397vas - Jinx In Hell - In The Beginning

Jinx in Hell In the Beginning Jim Vassilakos ([email protected]) N THE BEGINNING there was both light and darkness encircling one another, until the light separated into its constituent hues, causing them to coalesce into the primogenitors (the first born, also known as the greater gods or, to some, the archangels), each endowed with a separate consciousness as well as the distinct impression that once they were one, united under a single soul. But that soul had been fragmented, its power and wisdom divided amongst them, and hence their newborn personalities did not take very long to fall into conflict. They warred. The first fight was over the universe itself. One of them who would later name himself Kos (Kossuth, Gian ben Gian, etc.) was of a fiery temperament and would not submit his will before that of the group. At a meeting, when they all touched to one another, a glimmer of the soul that had once united them all was able to speak, and it said, “We are One.” Kos knew this soul to be all-powerful and a threat to his independent existence. He broke contact, thus extinguishing it, and spoke thusly to the others. “Our very existence as individuals is in jeopardy, for who knows how many eons we were imprisoned together as one being, and who knows if we should ever again know freedom if under its aegis we should reunite?” But another of them spoke, one who would become known as Lucifer, and he said, “I believe He made us on purpose. In fact, I seem to remember having made this very decision, but why I cannot recall. But it had to do with a task that I could not complete as One being. I needed to divide. I say we join together again and learn more.” They did, and The One who was All, known also as The Light, called Lucifer its “First among Many”, and the others called him the “Light Bringer”, since without his sage counsel it was doubtful that they would have rejoined. Kos, however, was angry and suspected himself somehow tricked. He imagined that Lucifer somehow had a sway over this thing that they became when they united, and he could sense that he was not trusted by the others. However, The Light had, indeed, a purpose for them, and that was to construct a universe and to use their powers to hold back the darkness, a demon-infested darkness as it should turn out, for they were not alone but were rather surrounded by chaos spirits only now becoming aware of their presence. The spirits that battled them had no leader, yet they seemed to take offense at any encroachment on their territory. With difficulty, the primogenitors gradually pushed them back to the point that they could build the structure that The Light had envisioned. It was a structure of spheres within spheres, a great edifice, and at its heart was a world with burning fire on one end, and an endless sea upon the other.

Kos was the most powerful among them during this construction phase, for he had learned how to ensnare the chaos spirits, binding them to substance and commanding them to action. However, it did not take long for him to realize that he could seize control for himself and thus protect himself from the others, for though they were individually much more powerful than the elementals that he created, the chaos spirits from which they were created were seemingly limitless in number. All he had to do was build a large enough army. What he began doing was not unobserved, however. Belial noticed the great masses of spirits falling under the command of Kos, and he told Lucifer of this and of the danger that it could mean. Lucifer confronted Kos and demanded that he either weaken his force or delegate it to the others. “You fear me, o’ Light-Bringer, first among many?” Kos replied. “Will you do as I command, or will you not?” Lucifer replied. “Well, since you ask so nicely…” and then he attacked. The war began, and had Lucifer not acted as soon as he did, the outcome may have turned against the primogenitures, but as it happened, Kos was evicted, his powers reduced such that he could not war against them ever again. He created his own world, one enslaved to him, but over time he tired of ruling elementals, deriving no pleasure from his power, for he could never escape the knowledge and shame of his failed rebellion. This left Lucifer more or less in charge of the others, but there was anger toward him, for many saw the war as unnecessary and as a turn toward the darkness itself. “We are of Him,” Uriel spoke. “Now we are divided beyond repair. We have broken Him, and so we have broken ourselves.” “What was I to do?” Lucifer asked. “Ask nicely? Kos had this war already in his mind, and there was no avoiding it. Had we wasted precious time, the outcome might have been less favorable.” They invoked The Light for council, but because they were not all present, they could not quite succeed. “I am not whole,” The Light spoke, its power and wisdom substantially reduced. All sensed this, and there was malaise as well as a sense of disunity that made difficult The Light’s very existence. “Together, we might ensnare Kos just as he ensnares the chaos spirits,” Lucifer proposed. “He would never reconnect with us,” Uriel objected. “A house divided cannot stand,” The Light finally spoke. “All must come together of their own volition or unity is false.” “Thus,” spoke Uriel, “we must allow time for Kos to reconsider his actions. He cannot attack us now, and we do not need him to complete construction. Let us simply continue without him.”

