I was watching the video We Know More About the Romans than You Think from Told In Stone when a distressing thought crossed my mind. When I read about the lives of Roman emperors, ancient Greek philosophers, and stories about commoners and slaves, the world of classical antiquity seems very real and human to me. We have beautifully written histories and poems from this era that could fill a thousand TV shows. By contrast, when I think of the world of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, I picture empty ruined temples and the occasional colorless stone carving of Maya rulers taking captives in battle. I’m always aware these flat depictions of the Maya world are just a shadow of the richness of this civilization. Most of the writing of the ancient world (Old and New) is lost to us, but in Mesoamerica the destruction by the Spanish seems extraordinarily thorough. Or was there simply much less to destroy?
I’ve heard scholars estimate perhaps less than 1% of Greek and Roman text survives from antiquity, but the surviving material is still enough that a single person could never dream to read it all even if given several lifetimes, and there are still thousands of unedited fragments scattered in European libraries waiting to be published. In fact, we seem to know a lot about Roman life, from the average sewer cleaner’s salary to stories of celebrity gladiators, and thousands of examples of graffiti written about daily life, politics, and personal gossip. And though many pagan/heretical works from the ancient world were destroyed or neglected by medieval Christendom, many works survive to the present.
Similarly, in China, more ancient text survives than can ever be read in its entirety by one person. It’s full of thousands of years of ancient stories, philosophy, and poems that millions of Chinese schoolchildren know by heart. Despite dynastic struggles, wars, and sponsored book burnings (such as those under Qin Shi Huang), there’s so much material that sorting through repositories of ancient text remains a challenge.
It also seems like we keep discovering more ancient writing all the time. In Herculaneum, 1,800 charred papyri have been discovered, and this year machine-learning tools helped to read the burned text. Also this year, archaeologists found 10,000 bamboo slips dealing with Han dynasty-era administration. But have we found new Maya literature since the 60s? Not that I’m aware.
The stark contrast between the millions of pages of surviving ancient writings from the Old World and the four surviving Maya books is extraordinary to me in a way that’s equal parts upsetting and puzzling. How is it that we have over 20,000 ancient copies of the New Testament alone, but in Mesoamerica, with a tradition of writing of thousands of years, we have maybe 20 pre-Columbian codices? I’m aware of the colonial-era codices that depict Nahua life in colorful detail, but it seems like before 1300 C.E. the names just… stop.
Were the Spanish so thorough in their book burning that you can read an entire civilization’s extant literature in a weekend? Was the Maya literacy rate/population density that much lower compared to the societies of classical antiquity, such that a fraction as many books were written? Is there scholarship comparing ancient writing output of the Old and New World? Could we find a lost library of Maya books? Could these AI tools help decode degraded Maya codices? Or was New World literature simply too sparse and inaccessible for it to survive societal upheaval compared to its Eurasian counterparts? Or, are there simply way more Roman and Chinese archaeologists looking for this stuff?
This question may be unanswerable, but it boggles my mind that we know so much relatively obscure information about minor Egyptian nobles or a 4,000-year old squabble among Sumerian merchants, and only a handful of tersely-worded stelae about some of the most important rulers of the New World. What gives?

Anyone from Lisburn remember the graffiti in Graham Garden’s that gave it its local name?
From my earliest years I remember the graffito “UP YOUR DUNGER” sprayed on the wall. It was, and to a degree still is, known by most folks in my school and some of my other local pals as Up Your Dunger Street.
Frequently painted over and just as frequently replaced…
Lisburn is a shitehole.

Part I
Zizek and Heidegger: the alpha and the omega
Chapter 1
Thinking, finitely: Zizek on Heidegger on finitude (continuation)
Heidegger's retreat
Now, most of Zizek's criticism of Being and Time and the work following it through the mid-1930s dwells on the impoverished social and political structure underlying it. But Zizek never fully explains his own path from Heidegger's subjectivism to social and political questions. When pressed to complete the critique of Heidegger's philosophy of finitude, both The Parallax View and The Ticklish Subject turn immediately to the social and political stakes of Heidegger's thought - the question of Heidegger's Nazism, the possibility of an Heideggerian politics, etc., In other words, Zizek leaves out a step in his argument, and an essential one at that - namely, the explanation of why Heidegger's great social/political "error" doesn't stem from his subjectivism at all and what it does stem from. It's to the task of filling out that unarticulated moment in Zizek that I now turn.
