Wednesday nights, ~10pm EST.
Site: Oh, here is good. (NO, it's not finished yet.)
Game begins Wed, Nov. 29th. Finished PCs only (yes, this includes backgrounds).
Currently there are 3 prospective players (and 2 finished characters!). Five will be the maximum, first come first serve basis. See previous post and site link for more information. If a player can't make it, we can establish a waiting list thingy.
This has been a public service announcement. Regular floggings will resume shortly.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Sunday, November 26, 2006
RECKONINGS: an RPG campaign
The world of Urdu is old, the oldest thing in this incarnation of the universe, the point from which all else came into being. For billions of years people have lived and fought and died on it. Mighty empires have rose, fallen, rebuilt themselves, been ground into ashes by those who came after them Over all of this the gods have watched, sometimes playing games, sometimes now, feared and worshipped, they were pieces of the universe given form, powers beyond human ken who built their cities in the heavens from which to watch all that passed below them.
Until the Cataclysm. Until the terrible event over 300 winters ago when the heavens themselves fell down, destroying the entire southern continent, obliterating tracts of land and reshaping the world in a fury of fire and the death screams of the gods. Those who could Channel their power did so, in one last moment as the gods tried to halt their demise and failed. The ancient wizards, whose bargains with Mors and Arth'Ba'Toch failed as Death and Time died, passed on, and most magic in the world was lost or shattered by the loss of the gods.
The world has never recovered, though nothing has risen to replace them, no terrible Power come to claim the world as its own. There is only the loss, and the building of the new world from those terrible moments and the ashes of all that had come before.
Into these times come your characters, drawn to the city of Estavia (one of the few to have grown in strength when all the empires were shattered), a haven of modern alchemy trying to find new ways to do for people what the gods always did. You are, each, the relics of an old age, one of the families of those Gifted with magic who remain in the present age and have not been destroyed by the Hands from Bremen or died out due to inbreeding. Almost the last of those gifted, a three hundred year program to make Gifts strong enough to face down the remaining Wizards, but no one living knows why the Gifted families went this far, nor what was intended....
most believe it is the salvation of the world and the restoration of the gods.
Player info:
I plan to run this game very much in anime style. There should be lots of interpersonal conflicts, there'll be lost of conflict of other types, and PCs should get to do Cool Things.
Risus system, 12 dice. Each PC can have 4 dice (max.) in any cliche. Cliches can be increased from d6 to d8 or d10 via an extra die (said extra die does NOT count towards total dice in cliche). There must be at least 2 dice in a cliche to do this), so a PC could have Singing Gift (3d6), swordsmanship (3d8), Acrobatics (3d6) and Gambling (2d6) as cliches as an example.
A Gift is, basically, a single kind of magic. Fire, Water, Swordsmanship. That sort of thing. The Gifted families (one family, one gift) have been around for a long time, though no one knows how they came about. When a family dies out, their Gift is gone forever. A Gift is kept within a family, so inbreeding among cousins and siblings is the norm, since breeding with outsiders only leads to children with weak (or no) gifts.
Once the gods died, and terrible things like plagues and birth defects came into the world, the gifted have been fighting a long, losing battle. Few of any generation are whole in body and mind; fewer still have powerful gifts. Of your generation, you are one of at best five of your Family with a powerful gift, and have been sent to the city of Estavia and the Inn of the Lost Rainbow because of an agreement so old no one remembers it.
If one player takes a gift, no one else can. All PCs come from different Families. if you wish to play something other than a Gifted (or a Gifted Channeller/Wizard/Alchemist), talk to me. The following Gifts are not available for PCs: Shadow, Death, and Fire.
Other notes: magic can't be used to change people, save for alchemy (and even then, it is very limited in usefulness). There are no transformation gifts, no healing gifts and such. No Wizard spells for such either.
CRUNCHY BITS:
- You CAN adds hooks (2 max; 2 free dice maxiumum). (In fact, the GM encourages it.) A Hook, in this instance, counts as a character flaw (sworn vow, crippling thing etc.) (you get 1 die for every hook you have, 2 if it's a really severe hook.) You CAN get tails, via the risus rules, but only by supplying pic/drawing PC and more background than usual. (Normally, I'd except 1 pqage including bacckground, family the PC left, PCs family life -- did the famiytl breeding for gifts put engenics to shame? etc. -- and anything on PC personality. More would be, well, history of parents, some family lore/secrets or whatever.)
- PCs are human; there's no elves, sentient dogs etc. on this world.
- Think Cliche. That's how Risus works. More dice in a cliche is skill; increasing dicepool size is power. (This is a general rule, not specific)
- Keep in mind that there are items of magic etc. out there to increase power and the like available. PCs tend to be exceptions to rules. (For example, somerone with 2 gifts could be possible.) Invent cool Tricks for the pc.
Until the Cataclysm. Until the terrible event over 300 winters ago when the heavens themselves fell down, destroying the entire southern continent, obliterating tracts of land and reshaping the world in a fury of fire and the death screams of the gods. Those who could Channel their power did so, in one last moment as the gods tried to halt their demise and failed. The ancient wizards, whose bargains with Mors and Arth'Ba'Toch failed as Death and Time died, passed on, and most magic in the world was lost or shattered by the loss of the gods.
The world has never recovered, though nothing has risen to replace them, no terrible Power come to claim the world as its own. There is only the loss, and the building of the new world from those terrible moments and the ashes of all that had come before.
Into these times come your characters, drawn to the city of Estavia (one of the few to have grown in strength when all the empires were shattered), a haven of modern alchemy trying to find new ways to do for people what the gods always did. You are, each, the relics of an old age, one of the families of those Gifted with magic who remain in the present age and have not been destroyed by the Hands from Bremen or died out due to inbreeding. Almost the last of those gifted, a three hundred year program to make Gifts strong enough to face down the remaining Wizards, but no one living knows why the Gifted families went this far, nor what was intended....
most believe it is the salvation of the world and the restoration of the gods.
Player info:
I plan to run this game very much in anime style. There should be lots of interpersonal conflicts, there'll be lost of conflict of other types, and PCs should get to do Cool Things.
Risus system, 12 dice. Each PC can have 4 dice (max.) in any cliche. Cliches can be increased from d6 to d8 or d10 via an extra die (said extra die does NOT count towards total dice in cliche). There must be at least 2 dice in a cliche to do this), so a PC could have Singing Gift (3d6), swordsmanship (3d8), Acrobatics (3d6) and Gambling (2d6) as cliches as an example.
A Gift is, basically, a single kind of magic. Fire, Water, Swordsmanship. That sort of thing. The Gifted families (one family, one gift) have been around for a long time, though no one knows how they came about. When a family dies out, their Gift is gone forever. A Gift is kept within a family, so inbreeding among cousins and siblings is the norm, since breeding with outsiders only leads to children with weak (or no) gifts.