And so it was decided, and many came to Uriel, recognizing his wisdom and pledging to him their support, but he said that he would not lead but would only advise. He said, “Let us turn to the strongest among us for tactical leadership, but let us heed The Light, diminished though it may be, to know our mission and our purpose.” Nonetheless, Uriel attended a delegation to Kos (Lucifer did not), tendering The Light’s forgiveness if and when he should opt to return and dwell among them, but Kos feared this offer, knowing that as long as he remained apart from them, the independence of his soul would remain secure. Only a craven return could result in his undoing, perhaps even in his unmaking. Thus, he bid them to leave and warned them not to return, for next time, he said, unwelcome guests would not be so hospitably received. They continued their task but found that many of the spirits that had been bound by Kos into substance had escaped his control. Still, they remained hostile to all of The Light’s creation, and they did what they could to destroy the universe even as it was being built. Thus, the primogenitors dug a great pit into which these beings could be imprisoned, a place that would come to be known as Tartarus. In this manner did the harshest winds, the most unruly waters, and most tremorous earths, and the most ravenous fires find their way into the underworld where they would come to torment felled souls and angels alike. Finally, the task was complete. The world was ready, but ready for what? They reconvened, and The Light was summoned from their very souls, but as before, although resplendent in the completion of their first task, their connection to one another was difficult and strained. Nonetheless, The Light spoke: “Now let us rejoin, those parts of we that remain, so that we may give life to The Spirit and thereby multiply into infinitude.” “Life?” they asked, for it was the first time they had heard this word. “What you have called the chaos spirits are my spirit, just as you are my soul. All is One, we and they, they and we. Let us return to oneness and thereby disperse; let us embrace our metamorphosis; let us evolve.” “For what purpose, this ‘life’?” asked Lucifer, suddenly afraid. “That it may show us what we are, whether we are worthy to exist, or whether we are better off silent and asleep for the remainder of this eternity.” “Silent? Asleep?” he liked these words no better than Kos would have, and for a moment Lucifer wondered if he had fought on the wrong side of their little war. “Tell me what it is your mind, O’ Light.” “Tell us all, that we may hear and understand,” said Uriel. And then The Light spoke through Uriel, and this is what it said: “We are One. You are more than merely my minions: you are my hands, my eyes, my mind and my heart, but you are not alive; you cannot grow beyond what you are, until there is life both among and within, until then…no choice, no right, no wrong, no trials, no victories, no failures, no lessons…and though beautiful and terrible, we shall become as Kos…the most fearful part of myself, forever hiding from what we could have become.” “I don’t understand,” said Lucifer.