Let me offer what is admittedly a mere "reconstruction" of Zizek's argument, an effort to fill in the missing step. While such a method demands that we strike out a little from what he has explicitly written or said, it will not only allow us to bind Zizek's political critique of Heidegger with his (Zizek's) position on finitude but also help to clarify several cryptic Zizekian statements about the limits of a philosophy of finitude and of Being and Time.
My claim here is that a careful Zizekian examination of these chapters in Heidegger would indicate a misplaced keystone: we might, in fact, use either or both of Chapters 1 and 2, but, for the sake of brevity, I'll stick with the clearer case here, the discussion of existential guilt and resoluteness in the second chapter of Division II. In attempting to connect the existential concepts of Chapter 2 with concrete (existentiell) experiences, Heidegger starts out from the "call of conscience," a call which he reduces to its essence as the existential accusation, "Guilty!" with which Dasein is always faced. Heidegger carefully dissociates this "call" from any specific remorse over deeds or intentions. Indeed, he argues compellingly that existential guilt underlies the possibility of the more familiar and everyday "pangs" which we usually associate with the, "call of conscience" (see, Heidegger 1962, H. 281-284/R&M. pp. 327-329).
Whence comes this omnipresent and foundational affect? As Heidegger's analysis reveals, Dasein is guilty in having evaded its "own" voice and thus being seduced by the comforting everdayness of the "They," with its elimination of ambiguity and uncanniness. Thus for Heidegger, "Dasein itself," though only in its uncanny "nothingness," is the "caller" who breaks up the party of inauthentic definiteness, who challenges our identification with our publicly defined "selves" and their projects (Heidegger, Being and Time, H, 276/R&M, 321). The key moment of guilt here is one that happens to us (a "situation" into which we are "thrown") and its force seems to come from the tension between inauthentic "common" understanding and those which are my "own-most" possibilities.
Heidegger characterizes "resoluteness" in the face of such guilt as "wanting to have a conscience," that is, as understanding and aligning one's Dasein with the indefiniteness of "care." While, given the sordidness of the life I have lived by following the "accepted" self- and world- understanding, my guilt will always, in the first instance, take the form of self-accusation, I respond resolutely - authentically - to this raggedness by acknowledging its inevitability. And I do that by choosing some coherent subset of concrete life projects, understanding and relationships. The "existential" choice here amounts to what I called "commitment" above, a complete investment in, and transformation through the situation in which it occurs. Certainly, we can make sense experientially of why somebody acting resolutely might speak of "finding themselves," but, really, what's at stake is projecting or even producing a "self." Recall here Zizek's emphasis upon the way that the commitment of anticipatory resoluteness attacks any conceptual space (ie., the world, the self) constituting a limit to finitude. To affirm resoluteness is to act in a manner "beyond good and evil" or beyond, in any case, the remorse by which such moral categories of selfhood are enforced. Thus, the chapter on "the call of conscience" gives us a second moment, a "resolution" of guilt, in which authenticity is defined not by the pair "theirs/mine" but rather "determinate/open" and openness is realized through a "determining" act of choice.
In fact, the issue here is, in the final analysis, the role of the authentic "self" itself. Heidegger's concept of "authenticity" has two antecedents: on the one hand, from its introduction in the first chapter of Being and Time, the term, "Eigentlichkeit," (authenticity) is associated with "mineness" (jemeinigkeit), with, then, an honesty to oneself as "individuated" - even if this "self" must be conceived as irreducibly "worldly" and even insubstantial. On the other hand, Heidegger also associates authenticity with Dasein's ability to decide or choose (Heidegger 1962, H. 42/ J&M, pp. 67-68). To this extent, the issue of authenticity is not so much one of "individuality" versus "group think" (falling, idle chatter, etc., etc.) as it is a kind of "understanding" of its world which frees it from even internal measures of its being. Which is just to affirm Heidegger's own insight that, with such resoluteness, we find an essential freedom, a spontaneity.