Once the gods died, and terrible things like plagues and birth defects came into the world, the gifted have been fighting a long, losing battle. Few of any generation are whole in body and mind; fewer still have powerful gifts. Of your generation, you are one of at best five of your Family with a powerful gift, and have been sent to the city of Estavia and the Inn of the Lost Rainbow because of an agreement so old no one remembers it.
If one player takes a gift, no one else can. All PCs come from different Families. if you wish to play something other than a Gifted (or a Gifted Channeller/Wizard/Alchemist), talk to me. The following Gifts are not available for PCs: Shadow, Death, and Fire.
Other notes: magic can't be used to change people, save for alchemy (and even then, it is very limited in usefulness). There are no transformation gifts, no healing gifts and such. No Wizard spells for such either.
CRUNCHY BITS:
- You CAN adds hooks (2 max; 2 free dice maxiumum). (In fact, the GM encourages it.) A Hook, in this instance, counts as a character flaw (sworn vow, crippling thing etc.) (you get 1 die for every hook you have, 2 if it's a really severe hook.) You CAN get tails, via the risus rules, but only by supplying pic/drawing PC and more background than usual. (Normally, I'd except 1 pqage including bacckground, family the PC left, PCs family life -- did the famiytl breeding for gifts put engenics to shame? etc. -- and anything on PC personality. More would be, well, history of parents, some family lore/secrets or whatever.)
- PCs are human; there's no elves, sentient dogs etc. on this world.
- Think Cliche. That's how Risus works. More dice in a cliche is skill; increasing dicepool size is power. (This is a general rule, not specific)
- Keep in mind that there are items of magic etc. out there to increase power and the like available. PCs tend to be exceptions to rules. (For example, somerone with 2 gifts could be possible.) Invent cool Tricks for the pc.
Monday, November 13, 2006
New Game, Near Future, Nearly Soon
I have expressed interest in running a game of Lacuna. If you're interested in knowing about this, and want to know more about it I have the pdf of the small game book and will be happy to share it with you.
The basic premise behind it is, you're a "Mystery Agent" who goes into the dreamworld, hereafter referred to as the Blue City, where people go when they're sleeping. You are the disinfectent of society and erase the bad thoughts and urges that serial killers and rapists have when they're awake and killing/hurting people.
There are dangers to your job, such as an unwanted meeting with the Spidermen. Tall lumbering humanoid spider creatures that wear a Blok-style garment (think Russian army WWII era). Or going insane or even dying due to a heart attack.
For more, and how to create a character, contact me! You know the channel, I'll be the time!
The basic premise behind it is, you're a "Mystery Agent" who goes into the dreamworld, hereafter referred to as the Blue City, where people go when they're sleeping. You are the disinfectent of society and erase the bad thoughts and urges that serial killers and rapists have when they're awake and killing/hurting people.
There are dangers to your job, such as an unwanted meeting with the Spidermen. Tall lumbering humanoid spider creatures that wear a Blok-style garment (think Russian army WWII era). Or going insane or even dying due to a heart attack.
For more, and how to create a character, contact me! You know the channel, I'll be the time!
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The Day of Discordant Discombobulations Wherein We See Ourselves For The First Time And Steal A Boat From Some Old Man By The Sea
[A short story, written especially for Kentari]
She crested slowly, rhythmic sensuous curves undulating in the azure world, pale as sky me the verdant, broad and sprawling ocean and as the earth nestled with the heavens, suspended between substrates as water funnelled from fish and we froze, Japanese tourists with camera faces staring, the world turned to paparazzi flashes.
Then we came down, like a zipper creasing into folds, stick and moving, the spears of our destiny stabbing into flesh and blubber and the whale died, reminding each of us in one poignant yet somehow meaninglessly shallow empty moment of our in-laws and gaping maws and poetry disguised as prose but why, for what -- no one knew. Knows.
We killed her quickly, her children watching, frozen, blood curses in whale song a sound that still haunts my dreams, sounding like child molesters, in the shower, singing as they are shivved; the tourists never stopped clicking, prisoner to their terrible plan, sucking away our souls by pieces -- but we had paid them away long ago.
Under other stars and distant suns seen once and never again under eyelids we sold ourselves, our souls, our lives, for just the pursuit of happiness and never its possession -- and so, waving, we carried the whale home soulless, feeding our families in bleak homes for another year, another turning of seasons and the relentless pitter-patter of time
falling down the stairs.
"Honey," he said, his voice breaking the silence like cheap dinner plate therapy on a basement wall, "why do I call you that?" in a quizzical, confused tone that implied in an implicitly explicit manner akin to the exoteric esoteric way of spouses something his darling wife entirely failed to notice.
"Call me what?" she asked languorously in a voice like rough sandpaper scraping over an open wound, her eyes the colour of limpid swamp water with a body that had not tasted solid food in a week of desperate dieting to fit into a reunion dress for someone six inches shorter that lay, moth eaten, in an upstairs wooden trunk filled with her lost hopes and a small, lonely tic tac.
"Honey," he said imperatively with the slight, hesitant whine like the drone of a biplane, the voice of all men ho are right but not in the eyes of their wives (a voice Hitler used, asking about the Jews, saying they might not be good people but at least they kept to themselves to a wife who was tired of hearing how they threw the best bar parties for children), and he beheld at her and froze, not unlike a bowling ball floating in the water.
"Yes?" she snapped snappishly, her voice skeletonizing his ego like a piranha, a whiplash of failed memories and corroded vows skittering over his flesh like hungry ghosts.
"The word. Honey. It - doesn't suit you," he noted miserably, his voice fluttering between notes, a song in need of a singer to free it from the entrails of time and the broad expanse of the gulf that nestled between them like the deep ends of the couch.
"How now? How not?" she exclaimed, correcting herself with a moment of mental whiplash, her eyes, steely-eyed like ball bearings, dared him to comment from their dead, cold, desiccated and mysterious depths that he had yet to grasp the courage to plummet and swan dive - or, perhaps, belly flop - into the abyssal abyssness of night and - oh! - her abs, that glistened with years of work like oil-stained rags.
"You aren't a bear," he smiled, the expression a fractional upturning of lips falling into the Shrodinger laugh that was not funny or morbid yet until a reply is made from the box of anothers being; neither living nor dead, trapped between reply and answer as unto a butterfly hovering above a jar of ether.
"You begin to bore me," she flounced, her voice slate-pale-grey-green as she turned and appraised him, hands on hips like the wife of some mighty Ice Giant of halcyon days of yore waiting for an explanation for the party that kept him up, not buying Ragnarok as an excuse again.
"I am sorry," he whipped in whispered words warbling whitely.
"Good."
She crested slowly, rhythmic sensuous curves undulating in the azure world, pale as sky me the verdant, broad and sprawling ocean and as the earth nestled with the heavens, suspended between substrates as water funnelled from fish and we froze, Japanese tourists with camera faces staring, the world turned to paparazzi flashes.