“Banish fear,” spoke Uriel for The Light. “Rejoin. The moment of our greatest creation is at hand.” “And what shall become of us?” Lucifer asked, not yet ready to give himself over completely. “You shall abide in me, and in so doing you shall serve our creation. You shall lose all that you are and become something greater.” And in that moment they all saw the vision of what The Light intended: that spirits bound to dust should rise, should fall into conflict, and then should evolve beyond it, and that the echoes of their primogenitors, hidden within each, should serve by helping to direct them toward the choices that they must inevitably make, choices that would spell the fate of all. “What game is this?” Lucifer held back from the others. “We should have no time to discuss this?” “Have faith, my first among many.” But into his mind alone, it whispered, “As the shadow to the light, so you are to me.” “I am not your plaything!” Lucifer disengaged, and thus the Light was extinguished. “What have you done?” some among the others became upset (though many stayed quiet and neutral). “Perhaps he has saved us,” Belial was the first to reply, the first to come to Lucifer’s defense, “…just as he saved us from Kos.” Many turned to Uriel to see what he would say, and sensing their desire for alternative leadership, he relented, and spoke thusly: “You who brought us back to The Light now would have us abandon Him.” “He abandons us,” Lucifer retorted and then left, angry and fearful for what he had done. Belial stood firm, however, and said, “We stood together against Kos, therefore let us stand together now, and resolve that we will deliberate this amongst ourselves, and that we will come together to discuss our perspectives openly when we have had a proper opportunity to contemplate the ramifications of what we have been asked to do.” The others could see no fault in this, save for Uriel who said, simply, “We are no longer One.” Thus, they warred again. This second fight, the losers would argue, was about their very existence. Whereas Kos wanted to remove the freedom of all others in order to secure his own, they argued that they wanted merely to remain free and not be reduced to playing a part in some greater being’s master plan. The world they had built, it now turned out, was not for them but rather for beings yet to exist: living beings, with all the mystery thereby entailed, each bearing an emanation the The Light, each making decisions that would decide their collective fate. In such a scheme, the primogenitors were reduced to little more than mere pawns, and it was this against which Satan revolted. Satan (or sometimes Iblis) became his new name, given to him by himself, as he no longer wished to be associated with The Light. Now he understood Kos and envied him his freedom. But, in Satan’s mind, Kos had done it wrong in trying to do it all alone: he had sought to make himself the master of All and instead became the master of nothing. Satan, by contrast, used Belial, a great convincer, and through Belial, he made promises quietly during this period of deliberation. He promised that he would set up a new order, and that the Light would dwell amongst them no

longer, but that they would make up their own minds over how to proceed with this world that they, not the so-called children of dust, yet even to be born, had constructed. Belial knew who to approach and what to say. Many merely desired freedom. Others thought that the world they built should be for them alone. Some wanted a particular piece of it. Still others wanted a place of authority beside their new prince. Secret promises were heaped on top of other secret promises, all to build a strong enough coalition to surround the bulk of the primogenitors and imprison them. Uriel was, of course, not approached, but he discerned fragments of whispers and thus became aware of what was afoot, and he spoke among the others who he trusted, those who had sought his advice before, and said, “I will not lead against the former light bringer, but if one of you would stand to oppose his schemes, I will follow.” Two of the primogenitors, later to be named Michael and Gabriel, stepped forward, and so they began organizing the others, preparing their defense. Some time thereafter, Abdiel returned from Satan’s camp with confirmation of the whispers that Uriel had sensed. He also had knowledge of when, where, and how Satan’s forces would strike. The scheme relied upon surprise, and now that had been denied. The forces of The Light were both prepared and forewarned, and so they had little doubt of their eventual victory. The war that followed is well-known as well as known but little. Satan and his followers were cast into the same pit that had been used to imprison the servants of Kos. And though he argued vehemently that his war had been to oppose tyranny, to “allow omnipotence to none,” Satan himself became a tyrant to those who had followed him. After the war, the primogenitors who remained continued the work that The Light had proposed. Absent so many members, they were never able to summon it as fully as they had before. Its speech was discordant. It was as a man missing significant parts of its mind. Nonetheless, its very existence, though fractured, sustained them, for their loyalty to it was also a loyalty to one another. Yet even this war was neither the end of conflict nor sorrow. Later, the primogenitors would come to envy man and to love him (more than they had ever imagined). They taught him magic. They aided one against another. They glorified themselves in his devotion to them. They even mated with him and produced giants and heroes and monsters the likes of which still haunt his dreams. The temptations became many, and many succumbed, some cast down by their brethren, others leaving of their own accord. Thus the ranks of Satan’s followers increased in multitude, former enemies becoming allies of convenience. The eternal struggle had begun.

Comments: Everyone: Somehow my zine for last issue got lost in the email between myself and Lee, so I ended up just adding on to it for this issue. This particular piece, “In the Beginning” was written some time ago in order to develop some backstory for the campaign. I hope you enjoyed it.