In the light of this ambiguity, we might say that, Heidegger, unacknowledged, "changes the subject" of his analysis between the Dasein of experience in general and authentic Dasein - moving from a Romantic, "individuated" self to a chosen, created subjectivity. And, in retrospect, doesn't Heidegger's own forced description of the categories in both Chapters 1 and 2 of the second division hint at this shift? Since it is "ready for anxiety," anticipation is no longer simply anxious Being-towards-death, as state into which Dasein is born. Since it "wants to have a conscience," resoluteness is no longer simply anxious Being-towards-death, a state into which Dasein is born. Since it "wants to have a conscience," resoluteness is no longer simply the existential "call to conscience" in its traumatic presence ("Guilty!") (see, Heidegger 1962, Section 45). Indeed, one might go so far as to suggest that "anticipatory" Dasein is no longer anxious and that her "resolute" doppelganger is no longer guilty.
Now of course, it's important not to exaggerate this division in Being and Time between two Daseins. The very convincingness of the image of the "resolute" individual, authentically facing her own death and nullity, forbids such exaggeration. There is, after all, a certain intuitive rightness about the existentialist ethic that largely explains the enduring influence of Heidegger's early book. At a psychological level, nobody would deny that such an individual, as master of anxiety, still experiences something of it. Fortunately, though, a Zizekian understanding of the dialectical relationship between the two subjects of existential analysis allows us to understand this psychology, while also moving beyond it.
Recall that Being and Time introduces the concepts of "care" and "Being-towards-death" as figures for, more or less, the "uncanniness" of Dasein's Being - the way that its "existence" is never present-at-hand to it as a mere object for analysis. Now, the value of existential conscience as a moment in Heidegger's thought is that it suggests a concrete dimension in which such uncanniness obtrudes upon our everyday consciousness without becoming such an epistemological object. "Uncanniness" isn't missing from the first subject, "guilty" Dasein. As Heidegger is at pains to indicates, the virtues of authenticity is that, in it, Dasein is "in-the-Truth," namely, the truth that is constituted by its own uncanniness all along. However, neither the anxiety of Being-towards-death nor even the "guilty!" of the call of conscience directly thematize this indefiniteness as self-understanding. In existential guilt we know our "Selves" in being struck by what we are not - our everyday "they" selves with our definite self-understandings and projects. But to know that we are not the definite "person" we thought ourselves to be or even any such determinate character is not yet to understand ourselves as the indefiniteness of care or Being-towards-death. If such Dasein (admittedly, fundamentally inarticulate) were forced to give its self understanding, wouldn't it be something like, "I am not what I thought myself to be, nor what others think of me?"
Heidegger himself acknowledges that, while the true meaning of conscience is present from the start in the call of conscience, such meaning only appears when "the call is rightly understood" and that only happens when we "hear it authentically" in "a factical taking-action" (Heidegger 1962, H. 295/R&M, p. 341.) In other words, we only really "know ourselves" in the moment of practice, the moment of authenticity. We might say that, lacking such a praxical response, Dasein remains wedded to a view of itself as that kind of subject tragically opposed to a meaningless world. From the viewpoint of the Dasein experiencing "guilty!" there is still a "court of appeal" before which my everyday self is accused: there, I am "call(ed) forth and summon(ed) . . . to being-guilty," forcing me away from my everyday self and world (Heidegger 1962, H. 295/ R&M, p. 341).
In other words, I'm suggesting that the shift from the call of conscience to resoluteness mirrors the movement Zizek finds from Kant to Hegel, a "parallax shift" from an incomplete to a complete modern dialectic. The only difference in my example from Being and Time is that Heidegger does not, indeed cannot, acknowledge the shift whose assertion underlies Hegel. Rather than admitting the difference made by the movement from a Kantian framework wherein a finite subject faces off against the "noumenal" or the "in-itself" to a "finite" Being, Heidegger projects the characteristics of those "Kantian" structures (such as guilt) onto the viewpoint of the "authentic" subject - so that, the authentic person exemplifies a kind of sour Germanic individualism in its "reticence," "certainty," etc., etc. In Zizek's words, this side of Being and Time models an "ultra-serious heroic confrontation with our destiny" (Zizek 2006b, p. 110). For this reason, it remains unclear whether Heidegger suggests that we should not take the end of a philosophy of finitude to be a "tragic" situation in which a humanized subject confronts a "meaningless" universe. But, in any case, Zizek demands that we push our understanding of finitude in another direction. We must move away from the "utter seriousness", the "all-pervasive pathos" of the merely "existential" Heidegger (Zizek 2006b, p. 110).
