In a primitive society, a false negative can kill you.
You're sitting around your fire at night, and you see something moving. It might be just a shadow, but it might also be a predator. Your brain says "Predator!", puts you into fight-or-flight, and your eyes resolve the shadows into the shape of a panther or whatever. And you get up and grab your spear.
There are two possibilities. One is, it's a panther, you stab it, you win, you get to pass along your genetic material because your brain saw "shadows" and made your eyes perceive "enemy." Or it's a shadow, but you saw it as a panther, so you're awake but no skin off your nose.
But if your brain says "Shadows, never mind, going back to sleep," and it's really a predator...well, you're fucked. And that's why we hear voices in the wind, see monsters in closets, and Jesus in tortillas. We're genetically designed by evolution to see patterns, specifically faces.
So when people tell you that They look human, just keep that in mind.
May want to go grab a drink, we're gonna be here a while.
The Game:Ars Magica, 4th Edition The Publisher:Atlas Games.
Originally published by Lion Rampant, I think, and maybe White Wolf?
Anyway, White Wolf still own or owns some of the rights, which is why
the Order of Hermes and associated jargon stuck around in OWoD. Degree of Familiarity: Not a lot. I played some iteration of this game when Jon ran it a million years ago, but like a lot of my brother's games we played twice and then he got distracted by something shiny. Books Required: Just the core. I picked it up for all of $5 at a con last year.
I had never really read the game, just played it once and then played a lot of Mage: The Ascension.
And reading it now...I gotta say, I don't quite get it. I mean, it
looks like if you're playing a mage you kind of suck at magic. The
examples they give of casting spells...well, hell. The one on page 69
(huh-huh) has a magus coming to a stream and, not wanting to get his
dainty feet wet, tries to magic himself across by making the rocks into
stepping stones.
I want to say, as an aside, that a fucking muppet can do this kind of thing by howling.
In the book, the magus screws it up and barely manages to move one stone, and that's if he exerts himself.
OK,
seriously, is it me or does that suck? I mean, why would I want to play
a game about mages (sorry, magi) if I can barely shift a rock around,
and that causes me damage? I get that the troupe play aspect (in which
you make several characters, including companions and grogs, and play
them all severally) is part of this, but hell, all the more reason why
magi should cut loose and whip fireballs around.
Anyway, I'm
just going to make a character and see what I get. Maybe someone who
plays this game more regularly can tell me if the character would ever
succeed at magic. If not, fuckit, find me a different system.
Step One: Concept. Well, first I decide if I'm a magus, companion or grog. Let's go magus. That requires I choose a house.
Heh. You know, there's a story
that Clan MacFarlane used to steal cattle by moonlight, and that the
full moon was therefore known as "MacFarlane's Lantern." I have no idea
how true that is, but it's tempting to me to make a magus that follows
that kind of tradition. That is, would prefer to steal herbs than grow
them, that kind of thing. I decide I'll make my character House Bjornaer
(since if you go back far enough in Scotland, you get Anglo-Saxon, and
that's Germanic enough for purposes of this game). Due to being House
Bjornaer, I get a "heart-beast," which I assume is a lot less fruity in
play than it sounds.
Oh, wait, here we go. There's a house template. I can use this or deviate, but since it's late, I'll start here. I get:
Magic Theory 4 Organization Lore (Order of Hermes) 2 Parma Magica 2 Scribe Latin 2 Speak Latin 4* Speak Own Language 4 (Scots-Gaelic, I guess) Will Over Form 1
I
get 15+age experience points, and I get the Follower of Bjornaer
Virtue. Right now, the important thing is I get a heart-shape, some
animal that I resonate with.
Well, I want "under cover of night,
I steal things" to be my catchphrase. The European Wildcat is tempting,
but I think the red fox is a better fit. My mage's heart-shape,
therefore, is the red fox, and since the fox isn't exactly "battle
ready" on the same scale as the listed example (like a sodding bear),
I'm gonna say the Virtue costs +1.
The "Typical Virtues and Flaws" listed don't do anything for me, so I'll move on.
Characteristics.
OK, a score of 0 is average, and most folks fall between -3 and +3.