Then we came down, like a zipper creasing into folds, stick and moving, the spears of our destiny stabbing into flesh and blubber and the whale died, reminding each of us in one poignant yet somehow meaninglessly shallow empty moment of our in-laws and gaping maws and poetry disguised as prose but why, for what -- no one knew. Knows.
We killed her quickly, her children watching, frozen, blood curses in whale song a sound that still haunts my dreams, sounding like child molesters, in the shower, singing as they are shivved; the tourists never stopped clicking, prisoner to their terrible plan, sucking away our souls by pieces -- but we had paid them away long ago.
Under other stars and distant suns seen once and never again under eyelids we sold ourselves, our souls, our lives, for just the pursuit of happiness and never its possession -- and so, waving, we carried the whale home soulless, feeding our families in bleak homes for another year, another turning of seasons and the relentless pitter-patter of time
falling down the stairs.
"Honey," he said, his voice breaking the silence like cheap dinner plate therapy on a basement wall, "why do I call you that?" in a quizzical, confused tone that implied in an implicitly explicit manner akin to the exoteric esoteric way of spouses something his darling wife entirely failed to notice.
"Call me what?" she asked languorously in a voice like rough sandpaper scraping over an open wound, her eyes the colour of limpid swamp water with a body that had not tasted solid food in a week of desperate dieting to fit into a reunion dress for someone six inches shorter that lay, moth eaten, in an upstairs wooden trunk filled with her lost hopes and a small, lonely tic tac.
"Honey," he said imperatively with the slight, hesitant whine like the drone of a biplane, the voice of all men ho are right but not in the eyes of their wives (a voice Hitler used, asking about the Jews, saying they might not be good people but at least they kept to themselves to a wife who was tired of hearing how they threw the best bar parties for children), and he beheld at her and froze, not unlike a bowling ball floating in the water.
"Yes?" she snapped snappishly, her voice skeletonizing his ego like a piranha, a whiplash of failed memories and corroded vows skittering over his flesh like hungry ghosts.
"The word. Honey. It - doesn't suit you," he noted miserably, his voice fluttering between notes, a song in need of a singer to free it from the entrails of time and the broad expanse of the gulf that nestled between them like the deep ends of the couch.
"How now? How not?" she exclaimed, correcting herself with a moment of mental whiplash, her eyes, steely-eyed like ball bearings, dared him to comment from their dead, cold, desiccated and mysterious depths that he had yet to grasp the courage to plummet and swan dive - or, perhaps, belly flop - into the abyssal abyssness of night and - oh! - her abs, that glistened with years of work like oil-stained rags.
"You aren't a bear," he smiled, the expression a fractional upturning of lips falling into the Shrodinger laugh that was not funny or morbid yet until a reply is made from the box of anothers being; neither living nor dead, trapped between reply and answer as unto a butterfly hovering above a jar of ether.
"You begin to bore me," she flounced, her voice slate-pale-grey-green as she turned and appraised him, hands on hips like the wife of some mighty Ice Giant of halcyon days of yore waiting for an explanation for the party that kept him up, not buying Ragnarok as an excuse again.
"I am sorry," he whipped in whispered words warbling whitely.
"Good."
Friday, October 13, 2006
November Note
I won't be online much at all during the first week, and likely not during the second either (the first is guests, the second is NaNoWriMo :)). After that, should be on and will likely begin Low Life towards the end of month/beginning of December.
Low Life is going to run Day X (undetermined, as yet) Time Y (ditto) once a week. For this game, there shall be NO side sessions. For a change, basically :)
The game will likely run 3 months or so, and LOLAD 2 run after it. After THAT, I may run Haunted and/or UA, players willing. No plans for whatever follows.
Low Life is going to run Day X (undetermined, as yet) Time Y (ditto) once a week. For this game, there shall be NO side sessions. For a change, basically :)
The game will likely run 3 months or so, and LOLAD 2 run after it. After THAT, I may run Haunted and/or UA, players willing. No plans for whatever follows.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
After Low Life...
Low Life will begin in December (or later November, depending) and end ~April, since the game is designed to answer the question of: "So, what DO you do with these gifts?" and, once players have decided and begun down their paths, to end.
After that? Well, I'd like to run UA again. Partially for a break from BESM, mostly because it's Unknown Armies. I don't have a plot in my head as yet, but the basic idea is to allow, well, any idea. It's modern earth, it's unknown armies. The system is flexible, the Gm is uber-flexible, and we want high weirdness. Ignore the "magical/adept" stuff, and focus on the Really Weird, maybe with some magical trick...
Like?
A nun with reverse stigmata.
A cyborg.
Princess Diana.
A mafia hit man on the run for killing his boss.
A computer programmer who hacked the wrong files.
A child convinced they're from another world.
A woman who is convinced she is the mother of Buddha.
Conjoined twins whose other half exists in an otherspace and change positions every day.
A tourist who is really, really confused.
The star of an old silent movie somehow brought to life.
etc. Go for somethng off the wall. Go for weird. Strange. Bizarre! Throws ideas about! I shall make a forum. It shall be built. Ideas shall come!
After that? Well, I'd like to run UA again. Partially for a break from BESM, mostly because it's Unknown Armies. I don't have a plot in my head as yet, but the basic idea is to allow, well, any idea. It's modern earth, it's unknown armies. The system is flexible, the Gm is uber-flexible, and we want high weirdness. Ignore the "magical/adept" stuff, and focus on the Really Weird, maybe with some magical trick...
Like?
A nun with reverse stigmata.
A cyborg.
Princess Diana.
A mafia hit man on the run for killing his boss.
A computer programmer who hacked the wrong files.
A child convinced they're from another world.
A woman who is convinced she is the mother of Buddha.
Conjoined twins whose other half exists in an otherspace and change positions every day.
A tourist who is really, really confused.
The star of an old silent movie somehow brought to life.
etc. Go for somethng off the wall. Go for weird. Strange. Bizarre! Throws ideas about! I shall make a forum. It shall be built. Ideas shall come!
Monday, August 21, 2006
LoLaD....
I think there is a problem.
The plot, she is winding down.
But I find I don't care.
No desire to finish, or begin,
Or complete. No burn out, this,
But a kind of boredom -- surprising
But still true for all of that.
Thoughts on this are welcomed.
I find it amusing, darkly, &
LOLAD1 ended much the same way
Fading away and - poof! - gone.
Some things do not wish to fade.
But even so. Even so. And even moreso.
It seems to be dying slowly,
Inside and out, a slow decay.
Reasons? Post them. Solutions?
Them to. And having written, I go.
The plot, she is winding down.
But I find I don't care.
No desire to finish, or begin,
Or complete. No burn out, this,
But a kind of boredom -- surprising
But still true for all of that.
Thoughts on this are welcomed.
I find it amusing, darkly, &
LOLAD1 ended much the same way
Fading away and - poof! - gone.
Some things do not wish to fade.
But even so. Even so. And even moreso.