To describe his differences with Heidegger's classical existentialist philosophy of finitude, Zizek suggests an alternative type of comedy to the classical one: such a comedy depends not upon the symmetrical and harmonious resolution of a potentially tragic situation but rather upon an a-symmetrical doubling of tragedy - upon the "infection" of the subject of annunciation by the negation otherwise reserved for "reality." He reminds us of an old graffito from May 1968 in Paris. Somebody crosses out an original inscription, "God is Dead: Nietzsche," and writes over it, "Nietzsche is dead: God." Now, for Zizek this is not yet the alternative comic dimension and indeed represents the worst kind of ideology; for the implicit result of the joke would be that God is alive and able to have the last word on Nietzsche. Thus, Zizek follows Alenka Zupancic in suggesting that the joke really should have read, "God is Dead. And, as a matter of fact, I don't feel too well, either" (Zizek 2006b, p. 109: see, also, Zupancic 2006, p. 196).
Without this gesture oddly preserving subjectivity in a wavering half-existence, we necessarily "revive" God by maintaining the tragedy of existentialism: either God is dead, so that the tragic hero Nietzsche must suffer, or Nietzsche is dead, proving that he was never anything but a speck of dirt, manipulated by the divine consciousness. Whether we tell the story as the death of God or of Nietzsche the tone is Byronic, outsized, tragic. And isn't this theatrical subject of finitude we find an abandonment of the genuinely finite dimension.
Indeed, as Simon Critchley has pointed out in a series of writings about Lacan - and partially in conversation with Zizek - the virtue of a comic or "humorous" subject is the deflation of such a theatrical, tragic "self." For example, writing of Freud's late essay, "Humor," Critchley embraces the idea that in the humorous, the super-ego "makes the ego itself look tiny and trivial" with the result that "I find myself ridiculous (Critchley 2007, p. 79). This deflation of the ego precisely allows the world itself to appear as "nothing but a game for children" - essentially incomplete, an appropriate field for the act (Critchley 2007, p. 80, quoting Freud).

It is obvious that reading Zizek is a very different experience than reading Heidegger, a difference which is quite intentional. In a recent interview, Zizek notes his "deep distrust" of the "Heideggerian pathetic style" - a distrust which, he insists, underlies his compulsion to "vulgarize" his own writing, filling it with references to German toilets, sex acts and reality TV (Zizek and Daly 2004, p. 44). My suggestion would be that the stylistic difference between the "anxious" but "resolute" Heideggerian and the oddly "comic" Zizek points to precisely what, in Zizek's analysis, finitude really demands. In other words, we have to pass beyond the "seriousness" of all existential accounts to do justice to the demand inherent the finite call. Not in heroic quaking before the nullity of death but rather in quietly but systematically kicking away the crutches of everyday existence can we redeem the finiteness of human life. It's a process that even removes the comfort of the tragic self facing the void but which, for all that, reaches more deeply into the "nothing" which Heidegger rightly discovers at the center of human experience than could Being and Time.
All of which would explain why Zizek combines repeated encomia of Heidegger's philosophy of finitude (as summarized in anticipatory resoluteness) with warnings about its limitations - warnings that extend, indeed, to an imperative that we "resist" any "temptation" to rewrite a "good" Being and Time. (Zizek 2006b, p. 278). That is, to the extent that the project of Being and Time as a whole demands we overlook or minimize the shift in perspective between the existential structures of Dasein's Being and the existentiell stances definitive of its authenticity, it cannot be saved. And such a demand is surely inherent in the very project of grasping the structure of Being as a whole from the pre-reflective experience of Dasein: that is, Heidegger's very project in Being and Time demands that he draw a straight line from the pre-reflective dimension of our "thrownness" to authentic understandings of that state.