They represent inborn potential, and so don't normally change
(interesting), and are paired for convenience, whatever that means. I
can get these scores by point-buy or rolling. I don't feel random right
now, I'll point-buy. I can set a score at 0 for nothing, I get points
for negative scores and I pay points (from a pool of 7) for positive.
Well,
I think having a high Intelligence is probably important for a magus.
In fact, the section says Intelligence is "paramount for the Hermetic
Arts." OK. I'll blow the 6 points to pump this up to +3.
But I
also want high Perception, given the amount of night-sneaking I'll be
doing. I'll blow 6 more for +3. I'm now in the hole 5 points.
Strength and Stamina I'll take down to -1, leaving me in the hole 3 points.
Presence
I'll take to -2. Some folks use the term "fox" to indicate an
attractive, sexy person. This guy ain't it. He's sneaky, shifty and
obviously predatory. That makes him creepy, not intriguing (unless
you're into that). I'm even again.
Communication I'll leave at 0.
Now, I would like higher Quickness and Dexterity, but I don't really
have the points. I'll leave them at 0 for now; maybe I can boost them
with Virtues or something.
Virtues and Flaws.
I can spend up to 10 points on these, but I can only get Virtues if I
take Flaws. OK, fine. I've already spent 1 point on my Follower of
Bjornaer Virtue. I'm encouraged to take Hermetic traits here, so I'll
have a look at the list!
I want Gentle Gift, because it's good
for stealth. I'll take Discredited Lineage; he's known to be a thief and
not a very repentant one at that. And I'll take Susceptibility to
Faerie Magic, because it seems the sort of thing that might trip him up.
I'm down to 4 points of Flaws, max, remaining. Since it's a theme
today, I'll take Reckless, which gives me a bonus to bravery rolls (put
another way, fuckit). I'll take Mythic Characteristic, upping my
Perception from +3 to +5, and giving me a "once per day" special power
with it. I'll say that once per day my character can hear something
happening far, far outside of his earshot, something that pertains to
him or his interests (ears of a fox!).
Keeping with the theme, I
take Bad Reputation. Local folks know he's going to steal their sheep,
and they're right. And for my last Flaw, I'll take Small Frame. This guy
is slight, weak and not altogether healthy. I have two more Virtue
points, so I'll take Subtle Magic. I don't have to gesture at all to
cast spells.
Abilities. OK, to do this I need to figure
out an age. I see this guy as being older than he looks. He's weasly and
gaunt and pinched, and then you get close and he's all that and
yellow-toothed and old, too. Of course, "old" is relative, and we're in
Mythic Europe, here. I'll say he's 32, meaning I have 47 experience
points with which to buy Abilities.
OK, as usual, there are too
many skills I want. I also need to use these points to buy up the
Abilities I already have. Plus I get a specialty in each skill. So using
the handy chart in the book, I come up with:
Magic Theory 4 (fast-casting) Organization Lore (Order of Hermes) 2 Parma Magica 3 (I'll do this one later, when I do magic) Scribe Latin 2 (copying) Speak Latin 4 (Hermetic usage) Speak Scots-Gaelic 4 Will Over Form 4 Stealth 4 (sneak) Thrown Weapon 2 (daggers) Athletics 3 (jumping) Animal Handling 3 (rustling) Hunt 3 (tracking) Faerie Lore 1 (faerie forts) Awareness 3 (alertness)
Magical Training. I get 150 points to buy up Magical Arts. Nifty, eh? And handily, the books gives me a few sample spreads of points.
Well,
I see my fantastic Mr. Fox as Concentrated. Not quite specialized, but
close to it. That gives me 10, 10, 8, 2 1 in Arts, so I look at the 15
Arts and see what I like.
Definitely Intellego is his strongest
Technique. I'll make that 10. But I also want a rating in Muto, for
transformation, so I'll make that his 8.
For Forms, duh, Animal
needs to be there. But is it his highest? I think I'll actually make
that one 2, put the 1 into Herbam, and put the 10 into Corpus.
Self-perception and transformation is where he's strong.
Now I
get 150 levels of Formulaic Spells, but my max is Technique + Form + 10,
or 30 if I go Intellego Corpus at all. Let's have a look. I'll take
Vision of the Marauding Beast; lets me know what hurt an animal.
Whispers Through the Black Gate lets me talk to corpses, which is fun.