It seems to be dying slowly,
Inside and out, a slow decay.
Reasons? Post them. Solutions?
Them to. And having written, I go.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Room 333
Room 333
[a thingy done for the UA campaign Faces in the Dark]
There is a reason the 3rd floor of the school was closed down. One beyond the mundane issues of cost and space and heating. This is that reason, a door to a place that should never have existed.
There is a city made of glass and butterfly wings. There are wonders in it, of the kind of terror and awe true wonder holds, the dream made real, words made solid, form and ideal bleeding together into an unreal geometry that hurts the eyes but tugs at the heart, making you wish you'd dreamt it, seen it, even once.
The walls are covered in graffiti in languages that were old before the world existed, languages not even known to the dead. They give the city shadows, though it has no sun. The sky is grey, and pale, with a deep purple rent that lets down the light, the kind of cut one would imagine if the sky bled.
The streets are raw, pale and cracked like flesh, hard and soft at the same time. There is no sound here, just silence, stillness, a waiting so deep that nothing has ever stirred. Dust glitters brightly in the air like unfallen rain, and then you hear it, buzzing, at the very edge of hearing, a rattling through the bones, more felt that heard, aching, as if they are growing, or breaking apart.
The voices. The voices, angelic, pure, harsh and wild. They are singing, and it sounds like heaven come down to earth, and you never, ever want to hear them again. They get louder, but somehow softer at the same time, like pillow talk by a leprous lover, gurgling fish-speak as pure as sunshine, as cold as ice, and you can't help but hear. And listen. And wonder.
"The children, the children,
The children are coming.
More than kith, less than kin,
They slouch ever downward slumming.
They're dying, they're living
They are here and becoming,
Listen to their song, their song, their song
Listen to them humming
To the bees buzzing to the light giving
To the harp of damned souls
The strings strumming
They're coming round the ways of the world,
They're reaching from the depths, plumbing
Listen to the beating of the drums
Listen to broken feet drumming
The floor, choking, dumb,
Dum, da dum, da dum.
Listen to them, giggling, laughing.
The children are coming
Listen to the singing
Becoming, unbecoming,
Cutting and culling
Listen to the sounds they make
Listen to the silence break
The children are coming
The children, the children,
The children are coming."
The song loops through you beyond madness, past reason or hope or fear. It ends with footsteps and laugher like fingers scraping chalkboards. Breathing like gum popping, the hiss of a sucking chest wound. And then a chorus, high and low, blended into a sexless monotone song than twiches, casting itself high and low along the music scale recklessly, searching seeking, pleading ... being .... heard. This, you hear:
"Here we are, all gathered together
Finding the sinners 'cuz we never
Did nothing wrong, we tell it true,
Nothing wrong, we beg of you,
O teacher, can you listen?
Look at our bright eyes glisten
We are crying for you to hear us
We are crying for you to love us
Teacher, we love you, we just can't
Understand you, the pain in your voice
No, we weren't making joking about your ranting,
O teacher we love you, we just need a choice.
We're singing you a song
We didn't mean to do wrong
O teacher don't hurt us
O teacher don't make us
Do homework
We beg you
We won't smirk, won't jerk
Won't hurt - just don't
Go beserk! We - love - you."
You can't see who - what - may be singing. Perhaps it's your own voice, your throat feels so raw, everything feels raw. Your eyes are burning, and everything blurs, becoming even clearer. Glass. And butterfly wings. Shadows and violet light. And the opressive, numbling, welcoming silence, the calm before a storm .... and, perhaps, distantly, the voices?
=> just what is in the City in the Otherspace. A class of children. The teacher is even scarier.
[a thingy done for the UA campaign Faces in the Dark]
There is a reason the 3rd floor of the school was closed down. One beyond the mundane issues of cost and space and heating. This is that reason, a door to a place that should never have existed.
There is a city made of glass and butterfly wings. There are wonders in it, of the kind of terror and awe true wonder holds, the dream made real, words made solid, form and ideal bleeding together into an unreal geometry that hurts the eyes but tugs at the heart, making you wish you'd dreamt it, seen it, even once.
The walls are covered in graffiti in languages that were old before the world existed, languages not even known to the dead. They give the city shadows, though it has no sun. The sky is grey, and pale, with a deep purple rent that lets down the light, the kind of cut one would imagine if the sky bled.
The streets are raw, pale and cracked like flesh, hard and soft at the same time. There is no sound here, just silence, stillness, a waiting so deep that nothing has ever stirred. Dust glitters brightly in the air like unfallen rain, and then you hear it, buzzing, at the very edge of hearing, a rattling through the bones, more felt that heard, aching, as if they are growing, or breaking apart.
The voices. The voices, angelic, pure, harsh and wild. They are singing, and it sounds like heaven come down to earth, and you never, ever want to hear them again. They get louder, but somehow softer at the same time, like pillow talk by a leprous lover, gurgling fish-speak as pure as sunshine, as cold as ice, and you can't help but hear. And listen. And wonder.
"The children, the children,
The children are coming.
More than kith, less than kin,
They slouch ever downward slumming.
They're dying, they're living
They are here and becoming,
Listen to their song, their song, their song
Listen to them humming
To the bees buzzing to the light giving
To the harp of damned souls
The strings strumming
They're coming round the ways of the world,
They're reaching from the depths, plumbing
Listen to the beating of the drums
Listen to broken feet drumming
The floor, choking, dumb,
Dum, da dum, da dum.
Listen to them, giggling, laughing.
The children are coming
Listen to the singing
Becoming, unbecoming,
Cutting and culling
Listen to the sounds they make
Listen to the silence break
The children are coming
The children, the children,
The children are coming."
The song loops through you beyond madness, past reason or hope or fear. It ends with footsteps and laugher like fingers scraping chalkboards. Breathing like gum popping, the hiss of a sucking chest wound. And then a chorus, high and low, blended into a sexless monotone song than twiches, casting itself high and low along the music scale recklessly, searching seeking, pleading ... being .... heard. This, you hear:
"Here we are, all gathered together
Finding the sinners 'cuz we never
Did nothing wrong, we tell it true,
Nothing wrong, we beg of you,
O teacher, can you listen?
Look at our bright eyes glisten
We are crying for you to hear us
We are crying for you to love us
Teacher, we love you, we just can't
Understand you, the pain in your voice
No, we weren't making joking about your ranting,
O teacher we love you, we just need a choice.
We're singing you a song
We didn't mean to do wrong
O teacher don't hurt us
O teacher don't make us
Do homework
We beg you
We won't smirk, won't jerk
Won't hurt - just don't
Go beserk! We - love - you."
You can't see who - what - may be singing. Perhaps it's your own voice, your throat feels so raw, everything feels raw. Your eyes are burning, and everything blurs, becoming even clearer. Glass. And butterfly wings. Shadows and violet light. And the opressive, numbling, welcoming silence, the calm before a storm .... and, perhaps, distantly, the voices?