History and political life: Nazism and will
Now we are finally able to turn to Zizek's criticism of Heidegger's politics and particularly to his shocking embrace of Heidegger's apparently Nazi rhetoric, or at least his willingness to applaud elements of Heidegger's approach in the period where others see only symptoms of his great "error."
But the first step here is to reflect upon the implications of Zizek's Heidegger-critique, as we've constructed it to this point, for understanding the very relationship between individual and society. We might assert now that his warning against "rewriting" Being and Time speaks to the foundational limitation Heidegger imposes on any social or political thought - a limitation which returns us to the difference between Zizek's critique and Jonas' or Habermas' condemnation of a "formalistic decisionism" in Heidegger. To see Zizek's point, we might begin from the observation that the movement from guilt to resoluteness takes us from a subject which is necessarily defined by the categories of individuality (my-ownness, for the most part absorbed in the "They," etc., etc.) to one which, in Zizek's take, defies description by such categories. The "decision" of authenticity, redefining reality itself by projecting "that possibility which is essential to Dasein at that time" no longer fits the way that we normally understand individual identity formation. For one thing, such a decision can issue from the socially transformative collective or revolutionary group (see, Zizek 2006b, p. 278).
Let me clarify this: the point is not that resoluteness allows us to substitute a "larger" subject for the individualized Dasein of "the call of conscience." Quite the contrary, the key here is that there is an untranslatable shift of consciousness between the kind of subjectivity which "individuates" in structures like anxiety and guilt and the authentic enactment of these structures - a heterogeneity in continuity which dissolves the constituted relationship between individual and society. More specifically, the same movement which forbids guilt in the second moment also makes traditional identity obsolete: to act resolutely is to leave behind the effort to "find out who I am," or to enforce the strictures of social inclusion and exclusion from an identity. We get the breakdown of precisely that distinction between the individual and the social that is conceivable as providing the "content" of individual Dasein's world through traditions.
Here we can see the basis for Zizek's scathing contempt for the discussion of individual and society which Heidegger introduces in Section 74 of Being and Time. There, Heidegger does indeed treat the individual's resolute decision as "merely formal," since Dasein's existential possibilities are "not gathered from death" (Heidegger 1962, H. 383/ J&M, p. 434). In this situation, Heidegger proposes that the content of resoluteness derives from "the communal heritage in which Dasein's existence is caught up" (Heidegger 1962, H. 383/ J&M, p. 435: Zizek's translation, 2006b, p. 278).
Indeed, Zizek's implicit insight is that the subject-switch producing the resolute individual also subverts the position of the social as providing the "content" of individual Dasein's world through traditions. Quite simply, when Dasein ceases to posit a "self" (against which the shared or common understandings emerge), the social, too, loses its pre-definition and opens up. "We" might do some things together, things that would change the set of possibilities facing "us," but "we" are no longer the "not I" which nonetheless provides the "I's" measure. We have at least the possibility of a new kind of socius, the self-producing, self-defining "collective." Indeed, such a collectivist theme, which his theological writing associates with St. Paul's decision to define Christianity as a practical orientation rather than an "identity," is essential to Zizek. Thus, as opposed to Judaism, where the "chosen people" could still conceive itself as a defined religious or even ethnic group, for Pauline Christians;

• "Holy Spirit" designates a new collective held together not by a master signifier, but by fidelity to a Cause, by the effort to draw a new line of separation that runs "beyond Good and Evil," that is to say, that runs across and suspends the distinctions of the existing social body. The key dimension of Paul's gesture is thus his break with any form of communitarianism: his universe is no longer that of the multitude of groups that wants to "find their voice," and assert their particular identity but that of a fighting collective grounded in the reference to an unconditional universalism.