Disguise of New Visage, yes please (changes my features). Preternatural
Growth and Shrinking, sure. Intuition of the Forest, awesome (lets me
know my way through a forest). Transformation of the Thorny Shaft isn't
about penises, oddly enough, but I like it.
I want a spell to
let me talk to animals, and I see that that's level 20, so fine, I have
"Speak with the Night-Hunter," which lets me talk with nocturnal
animals. Gift of the Bear's Fortitude sounds like a good plan, since I'm
kind of wimpy normally. And, I just can't resist taking Shape of the
Woodland's Prowler, letting me change other folks into wolves (or foxes,
I think). And that's my 150 points.
Finishing Touches. I get a Reputation from my Flaw, and that's easy: Thief. And now I gotta think more about this guy's life.
His
name, at birth, was Aidan, at least that's what he tells people.
Honestly, he isn't entirely sure. He was brought up by a band of
Reavers, (not this kind, this kind),
and he isn't sure if his birth mother was among them or not - there was
a lady he called "Mum," but so did a lot of the other kids. Aidan lived
as a scavenger until he was 10, when a half-senile and quite amoral
magus wandering through Scotland took him in as a house boy. When Aidan
manifested some magical talent (and his master noticed he was stealing
whatever wasn't nailed down), the old magus took him on as an
apprentice. He also called the boy "Vulpes," and the name stuck, at
least among mages.
Vulpes got out of his training at age 25, and
spent the next seven years back among his people, the Reivers. He
practices magic, but never got into the theory of it all. As such, he's a
little more physically adept than many mages, but years of
book-studying has taken those skills away from him. He's looking for a
covenant that will take him, but his reputation precedes him. But then,
he's never been shy about taking what he needs. Can you just steal your way into a covenant of magi?
Oh!
Wizard's sigil! When Vulpes casts magic, there's a faint scent of fresh
blood that accompanies it. Like a fox just got a chicken, di ye ken?
Go ahead and sing it, I know you're thinking it. The song that's been in my head is this one:
The Game:GURPS 3rd. Edition, using the Bunnies and Burrows book The Publisher:Steve Jackson Games. Degree of Familiarity: Not a hell of a lot. I've played GURPS on occasion, usually with Karafa, but never run it and this is the only character I've made. Books Required: The GURPS core book and Bunnies and Burrows.
OK, so, I love Watership Down. One of my favorite books. And playing an RPG that's based on it just sounds like all kinds of fun. I read through the Bunnies and Burrows
book, and my initial idea was to make a storyteller character much like
Dandelion in the novel, but putting the OK Go song together with the
idea of bunny-hoppers makes me happy.
I like the idea of a bunny
that makes intricate Rube Goldberg kind of devices, just because he
understands, on a deeper level than a lot of bunnies, that things can be
triggered by other things, which can then have their own effects. He
got that notion from watching a rain shower collapse a mud bank into a
pond. The raindrops made ripples, the mud made ripples, the rain fell
but also made the mud fall. Since then, he's tried to use that
understanding of cause-and-cause-and-effect to benefit his warren. The
other bunnies call him Ripples.
Basic Attributes. I start
with 10 in all of them, it's just that 10 here means "bunny average"
rather than "human average." No worries. I want my bunny to be smart as
heck, so I bump IQ to 15 (60 of my 100 points, holy crap...wait, shit, I
started the same way with my other GURPS guy!). I'll keep Strength and
Health at 10, and bump Dexterity to 12, meaning I've spent 80 points.
Physical Appearance.
Well...I'm a bunny. I figure he's brown. With fur. OK, I'll stop.
Ripples is a brown-furred bunny with a white tail. One of his eyes is
missing the fur around it (he got into a scrape with a raccoon once),
but that's about his only distinctive feature. Average appearance nets
me no bonus or anything.
Wealth and Status. I have no
particular Wealth. Average, no points. I figure Ripples might be known
for his "outside-the-box" ideas, and honestly, I like the notion that he
can get a bunch of rabbits together to put together his latest weird
contraption. I'll take a level 3 reputation, and figure it applies to a
limited class of bunnies (just the ones in my warren), so that costs me 5
points.