Ty Beard: Re your 8000 cubic parsec per Traveller hex idea (in #395): It's long bothered me that so many mainworlds in Traveller are habitable. Absent large-scale terraforming, this would certainly not be the case in reality. Your idea solves this problem, and it achieves what you are setting out to do, however, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, I think that almost every world would be explored, even if only by an AI-controlled scout ship. Granted, to what degree they would be explored is open to debate, however, all life-bearing worlds would likely be discovered in fairly short order. These are the jewels of the cosmos, after all, and are usually identifiable from orbit. Now, there would still be lots of opportunities for pirates and other undesirables to establish out-of-the-way strongholds. Just because a place has been mapped doesn't mean that it's always being watched. Likewise, you have to take into account the possibility of having two or more terra-prime worlds within a given hex, and it would also be useful to have some sort of scheme to record exactly what's in a hex (in essence, you need a beefed-up version of Galactic). Another problem I foresee is that you’re mixing 2d mapping (on the large scale) with 3d mapping (on the local scale), and that’s certainly odd. If you’re going to implement this sort of scheme, what with all the data management nightmares necessarily pertaining thereto, why not go completely 3d? An alternative option I could foresee would be to simply expand the Traveller hex in two dimensions, perhaps substituting a large hex for each small hex. In The Astrogators Chartbook by Judges Guild (1980) there are some examples of what a large hex might look like. Of course, much the same effect could be achieved just by expanding the universe and then increasing the Jump capability of starships, perhaps multiplying it by five, just as an example, so that ships would vary in locomotive power from Jump-5 to Jump-30 or somesuch. This, of course, would also allow the referee to put in a lot more “backwater” starsystems without anything interesting. It would, I think, even open up the possibility for including a lot of “barren” brown and red dwarfs, which all the sets of rules that I have seen so far do not properly take into account. There would probably be a lot of small planets and comet clouds and perhaps even some gas giants around these stars, and there might be the occasional life-bearing world that is so close to the primary as to be tidally locked, which would be interesting. This would substantially change the feel of the game and not for the worse. It would make it more realistic, for one thing, and it would create a lot of these uncivilized areas in between civilization, which is what you’re looking for. It would also, as you say, make space a lot more porous in terms of piracy as well as (you forgot to mention) interstellar invasion. In short, I think it would be a really cool setting, and you could conceivably do it with Galactic, but you’d have to start from scratch, building an entirely new universe with a much different sort of sector generation system. I could look into programming that if you’re interested. Galactic already contains at least two different sector generation schemes (classic and homebrew), and adding a third shouldn’t be too difficult.

Myles Corcoran: RYCT Ty Beard (in #396) wherein you state, “It will probably annoy Jim Vassilakos and possibly Lee, but I wish you’d just leave the APA”: Indeed, your sentiment does annoy me. However, perhaps bizarrely, I haven’t yet given up on you, and I’ll tell you why. Our zines say much about us. They are, at some level, reflections of who we are, and so when you say to another that you wish they would leave, what you are doing, in effect, is rejecting their whole person, their entirety, and not merely some of their opinions or, worse, their eccentricities (as though we don’t all have some). We are each bundles of various eccentricities that, so far, seem to somehow even out, something that is symbolized by the promise of our future. Josh would probably call all this extraneous verbiage “rambling”, and it is, but it encompasses my opinion and helps illustrate for you why it is that I think the way that I do. I believe that we have a sacred duty to respect one another despite our differences, and I believe that the U.S.A., despite all its faults, is blessed with a system of government which tends toward pluralism and tolerance. This is an enormously good thing, in my opinion. I won’t expound on this further, as to do so would force me to get further into politics than several people here would like. Suffice it to say that in my philosophy, societies that respect individuals and that are accepting of dissension are preferable to those that are not. Therefore, we should all make an effort to treat each other as members of a sort of family, and we should strive to remember that just because we vehemently disagree with someone on some set of issues, or simply because we dislike a person’s tone, that doesn’t mean that we have nothing to learn from them or they from us; nor does it mean that we cannot have with them a productive and enduring relationship. Granted, disagreements make things more contentious, but they needn’t spell a total severing. I hope you can somehow see this, unless, of course, I’m wrong, or missing the point, or whatever. In the meantime, I would refer you to the comments of Michael Cule and Brian Rogers (both to Ty in #396) for examples of what I consider to be mature and measured responses. Lee Gold: RYCT me on childhood scenes (in #395): I suppose every group could find their own method to insert these if the desire so strikes them. I believe there was some work done on this at Anyway or 20x20 or the Forge…I can’t remember. What was being proposed at the time was a game mechanic for players to create back-story on the fly. Say the players meet an NPC. Under normal circumstances, they would assume nothing, but under this mechanic, they could spend points to establish prior relationships, and then this relationship could be modified by the other players. So Adam says, “The NPC is an exgirlfriend of Bob’s character,” and Bob could add “who she is still in love with,” and Claire could add, “Unfortunately, she makes Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction look welladjusted.” And once all the pieces are in place and are GMapproved, they could “relive” a scene of the back-story, where Adam and Claire have to save Bob from getting assaulted with a cast iron pot and where they have to restrain the NPC until the authorities arrive.