=> just what is in the City in the Otherspace. A class of children. The teacher is even scarier.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Supers Lite Post II
Will exist. Has forum here on the forums, and two players. Time and dates are uncertain, at present.
"The fundament of a superhero is the guy in tights saving innocent people from bad things. It's amazing how infrequently that seems to happen in superhero comics these days."
Frank Miller
"The fundament of a superhero is the guy in tights saving innocent people from bad things. It's amazing how infrequently that seems to happen in superhero comics these days."
Frank Miller
Sunday, July 23, 2006
One Player Game: Supers Lite
So, because of some odd thoughts I had about superhero universes, and such things in genera, and my generally pessmistic outlook TO such things, I want to try something different.
A superhero game, in "lite" mode. Not dark, not doom and gloom and 'the real world does this, so everyone fears you' etc. It's never really happened in #game1. So I'd like to try it. The one player limit is, well, I think I could manage it best that way.
(N.B. Two players is possible if 2 ppl want to do a siblings or parent/child duo.)
The goal is a superhero game that's about fun. Helping people, having fun, balancing hero and life, beating Bad Guys and the like.
Oh, yes: So far, Caltak is interested. He just said so.
To continue: The actual universe - and power level of the PC - will be worked out with the player. We can do spiderman level, even Superman (though, well, not THAT powerful please :p) and go from there. The PC will need family, job, who they're "out" to and the like.
How many heroes/nature of the universe'd have to be worked out, too. are there lots of heroes? Villains? Tems? I don't mind stealing piles of stuff from other universes, but I'd also rather not set it specifically in another one; the PC is the star of the story.
The game system would also have to be worked out. Probably Risus, or something, for simplicity. [Not BESM - done it too much lately.] Amber, a la 4ways, is also viable.
Things to keep in mind: This universe will be a collaboration between GM and player. For those who watched La Fin, it's something like that. Only more so. The comic angsty cliches will be used, of course; GF/BF wondering where you are, people wondering why you always go missing etc. How far all of that goes depends on what's made, and the general kind of universe it is, how common heroes are etc.
Players who are NOT in it will be encouraged to make up villains, settings etc. that can be thrown in. I plan to have FUN with it :)
CAVEAT: Okay, so I AM editing it now. To whit:
The PC would need a family. Friends. A weakness or two. Means of travel. Ability to withstand getting hurt. And, for the sake of their sanity, probably at least one person who knows their secret. If it is one.
A superhero game, in "lite" mode. Not dark, not doom and gloom and 'the real world does this, so everyone fears you' etc. It's never really happened in #game1. So I'd like to try it. The one player limit is, well, I think I could manage it best that way.
(N.B. Two players is possible if 2 ppl want to do a siblings or parent/child duo.)
The goal is a superhero game that's about fun. Helping people, having fun, balancing hero and life, beating Bad Guys and the like.
Oh, yes: So far, Caltak is interested. He just said so.
To continue: The actual universe - and power level of the PC - will be worked out with the player. We can do spiderman level, even Superman (though, well, not THAT powerful please :p) and go from there. The PC will need family, job, who they're "out" to and the like.
How many heroes/nature of the universe'd have to be worked out, too. are there lots of heroes? Villains? Tems? I don't mind stealing piles of stuff from other universes, but I'd also rather not set it specifically in another one; the PC is the star of the story.
The game system would also have to be worked out. Probably Risus, or something, for simplicity. [Not BESM - done it too much lately.] Amber, a la 4ways, is also viable.
Things to keep in mind: This universe will be a collaboration between GM and player. For those who watched La Fin, it's something like that. Only more so. The comic angsty cliches will be used, of course; GF/BF wondering where you are, people wondering why you always go missing etc. How far all of that goes depends on what's made, and the general kind of universe it is, how common heroes are etc.
Players who are NOT in it will be encouraged to make up villains, settings etc. that can be thrown in. I plan to have FUN with it :)
CAVEAT: Okay, so I AM editing it now. To whit:
The PC would need a family. Friends. A weakness or two. Means of travel. Ability to withstand getting hurt. And, for the sake of their sanity, probably at least one person who knows their secret. If it is one.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
LOLAD2 Ramblings and stuff
LOLAD 2 will run. Not sure when, of course. I think everyone'll need a break from the world, so we'll do something else (what? no idea yet. Could do more of Havoc! :) Or UH ::p)
But, since some players are already thinking up PC ideas:
1) No MC from lolad1. (Secondary Characters - Travor's sister, maybe Mufasta etc.) are possible. Ideally, though, the game won't have much connection to lolad1, PC wise.
Starting point breakdown:
13 CP for stats.
10 CP for abilities.
20 SP for skills.
No more than 5 points total in defects.
Items of Power and the Magic attribute ARE allowed, within reason.
No PC weres or vamps. You're all human (or human+), or some weak kind of alien etc. This is a lower-powered game. Think of the PCs as vigilantes and the LOLAD1 PCs as the Justice League -- very little interaction between them, gross differences in power.
The LOLAD1 game will, of course, be referenced. LOLAD2 wil take place in the modern world, so 5 years or so after LOLAD1. Newcasts etc. will mention those PCs. (Players are encouraged to come up with "what my PC would be doing in 5 years" things for fun once lolad1 ends :))
Of course, how LOLAD2 plays out will depend on how 1 ends, naturally. Given the plot so far, I have some vague ideas, but the whims of Sparkie change many things.
The "between games game" will be intended as a short, fun game. Different genre entirely, ideally. I would like to do the Haunted game, for example, at some point. Or we could do something nice and silly. Really up for anything.
(Keep in mind that this is 3+ months down the road; lolad1 still has a weys to go. But toss out ideas here and we'll see what people are up for. Time will be the same on Monday.)
But, since some players are already thinking up PC ideas:
1) No MC from lolad1. (Secondary Characters - Travor's sister, maybe Mufasta etc.) are possible. Ideally, though, the game won't have much connection to lolad1, PC wise.
Starting point breakdown:
13 CP for stats.
10 CP for abilities.
20 SP for skills.
No more than 5 points total in defects.
Items of Power and the Magic attribute ARE allowed, within reason.
No PC weres or vamps. You're all human (or human+), or some weak kind of alien etc. This is a lower-powered game. Think of the PCs as vigilantes and the LOLAD1 PCs as the Justice League -- very little interaction between them, gross differences in power.
The LOLAD1 game will, of course, be referenced. LOLAD2 wil take place in the modern world, so 5 years or so after LOLAD1. Newcasts etc. will mention those PCs. (Players are encouraged to come up with "what my PC would be doing in 5 years" things for fun once lolad1 ends :))
Of course, how LOLAD2 plays out will depend on how 1 ends, naturally. Given the plot so far, I have some vague ideas, but the whims of Sparkie change many things.
