obvious to the reader. (“Hi, Uncle. Oh, I’m fine. ‘Where’ve I been,’ oh…Jinx has me quartered in some ArchNecromancer’s fortress in Hell, but aside from all the devils and undead standing guard everywhere, everything’s pretty much dandy.”) Often, as GMs, we confront characters with adversity, and then we watch them try to squirm their way to safety, whether this involves combat, dialogue, or simply hiding in shadows. However, how often do we put characters into a situation where they have complete control over the scene, where they are so powerful that their will, whether morally constrained or not, decides the outcome in nearly each and every detail? I think this is a useful exercise and one particularly easy to justify with “high-level” characters, as it’s in these moments of powerfulness that characters will often show their true colors. They must then decide what it is that interests them. That said, of course, it would obviously make for a boring campaign if every scene were such a cakewalk. But for a certain type of characterization, I think such scenes are useful. Re your Aldea overview: RAE. It sounds like it would be a fun setting as well as good source from which to loot ideas. I especially like the notion of a sentient or quasi-sentient magic item (the Blue Rose Scepter) essentially controlling access to the highest class as well as the identity of the ultimate ruler. After seeing the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD, I became rather enamored of way the palantir were used in the story, and the thought occurred to me of what could be an interesting fantasy setting. What I imagined was a world where some number of magical orbs fall from the sky, scattering randomly upon the landscape and in the ocean. Each orb serves as a psychic conduit to a powerful, alien being. These beings (gods) can cast powerful magic and control lesser beings (mortals) though these orbs, and they are, for the most part, of differing moral persuasions (alignments). Each orb, therefore, seeks a champion or wizard-king which it controls directly, as in the intellect of the god inhabiting that individual so long as they are in close proximity to the god’s orb. Likewise, any who come into close proximity to an orb are likely to become controlled by the god, and any who touch an orb are certain to be controlled by that god. Now, these gods are all aware of one another, and they are all playing a sort of game to see who can dominate the others. Each wish to imprison the others, and the way that this typically happens is that the

society that discovers one of these orbs is driven to war against the others. Upon the subdual or destruction of one society by another, the victor takes the conquered orb (careful not to touch it), and places in molten lava, or buries it in a pile of festering dung, or so on and so forth, where the losers must reside in a state of torment and humiliation until the end of the contest. I could see the greater devils of the Jinx campaign playing such a game, destroying worlds for their amusement, the inhabitants, to them, like ants. Yes, to them, Cedric wouldn’t matter at all. Brian Rogers: Excellent Harry Potter write-up. As I’ve only seen the first of the movies and haven’t read any of the books, I’m probably not your target audience, but I found Dumbledore’s “odd speech” truly inspired, and I very much enjoyed Professor Night’s class (even the swooning was interesting). As for the personal feud, at first I thought that trying to magically strangle the object of one’s animosity, purely as a practical joke, mind you, was perhaps just a tad bit extreme, even for a spoiled brat (although, I suppose this all depends on the degree of spoilage), but then I realized that the scarf was only strangling Juliet’s head, not her neck. I’m going to have to read your submissions more carefully from now on, but suffice it to say that this was an exceedingly strong submission, and even though I’m probably about the furthest thing from your target audience, I found myself quite taken up with the characters. More of the same, please…and more dialogue, if you can manage to squeeze it in. On the subject of Sulu: This seems a tad too political to answer here. Please see my personal/political blog (specifically the entry for July 21st).7

7

http://jim-vassilakos.livejournal.com