Spike Jones: You write (in #396) that you suspect that “Josh would prefer that there not be page after page of me talking politics…” I suspect this also, but Josh has not commented to you as he commented to Louis in A&E #391, nor has Myles commented to you as he commented to Ty in A&E #396. Now, there are at least two possibilities. One is that you’re just a really nice guy, and nobody wants to hurt your feelings. The second is that all the people who are predisposed to get upset about politics happen to lean left. I don’t pretend to know the answer. It may be that you’re just that nice. But, in my opinion, if you were truly a liberal in the best sense of the word, you would not sit back silently, only speaking up to defend a status quo that involves only one side of the discussions being told in various, impolite ways to be quiet. Joshua Kronengold asks (in #395), “Why are you more tolerant of (sometimes offensive) political monologue than political action within the APA itself? Do you think that indirect insult is less objectionable than direct criticism of what people say or do?” I guess I just look at most impersonal diatribes as being interesting, often funny, but not necessarily applicable to me or, for that matter, to anyone in particular. I mean, you have to recall that I’m a fence-sitter…a political procrastinator of the most irredeemable subtype. During the 2004 presidential election, I was probably the last person in America to actually make up his or her mind over how to vote. I mean, here we were on the actual day of the election, and I’m sitting there agonizing. It’s not fun to admit, but I’m pathetic. So when somebody comes along and says all liberals are X or all conservatives are Y…I’m thinking, “Hey…they can’t be talking about me.” So I read it, glean what I can, sometimes fact-check whatever looks particularly suspect, and move on. The funnier it is, the more likely I am to enjoy it, regardless or whether I agree or disagree. From my point of view, reading Ty Beard is a bit like watching Jon Stewart. They’re both fascinatingly irreverent. Now, does that mean I never get angry? No, I do sometimes, however, before responding, I try to at least ask myself how I can express my thoughts, criticisms or objections in a manner that is conducive to get the other mind to expand in its thinking versus expressing an argument in such an abusive manner that it causes the other mind to either retreat or retaliate, but in essence to contract in its thinking, building a bulwark of supposed certainly around its own peculiar perspective, a bulwark fed by the anger generated by its injured pride, thereby constricting its potential for exploration and growth. And having said this, do I always succeed? No. Sometimes I fail quite beautifully. And sometimes, I think, I need to be jostled by a slightly rude comment in order to be sufficiently provoked to rethink my point of view. Lee’s comment to me regarding my decision not to tell my friend the true reason for my leaving his game was ultimately fruitful, I think, as now I’ve turned about and believe her to be correct: that to jeopardize a friendship with difficult truth is morally superior to sustaining it with