The "between games game" will be intended as a short, fun game. Different genre entirely, ideally. I would like to do the Haunted game, for example, at some point. Or we could do something nice and silly. Really up for anything.
(Keep in mind that this is 3+ months down the road; lolad1 still has a weys to go. But toss out ideas here and we'll see what people are up for. Time will be the same on Monday.)
Sunday, July 09, 2006
LOLAD 2?
The Major Plot is about to unfold, in game, soon. (Soon in this game, of course, is a while in RL :)) Depending on how things go, it will end - interestingly, for the world.
So a second campaign may be ran, if players are willing and not lolad'd-out. Said campaign would be set in 2006, using lower powered characters: no weres and vamps, for one thing, using BESM. Real world*
* "Or what is left of it." - Sparkie
Proviso: no PCs from the first campaign can be used. NPCs from it can be turned into PCs, with GM permission, but for the most part everyone is expected to make new characters and the game go from there.
Once this campaign draws to a close, we'll do an informal poll and see if players are up to the new game deal, or taking a break from the universe, or whatever.
So a second campaign may be ran, if players are willing and not lolad'd-out. Said campaign would be set in 2006, using lower powered characters: no weres and vamps, for one thing, using BESM. Real world*
* "Or what is left of it." - Sparkie
Proviso: no PCs from the first campaign can be used. NPCs from it can be turned into PCs, with GM permission, but for the most part everyone is expected to make new characters and the game go from there.
Once this campaign draws to a close, we'll do an informal poll and see if players are up to the new game deal, or taking a break from the universe, or whatever.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
New, Improved Quotes!
The quotes have improved, thanks to the efforts of Fennec (and kentari, for how Sparkie does them now). Search is now available ONLY on the site. Improvements will be added as time permit. The regular quotes via 500 per page in the normal quotes section of the site will be updated as usual.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Novel Editing, anyone?
Waking the Dead, a novel I wrote last year, is (finally) at beta-editing stage. From post to sffmuse...
Novel is 242 pages, I think, a little over 90K. .rtf format.
It's urban fantasy - magic, the real world, teen protagonists trying to save it. Etc.
What's in it: A lot of weird things. Talking dogs without heads, ghosts, witches, wizards, magical powers and the like. Viewpoint does shift between characters, though it's done as first person from each character, with two interludes and lots of odd pieces tossed in. Novel is NOT in chapter format, though each day is marked.
What's not in it: Sex or swearing. Moderate violence is in it.
Below is the first 4.5 pages. Contact me in chat if you want a copy of the whole thing to edit and I'll email you one. If you want something in return besides gratitude, ask :)
The goal (hope :)) is to get the edited copies back within 2 months, read over all of them, and edit ruthlessly according to the hive mind.
-------------------------
De mortiis, aut bene aut nihil.
("Of the dead, speak well or not at all")
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
- Sir Thomas Browne
To bring the dead to life
Is no great magic.
Few are wholly dead:
Blow on a dead man's embers
And a live flame will start.
- Robert Graves, from "Bring The Dead To Life"
WEDNESDAY
The corpses were bleeding. In their hollow cages under the ground staining them with embalming fluid leaking from pores, eyes opened, voices screaming without sound. The earth muffled it, contained it, embraced it. Earthworms died, but no one took notice, no one heard. Who comes, if no one hears your call?
Elsewhere, screams are muffled by drugs, replacing tears from eyes too dry to weep. The men in grey enter a room, smiling their bland smiles, holding needles. The needles make it all go away. The mute screaming no one can hear is unheard. Outside the window shines the moon, oblivious. The screaming man speaks to it, but he is a man, and the moon does not hear him. Soon he stops screaming and the world get fuzzy in a pleasant way. He floats away, gently, lost in bliss of forgetting.
It takes them two more minutes to unclench his fists, pale gouges in palms a testimony to terror washed away by cold water. The man in white sleeps, in a room of soft walls, and dreams the ground leaked blood that no one saw because they were too busy eating their eyes and ears.
Jansen
"The urban world is a wilderness, a jungle of a kind," Uncle Alvin was saying as he paced the front of the class room. He's tall and a fair bit on the chubby side, constantly adjusted his glasses (he calls them spectacles) and tends to use his hands a lot while talking. Which he also does a lot, but he has the kind of voice people love to hear, deep and smooth like rough velvet.
"This is generally an accepted analogy of the modern world," he said, waving a hand absently to the window, "but not well understood. The problem with such metaphors is that too often they contain more than they seem, and don't really explain enough of what they contain. Too much water enters the glass, and what overflows - that which cannot fit into the paradigm - is discarded.
"This, of course, does not invalidate the symbol, but should serve to warn that the symbols are not to be trusted, if only because we value them so highly. Can someone tell me why we came down from the trees only to go back up in them with high rises?"
The ringing of the period bell barely covered the sighs of relief from the class. If he noticed, my uncle gave no clue.. "We'll take up tomorrow where we left off. Mythology and symbolism, people. Unless we know the sources for our symbols we are trapped by them. Read chapters six and seven by next Friday as well."
The class filed out, most of the other students shaking their heads and a few making jokes under their breath. I could have told them they were wasting their time, but I didn't bother. It took a lot to get under my uncle's skin for longer than five minutes, though my parents had come close a few times that I remembered and Cass was, well, Cass.
"I thought today's lecture went well," he remarked as I made my way up to the desk. I sat down on a desk and leaned my cane against his, waiting. We hadn't talked much recently, not about anything important. I think he was hurt I hadn't told him about Evan, but I hadn't told anyone, even if people had guessed.
"You're just lucky Liz is sick," I said. "Otherwise she would have asked you about the glass of water as the primordial egg and if you could actually explain symbols without using symbols and, if not, if it was of any use at all."
Alvin chuckled lightly, digging some more papers out of the desk. "Well, at least you didn't Jansen."
"I kind of want supper tonight," I said dryly. "Well, actually a late supper. I need to go downtown."
Alvin shoved some more books into his briefcase and managed to snap it shut. "Oh?"
"Yeah. Mom and dad want to talk."
"Oh." He looked up at me. "It's yes, not yeah. Is this going to be like last week?"
"You mean when Cass caused that fire hydrant to shower the street? Nah. Sorry, no. They don't want her coming, though, to be on the safe side. Besides, she has yearbook club stuff tonight. She's the photographer."
Uncle Alvin frowned. "There's something you're not telling me."
"Lots of things," I said cheerfully. "Now, can we get going? I'm hungry and I can't very well eat until after I do whatever they want. We can beat the traffic and -"
"Jansen," he said warningly.
I sighed. That was the trouble with my uncle. He wasn't weird like me and Cass, just good at knowing when he was being lied to. Even by omission, unfortunately.
1Lying in the ground cold and barren. No one hears their cries, no one sees their tears. The dead; weeping for the living.
In the underworld no one can hear you scream. In the empty places where body parts once lay, hollowed bones release memory, casting nets into the dreams, speaking in words the living cannot understand.