Advantages. A bunch of them are prohibited. I
want Composed (I get +2 to Fright Checks), and I want Eidetic Sense of
Smell (I can remember a particular creature or situation by scent -
mostly bunnies just live in the moment, but what I do takes some
planning). Together those cost 15. I'm at 100 points, so everything I
buy from here I have to take Disadvantages to make up.
Disadvantages. Well, let's have a look. The Bunnies and Burrows
book mentions that bunnies can take the Alcoholism Disadvantage,
because it's not like alcohol doesn't occur in nature (berries ferment).
I like the notion that my bunnies is a bit of lush; it makes sense that
he'd like to alter his perceptions a little. So I'll take 15 points for
that Disadvantage. I'll take Curious (duh), for 5 points and...oh,
hells yeah. Trickster means I like to outwit my foes. Ripples likes to
lead predators away from the warren by arranging elaborate "rabbit
chains" - one rabbit runs long enough to duck into a bush, where another
is waiting to run off, leading the predator further away, and then
another bunny zips off in another direction, leading the predator
through a garbage heap (to confuse his senses), and so on. That gives me
a further 15, so now I'm up 35 points. I can only take 40, so I'll take
an Enemy. That raccoon that messed up my eye is still looking for me.
See,
it went down like this. The raccoon (known amongst the warren as
"Render the Mask") had been known to make off with baby bunnies. That
pissed everybody off, but we weren't a big warren. So then Ripples,
after watching the mudslide, gets this idea. He gets the bunnies
working, and then sets up a few baby bunnies in this little makeshift
nest under a blackberry bush. Render climbs in across the tree limbs, as
usual, and starts to shimmy down the tree...but when he gets down to
the last few feet, the bark gives and he flops onto a pile of slimy,
rotting vegetation, covered with rabbit fur and gnawed sticks.
Render,
annoyed but not hurt, goes charging in to get the bunnies...but they've
already been pulled down a hole and away into a second tunnel. Render
goes digging after, but he's much heavier, and he starts to lose his
grip, whereupon Ripples and LOTS of other bunnies pop out and start
kicking at him. He falls into a hole, and the rabbits all pile dirt on
him.
Well, he lived, but he's pretty mad and humiliated. And
unlike Ripples, who has forgotten the particulars, he remembers the
whole thing. But he's a busy guy (he's paying off a debt to a bear or
something) and he only shows up on a roll of 6 or less on three dice.
He's a 100-point character, but he's worth 5 points as an enemy.
Whew. OK. Quirks.
Ripples
believes that all rabbits are basically good and that they should all
work together to make the world a better place for bunnies everywhere
(1). He doesn't like to thump; it makes his paws feel funny (2). He's
constantly looking up and is afraid of things that climb trees (3); you
can blame Render for that. He thinks human beings are lucky (as in,
bring good luck), and so if he sees one he thinks it'll be a good day
(4). Finally, he espouses the health benefits of fermented berries -
they make you smarter! (5)
I've got 45 points. On to Skills!
I
get Camouflage, Common Lagomorph, Lapine, Running, Stealth and Survival
at 15 for free. I want Botany, but it's a Very Hard skill for bunnies.
I'll take it at 15, for 8 points. I'll take Common Carnivore at 15 (2
points) and Ursine at 14 (2 points), so I can talk with Render (that is,
beg for my life). I'll take Fiber Crafts at 15 (4 points), letting me
weave stuff out of reeds and so on, and I'll take Hedgewise (kind of
like Streetwise) at 15 (2 points).
Hell, better take Engineer.
I'll specialize in Traps (meaning I have to take the Traps Skill, but I
was going to anyway). I'll take it at 15, so I pay 4. I'll take Strategy
at 15 (4 points), Tactics at 15 (4 points) and Traps at 17 (6 points).
That means I've spent 36, leaving me with 9. Damn, that's one less than I
need to bump an Attribute up. OK, I'll bump Traps down to 16, saving me
2 points, and then I'll take Common Avian at 14. And then I'll use the
remaining 10 to bump up Health to 11.
Not everyone has seen Them. Most people think they have.
They don't come out of the shadows and lay waste to everything in Their path. They've done that exactly once, that we know of, and that was Jerusalem. Mostly, They wait for you to fall into a shadow and then They do whatever it is They do with you.