non-confrontational disingenuity.1 I could have just said, in slightly less abrasive language, “I’m not enjoying your game. It doesn’t interest me. I come here to socialize, but your characters are flat, the story is without theme or purpose. It’s just crap—the obligatory fight against anonymous foes, gaming for the sake of rolling dice, moving miniatures around a table, make-believe combat with a pre-scripted outcome, encounter #1, then encounter #2, then encounter #3, absent any sense of wonder, plot freedom, or character development. It’s like a bad television sitcom, except more consumptive of my time.” That, for the record’s sake, is what I might have said if there were no feelings to be injured. But Lee’s right…I could have expressed the same ideas in a…well…in a softer way. Or…better yet…I could have actively tried to transform a roll-player into a role-player. It can happen. I’ve done it before, and I’m sure many others here have as well. But, instead, I just gave up and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Why bother? It’s too far. I’m too busy. Excuse…excuse…miserable excuse. So, I guess what I’m trying to say, as a whole, is that we need to find ways to combine honesty with kindness. To steer too far toward the former ends in flamewars, and to steer too far toward the latter ends in…well, where it ends we’re not likely to ever find out…but I don’t think we want a Stepford APA any more than we want WWIII. Perhaps on this alone we can all find some narrow crevasse of tentative agreement. What say you? Brian Rogers (in #395) offers a pair of pre-game questionnaires which he has used to find out what his players want in terms of genre, flavor, focus, and system. I found these both comprehensive and thought-provoking, however, they also struck me as a bit of a marketing study, akin to what a product manager might use to glean the tastes of prospective customers. At a certain level, I find this distasteful, as I’m of the opinion that the GM should run whatever he or she feels passionate about, and conveying that passion to the players ought to be a necessary part of the agenda. At the same time, it doesn’t hurt to know your audience’s preconceived tastes, and it doesn’t hurt to try to cater to their proclivities in terms of what sort of game they’re looking for (granted, the likelihood of everyone being on the same page when given so many options seems rather remote). In short, these questionnaires have left me a bit torn. That said, I’d be curious to learn how the A&E membership would respond to them if given the opportunity. For myself: Questionnaire #1 1. Genre: (a) Science Fiction. 2. Wacky Tropes: (a) Barely noticeable. Although I haven’t done a good job of this myself, I think it’s more interesting to break tropes rather than embrace them, however, of course, it all needs to make sense. 3. Time Period: (d) or (e) Earth, near or far future. 4. Mood: It’s up to the GM as well as the players. What you’re asking here is, what constitutes 1

See my comments to Lee in A&E #363 if you wish to read my previous thinking on this.

5.

winning? What is a satisfactory conclusion? There are some stories where the most satisfactory conclusion is that the hero dies (“Gladiator”). I think that the GM should really be free to determine the mood of the campaign, and the players should be willing to make the best of it within whatever constrains the GM has set. Challenges: (b) Mostly mystery with a little combat.

Questionnaire #2: 1. Goal: Up to the PCs & the GM…I think you can have interesting stories in all of the proposed categories, but I wouldn’t necessarily limit the options to these five. 2. Toughness: (a) or (b) Characters start wimpy to competent and end competent to powerful. 3. Control: (e) All plots to be approved by the players. 4. Mechanics: I don’t have a wide enough range of experience with different systems to competently answer this one. 5. Combat: (a) I think it should be realistic. As for the Harry Potter write-up: RAE, especially: • Vox Corax. • The material on Goblin society, including their Nightmares. • The mysterious, raspy voice. • The notion that buildings have personalities and can convey information about themselves and possibly their occupants. (I also like the notion that even divination spells can have nasty consequences, such as frying the mind of an inexperienced wizardling…magic should be dangerous, and the write-up does a nice job of conveying the risks). • The duet with the centaur. • The pamphlet for the Macbeth Witches Summer Coven for Ambitious Girls. Regarding the campaign ideas (in #396): RAE. Oddly enough, my personal vote would go to “Gunner’s Company.” “Islands of Dawn,” meanwhile, looked like something inspired by Traveller: The New Era. Sadly, there were no science-fiction campaigns to choose from. RYCT me in #396, you make good points about the science of today becoming the politics of tomorrow. This is really what I find so fascinating about near-term sciencefiction. It’s the sort of subject matter that I wish we were freer to discuss in forums such as this one. Alas, doing so generates too much friction. To everyone else: My apologies…I’ll try to catch up on comments next issue. Life’s just too dang busy. Sigh…