Elsewhere, a door opens; the man in white is unaware, floating, flying in his head where he cannot hear the dead. The grey men whisper things, voices impersonal as scalpels, and he almost makes out words, almost understands. Then they die, and continue walking unaware. Sometimes, effect comes before cause. This comforts him when they strap him in the chair. "You are dead," he tells them but they do not understand.
Somewhere, she is laughing. He can almost here it. He can almost see it, like the alimony checks she got, and child support though they had no children. Hate almost clears his mind, but almost counts for nothing.
"I told you it was nothing important," I said, trying to sound casual.. The car took the corner down Broad Street too fast and Uncle Alvin turned and glared at me as he stopped at the lights.
"Not important? Your sister is taking pictures of everyone male student naked!"
"But it's just for her private collection."
The silence that followed that was calm, except for the vein pulsing in his forehead like an alien worm under his skin. "Private collection?" he said slowly, but the anger was already draining from him, as it almost always did.
"Well, they won't go in the yearbook."
"And you let her do this?"
"It's Cass. I couldn't have stopped her, uncle."
"You could have told me."
"Well, yeah. But she promised me copies."
The silence was really loud as he swerved around another corner.
"That was a red light you just drove through," I said carefully.
"Would it have mattered?" Uncle Alvin snapped.
"Yes, because cars tend to go through intersections. If you have a red light you don't go. I'm pretty sure Driver's Ed covers that sort of thing, but insurance companies might not."
"You would have lived."
"Maybe. But, uncle, I don't know about you. And it's not infallible. You know that." I rubbed my knee, pulling my hand away when I realized what I was doing. "I know that."
The car slowed a fraction, then stopped as he swerved into a free parking space. I checked the meter out of habit, but someone had already paid up for three hours. Uncle Alvin caught my glance and snorted, opening the door. "You know, I'd think that you of all people wouldn't bother checking things like that," he said dryly, an apology of sorts.
"You never know," I said, and it sounded defensive even to me.
The pre-Christmas rush had already begun downtown and the streets were thronged with people and decorations. I closed the door and limped to the sidewalk, trying to hide my relief from my uncle. I'd had the cane for over a year now and still hated it. I was in high school, and needed a cane to get around. People noticed that, and I don't like being noticed, not like Cass does.
Uncle Alvin bought me one, then another when the first one accidentally broke. He'd never said a word when he got the third one and I've had it ever since. Something in his gaze had told me I was pushing my luck, but it had run out that one day anyway, for a moment. Just a run of the mill car accident, but I never knew for sure. We always want it to be more, to have some special secret meaning. We don't like to believe in accidents; we'd rather believe in some meaningful coincidence that gave purpose to our pain.
I've avoided being in cars as much as possible ever since. I know it's silly, but that doesn't mean I don't do it. I spend a few seconds shivering, not just from the cold, but trying to hide it from my uncle. He might not get how much his running the red light scared me.
Cass and I are weird, and mom and dad are even weirder, which was why Uncle Alvin was going to go shop for things while I went and talked to them. He didn't mind the fact the fact that mom and dad were dead; it's why he took us in after they died in the crash. He did have issues with them showing up and talking to us, though. I think it offended his sensibilities.
I waited until he'd gone into the mall, just breathing in the cold air to remind myself I was alive and made my way south to the park. I'd never noticed it last Christmas, but there are benefits to being lame. People get out of my way without thinking about it and don't notice me specifically. Which would be good except that "the young man with the cane" sort of narrows down the list of people in town to, well, me.
The park was deserted except for a few hobos, some of them local and the rest just wandering around the country from place to place. The police, or at least Constable Christensen, patrolled it about once every day to make sure they weren't bothering people and they got to sleep under the trees and out of the public eye, which spends most of its time closed and pretending they don't exist anyway. I gave a few some change, because I didn't want to live in a world where people didn't.
Novel is 242 pages, I think, a little over 90K. .rtf format.
It's urban fantasy - magic, the real world, teen protagonists trying to save it. Etc.
What's in it: A lot of weird things. Talking dogs without heads, ghosts, witches, wizards, magical powers and the like. Viewpoint does shift between characters, though it's done as first person from each character, with two interludes and lots of odd pieces tossed in. Novel is NOT in chapter format, though each day is marked.
What's not in it: Sex or swearing. Moderate violence is in it.
Below is the first 4.5 pages. Contact me in chat if you want a copy of the whole thing to edit and I'll email you one. If you want something in return besides gratitude, ask :)
The goal (hope :)) is to get the edited copies back within 2 months, read over all of them, and edit ruthlessly according to the hive mind.
-------------------------
De mortiis, aut bene aut nihil.
("Of the dead, speak well or not at all")
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
- Sir Thomas Browne
To bring the dead to life
Is no great magic.
Few are wholly dead:
Blow on a dead man's embers
And a live flame will start.
- Robert Graves, from "Bring The Dead To Life"
WEDNESDAY
The corpses were bleeding. In their hollow cages under the ground staining them with embalming fluid leaking from pores, eyes opened, voices screaming without sound. The earth muffled it, contained it, embraced it. Earthworms died, but no one took notice, no one heard. Who comes, if no one hears your call?
Elsewhere, screams are muffled by drugs, replacing tears from eyes too dry to weep. The men in grey enter a room, smiling their bland smiles, holding needles. The needles make it all go away. The mute screaming no one can hear is unheard. Outside the window shines the moon, oblivious. The screaming man speaks to it, but he is a man, and the moon does not hear him. Soon he stops screaming and the world get fuzzy in a pleasant way. He floats away, gently, lost in bliss of forgetting.
It takes them two more minutes to unclench his fists, pale gouges in palms a testimony to terror washed away by cold water. The man in white sleeps, in a room of soft walls, and dreams the ground leaked blood that no one saw because they were too busy eating their eyes and ears.
Jansen
"The urban world is a wilderness, a jungle of a kind," Uncle Alvin was saying as he paced the front of the class room. He's tall and a fair bit on the chubby side, constantly adjusted his glasses (he calls them spectacles) and tends to use his hands a lot while talking. Which he also does a lot, but he has the kind of voice people love to hear, deep and smooth like rough velvet.
"This is generally an accepted analogy of the modern world," he said, waving a hand absently to the window, "but not well understood. The problem with such metaphors is that too often they contain more than they seem, and don't really explain enough of what they contain. Too much water enters the glass, and what overflows - that which cannot fit into the paradigm - is discarded.
"This, of course, does not invalidate the symbol, but should serve to warn that the symbols are not to be trusted, if only because we value them so highly. Can someone tell me why we came down from the trees only to go back up in them with high rises?"
The ringing of the period bell barely covered the sighs of relief from the class. If he noticed, my uncle gave no clue.. "We'll take up tomorrow where we left off. Mythology and symbolism, people. Unless we know the sources for our symbols we are trapped by them. Read chapters six and seven by next Friday as well."