Those of us who have been to the Between have seen Their natural environment a little more closely, of course. But it's always disappointing to folks who want information to use for strategy or analysis. They're "home" is just...dark. Nothing really there. You get some sense of topography, but...well, the Between's hard to explain, and They aren't easy either, so I'll try and stay focused.
Even if you've seen Them, you probably haven't really seen Them. When we see Them, it's usually because They're dragging someone near us away. And we look straight at the person being dragged, and usually what we remember is the screaming and the terror and sometimes the abrupt snap when the...It...carrying the person decides "fuck it" and just kills him. But we're looking right at It, and the thing is that They are always shrouded in shadows.
So if you look at Them out of the corner of your eye, where the greatest concentration of rods are, you see Them better. Rods are the bits of the eye that see better in dim light, which is why your peripheral vision is better in the dark than in the light. So if you really want to see Them, you look out of the corner of your eye.
While they're dragging someone away. Yeah, I didn't think you want to see Them that badly.
But really, you want to know the worst part? Think about all the times in your life - before He took over, I mean - when you thought you saw something move in the dark? Just some little flicker of activity, just for a split second, and you looked into that corner or behind that door or under that bed and there was nothing there except shadows, and you thought, "Hell, I thought I really saw something?"
I'm betting you did. I think They were just waiting for something.
We don't talk about being American, or English, or Mexican, or Canadian, or Chinese, because nations don't exist.
We don't talk about being black or white or Hispanic, because race doesn't exist. He's never specifically forbidden that (after all, some folks are different colors than others, it's just that when people mention it at all, they're usually talking culture rather than skin color), but it's considered a taboo subject. Especially after dark.
We don't talk about religion or the religions we used to follow, if any.
We don't talk about the old days. Here's why.
They never happened.
This wasn't part of His explanations of the law in Riyadh. It was something that's kind of evolved since. You don't talk about ideas of nation, race, religion and other ideologies because they were never valid to begin with. God never existed, so there's no point harping on what people used to believe. Nations were never more than people standing on a patch of dirt and screaming "Ours!", so there's no point rehashing their slogans and songs. Race was never a valid reason to deny or extend anything to other people, so there's no point mentioning it.
As usual, He's got a point, but the larger issue overshadows it. Maybe he's right that nations, religion and race are artificial constructs, but that doesn't mean they weren't important or that there's no value in studying them. And even ignoring that, the fact of the matter is that they were worth killing and dying for, to a lot of people for a lot of years. And now He's saying, "Forget these parts of yourself ever existed, or else the monsters come in the night and kill you."
It's been 10 years, don't forget. Slowly but surely, They are taking out the people who just can't let go. The fire, the passion, the desire to stand and fight is becoming a less desirable trait.
He delivered it in English, of course. In His weird, non-accent accent, He stood in Riyadh, flanked by an army of Them, and told us how it was going to be.
It wasn't short. There are recordings, of course, and for a while it was just a matter of searching them online, but now that "online" doesn't mean the same thing as it once did, that's not as easy to arrange.
In that address, He explained Himself as clearly and concisely as He ever would. To my knowledge, He hasn't spoken since. Most of what He said was clarification on His statement three hours before Jerusalem. Ideology was the problem. Believing in something so strongly that you lost sight of what was real. Pursuit of an ideal, even when that ideal was untenable and counterproductive.
He made it clear He wasn't interested in debate. He wasn't interested in hearing about people's "right to believe." He mentioned, somewhere in that speech, while the world watched and tried to understand, that He couldn't control what anyone believed. But He could damn well keep them from acting in accordance with those "outdated, moronic, Bronze-Age ideals."
Mostly, He was talking about religion. But if you listened to the address, you started to understand: It wasn't just religion He wanted to dismantle.
He wanted a world where people realized that money wasn't actually worth anything. He wanted a world where people treated each other like people, related to each other on a direct, one-to-one kind of level, rather than seeing the vast majority of others as "them." He wanted a world in which greed, possessions, entitlement, victimization, were all gone.
Naturally, pretty much every major religion and government (what was left of them) stood up and said, "But that's what we wanted all along!"
More realistic folks stood up and said, "Um...how is this going to work?"
It's been 10 years. It's not working. But you can't say that too loud.
He never tried to keep people out of the Between. Of course, He never warned anyone, either, but that's sort of His way in a nutshell - do what you want, as long as what you want isn't clashing with the way the world should be.