The class filed out, most of the other students shaking their heads and a few making jokes under their breath. I could have told them they were wasting their time, but I didn't bother. It took a lot to get under my uncle's skin for longer than five minutes, though my parents had come close a few times that I remembered and Cass was, well, Cass.
"I thought today's lecture went well," he remarked as I made my way up to the desk. I sat down on a desk and leaned my cane against his, waiting. We hadn't talked much recently, not about anything important. I think he was hurt I hadn't told him about Evan, but I hadn't told anyone, even if people had guessed.
"You're just lucky Liz is sick," I said. "Otherwise she would have asked you about the glass of water as the primordial egg and if you could actually explain symbols without using symbols and, if not, if it was of any use at all."
Alvin chuckled lightly, digging some more papers out of the desk. "Well, at least you didn't Jansen."
"I kind of want supper tonight," I said dryly. "Well, actually a late supper. I need to go downtown."
Alvin shoved some more books into his briefcase and managed to snap it shut. "Oh?"
"Yeah. Mom and dad want to talk."
"Oh." He looked up at me. "It's yes, not yeah. Is this going to be like last week?"
"You mean when Cass caused that fire hydrant to shower the street? Nah. Sorry, no. They don't want her coming, though, to be on the safe side. Besides, she has yearbook club stuff tonight. She's the photographer."
Uncle Alvin frowned. "There's something you're not telling me."
"Lots of things," I said cheerfully. "Now, can we get going? I'm hungry and I can't very well eat until after I do whatever they want. We can beat the traffic and -"
"Jansen," he said warningly.
I sighed. That was the trouble with my uncle. He wasn't weird like me and Cass, just good at knowing when he was being lied to. Even by omission, unfortunately.
1Lying in the ground cold and barren. No one hears their cries, no one sees their tears. The dead; weeping for the living.
In the underworld no one can hear you scream. In the empty places where body parts once lay, hollowed bones release memory, casting nets into the dreams, speaking in words the living cannot understand.
Elsewhere, a door opens; the man in white is unaware, floating, flying in his head where he cannot hear the dead. The grey men whisper things, voices impersonal as scalpels, and he almost makes out words, almost understands. Then they die, and continue walking unaware. Sometimes, effect comes before cause. This comforts him when they strap him in the chair. "You are dead," he tells them but they do not understand.
Somewhere, she is laughing. He can almost here it. He can almost see it, like the alimony checks she got, and child support though they had no children. Hate almost clears his mind, but almost counts for nothing.
"I told you it was nothing important," I said, trying to sound casual.. The car took the corner down Broad Street too fast and Uncle Alvin turned and glared at me as he stopped at the lights.
"Not important? Your sister is taking pictures of everyone male student naked!"
"But it's just for her private collection."
The silence that followed that was calm, except for the vein pulsing in his forehead like an alien worm under his skin. "Private collection?" he said slowly, but the anger was already draining from him, as it almost always did.
"Well, they won't go in the yearbook."
"And you let her do this?"
"It's Cass. I couldn't have stopped her, uncle."
"You could have told me."
"Well, yeah. But she promised me copies."
The silence was really loud as he swerved around another corner.
"That was a red light you just drove through," I said carefully.
"Would it have mattered?" Uncle Alvin snapped.
"Yes, because cars tend to go through intersections. If you have a red light you don't go. I'm pretty sure Driver's Ed covers that sort of thing, but insurance companies might not."
"You would have lived."
"Maybe. But, uncle, I don't know about you. And it's not infallible. You know that." I rubbed my knee, pulling my hand away when I realized what I was doing. "I know that."
The car slowed a fraction, then stopped as he swerved into a free parking space. I checked the meter out of habit, but someone had already paid up for three hours. Uncle Alvin caught my glance and snorted, opening the door. "You know, I'd think that you of all people wouldn't bother checking things like that," he said dryly, an apology of sorts.
"You never know," I said, and it sounded defensive even to me.
The pre-Christmas rush had already begun downtown and the streets were thronged with people and decorations. I closed the door and limped to the sidewalk, trying to hide my relief from my uncle. I'd had the cane for over a year now and still hated it. I was in high school, and needed a cane to get around. People noticed that, and I don't like being noticed, not like Cass does.
Uncle Alvin bought me one, then another when the first one accidentally broke. He'd never said a word when he got the third one and I've had it ever since. Something in his gaze had told me I was pushing my luck, but it had run out that one day anyway, for a moment. Just a run of the mill car accident, but I never knew for sure. We always want it to be more, to have some special secret meaning. We don't like to believe in accidents; we'd rather believe in some meaningful coincidence that gave purpose to our pain.
I've avoided being in cars as much as possible ever since. I know it's silly, but that doesn't mean I don't do it. I spend a few seconds shivering, not just from the cold, but trying to hide it from my uncle. He might not get how much his running the red light scared me.
Cass and I are weird, and mom and dad are even weirder, which was why Uncle Alvin was going to go shop for things while I went and talked to them. He didn't mind the fact the fact that mom and dad were dead; it's why he took us in after they died in the crash. He did have issues with them showing up and talking to us, though. I think it offended his sensibilities.
I waited until he'd gone into the mall, just breathing in the cold air to remind myself I was alive and made my way south to the park. I'd never noticed it last Christmas, but there are benefits to being lame. People get out of my way without thinking about it and don't notice me specifically. Which would be good except that "the young man with the cane" sort of narrows down the list of people in town to, well, me.
The park was deserted except for a few hobos, some of them local and the rest just wandering around the country from place to place. The police, or at least Constable Christensen, patrolled it about once every day to make sure they weren't bothering people and they got to sleep under the trees and out of the public eye, which spends most of its time closed and pretending they don't exist anyway. I gave a few some change, because I didn't want to live in a world where people didn't.
Monday, June 12, 2006
So ... a bit over a week in game time ....
Let's see. Kage is somewhere between pack and cameron (both thinking he's on the other side), Cameron ordered Lynn out of his house, and Lynn took that to mean pack as well - since they're part of her - and Simon followed her out. The remnants of Cameron's bit of the locii got hacked up (and eaten) and the nice line Cameron drew shall have some fun, fun reprecussions ....
All because of a dance in a ballroom a vampire took to be mind control....
So ... however this is fixed is up to the PCs. Faline as mediator between Lynn and Cameron would be nicely amusing, but the GM is dusting his hands off of the whole PC-caused affair and letting the PCs fix the problem however they want to. If you don't fix it, well ... we'll burn them bridges when we come to them, eh?
We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. - Tom Stoppard
All because of a dance in a ballroom a vampire took to be mind control....
So ... however this is fixed is up to the PCs. Faline as mediator between Lynn and Cameron would be nicely amusing, but the GM is dusting his hands off of the whole PC-caused affair and letting the PCs fix the problem however they want to. If you don't fix it, well ... we'll burn them bridges when we come to them, eh?
We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. - Tom Stoppard
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)