Openers learned very quickly that the Between was useful, but not safe. And He set up the Symbol...maybe five years after Jerusalem. Like a lot of events of the time, it just kind of happened, and most of the world didn't see it until it was already there. But it was there, if people had been looking.
The Symbol is...well, it looks kind of like a spiral, or a loop, or a series of loops. I don't know. It's hard to describe. People define it in terms of symbols from their own culture. What letter it looks like, what alchemical symbols. Runes, Egyptian hieroglyphics, symbols from the Mayan calendar (even though we're well past that expiration date). But I think it's just something He made up. What frustrates people about the Symbol is that you can't cheat with it.
They know the intent behind the Symbol. That's the only way to explain it. If you're just using it to try and sneak through the Between and hook up with other resistance-types, They'll kill you. If you're using the Symbol to get through the Between to deliver a letter or something, They let you by. If you're delivering a letter and hooking up with resistance...well, then you're trusting your luck a little. They might kill you. They might not. And if there's a way to make this reliable, to really use the Symbol to your benefit, I don't know the secret.
It all points to Them communicating in ways other than what we use. Letters are symbols, of course, and depending on the nature of the symbol system a letter can stand for a concept or a sound. In English, letters stand for sounds and we group them together into words. In other systems, they stand for concepts, and as concepts are grouped you get bigger and more complicated concepts. But I think They understand symbols on a deeper, or more complex level - They know, somehow, what the intent was when the Symbol was made. I have no idea how that might work.
But if you watch the footage from Cheyenne Mountain, you can see Him nodding, almost imperceptibly, to the shadows around him. Acknowledgment of Their presence? Subtle, silent commands?
Like I said, that's His real power. Communicating with Them. We always assume He's controlling Them, but what if He is just the one person out of billions that They can understand?
All I can say is that...it's like living in every dystopian novel you've ever- Jeez, OK. The movies where there's computer security everywhere and they can track you flawlessly by a fingerprint? That, except you can't get away from it by going "off the grid." The grid isn't made of wires and nodes anymore. It's made of shadows. Anywhere you are, your body gives Him the window He needs to hear you, just by blocking light.
And, yes, the chances against Him listening in at any given time are pretty high. But when you think about how many people disappear every week, and the fact that He makes no attempt at all to hide what He's doing, you're left with two possibilities.
First, He might not be able to keep tabs on the whole world. That would make sense, right? Too much space, too many people, and He's got to sleep sometime, doesn't He? He might just grab people when He finds them (or they get reported - that's the other thing, it's not like He doesn't have followers), and takes enough people to make anyone thinking about resisting think twice.
The second possibility is scarier, but we have to consider it. He might actually be able to monitor the entire world somehow. He's already demonstrated that He can do things most Openers can't - direct two-way gates, controlling Them, expanding gates once they're open, and so on. Maybe He can listen to millions of people at once and sort through what they're saying for what He wants to hear. If so, that makes Him a savant and it makes Him even more terrifying, but honestly, my gut tells me this is what's really happening.
I say that because it's in keeping with how He's always behaved. He's never shown any desire to kill people. He's only ever killed to make a point, and He's going gone whole-hog at the very beginning, when He needed to make sure we all knew He wasn't fucking around. Since then, there haven't been any attacks on the scale of Jerusalem, and only a few on the scale of Cheyenne Mountain or Saint Peter's. He hasn't spoken to the world since the address he gave from Riyadh. Hell, to my knowledge He hasn't spoken since then.
The resistance, from what I've heard...hang on.
OK. Quick, now. From what I hear, most people who consider themselves "resistance" just want to be free to be religious again. It's a good, easy source of outrage, but it faces two big problems. First of all, it's dying out. Religion only works if people teach it to the kids, and teaching your kids about God is dangerous not only to you, but to the kids. Since there are no Churches anymore, urging you to send kids to Sunday school and give money, there's no community based on belief anymore, which is what He wanted in the first place, I think.
Second, the different religious factions still hate each other. They don't actively fight - radical Islam learned pretty quickly that any real violent activity against the West or the Jews was going to result in shadows opening up and a quick visit from Them - but they don't mingle and they don't help each other, either. And, in a show of bone-headedness that makes me want to sit down and cry, they blame each other for all of this.