(Zizek, Puppet, 130)
​
That Heidegger misses this possibility for understanding Dasein's social Being, that he settles instead upon the double inadequacy of "Mitsein" and the picture of traditions as providing the "content" for Dasein's merely "formal" existential decision, explains the broad force of Zizek's various political critiques of Heidegger: Heidegger is constantly retreating from his own insight in Being and Time - a retreat that begins in that book itself. Indeed, Zizek would ask us to take one further step and consider such retreat as definitive of Heidegger's path. Heidegger retreats in order to evade accepting the full "threat" of the "anticipatory resoluteness" himself projects, in order to tame its disruptive force under what I might call a "personalist" ethic of authenticity, an authenticity defined as being "true to oneself." Heidegger is, in Zizek's Lacanian/psychoanalytic understanding, fundamentally an hysteric, someone who protests loudly precisely in order to be sure that nothing changes. In this, we will see, his hesitancy in Being and Time anticipates the great political crisis in Heidegger's life which is to follow its publication.
Perhaps the most puzzling but fascinating part of Zizek's Heidegger writing is his derision for most critiques of Heidegger's Nazi period. I've already alluded to the widely accepted interpretation of Heidegger's "error," the one which ties his temptation by Nazism with residual subjectivism. Numerous Heidegger-critics from Karl Löwith through Habermas and Wolin start by observing that it is no accident that the authenticity of Dasein is defined in classic "existentialist" terms; in "transcending" the "idle chatter" of das Man, in authentic "being-towards-death," as its "own-most possibility," Heidegger seems to assert a classically subjectivist individual activity defined against a shallow social world. To be authentic is to act without determination by the "They", in an immediate "decision." If the problem with Heidegger's early thought is that it remains still too individualistic because it is too subjective, then the corrective might be a thinking which eschews the existential subjectivism of Being and Time. And then attitudes about later Heidegger will fall between those who see Heidegger as redeeming himself from subjectivism when he abandons the remnants of modern philosophy after the "turn" (Arendt, Heidegger himself) and those who take what Zizek calls the 'passive receptiveness' of the later work as still rooted in a subjectivist irrationalism (Jonas, Löwith, Habermas, Wolin, etc.)
In either case, these critics blame the residual subjectivism of Being and Time for Heidegger's failures, including, most importantly, his attraction to Nazism in the early 1930s. From this viewpoint, the language of his texts from this period indicates the untenability of the still subjectivist Being and Time indicate the ease with which Heidegger was able to slide from his existential subjectivism of the late twenties into Fascism, a Fascism which - for these critics - was nothing other than a philosophy of subjective Will transposed onto the later "subject" of the people (the Volk) and their leader. Thus, having declared itself in the crisis of Nazism, the disease of subjectivism was (either successfully or not, depending on the critic) expunged from the later Heidegger, the Heidegger of the critique of modern technology and of Gelassenheit.
For Zizek, on the other hand, it is precisely the ungrounded nature of Dasein's "decision" - Heidegger's radical "finitism" and even "subjectivism" here - that is worth saving - though, as we've already seen, "subjective" for him means neither "individual" nor "irrational." This last point is worth underscoring, for it is vital for Zizek that the subject of anticipatory resoluteness neither acts as a "formal" individual nor gains its "content" from available traditions. Zizek's appropriately titled post-Parallax View engagement with the question of Heidegger's Nazi period, "Why Heidegger Made the Right Step in 1933," tells this story, a story in which the language of "will," used in a transpersonal sense, actually indicates Heidegger's closest approach to a thinking-through Being and Time. Indicating Heidegger's derivation of this language from his seminars on Anaximander and Heraclitus, Zizek demonstrates that the meaning of such willing is hardly subjective in the sense of a closed position from which and for which Being is framed. Quite the contrary, in Zizek's interpretation at least, Heidegger's "will" must be related to Anaximander's "disorder," a primal disturbance in the historicity of any "fugue of Being" which cannot be ironed-out (Zizek 2007, p. 37). Seen not as the hegemonic claim of power over the whole of Being, but rather as a primordial disruption of totality itself, "will" means something much more like what Freudians get at with "drive":

• The primordial fact is thus not the fugue of Being (or the inner peace of Gelassenheit), which can then be disturbed/perverted by the rise of ur-willing; the primordial fact is this ur-willing itself, its disturbance of the "natural" fugue. To put it in yet another way: in order for a human being to be able to withdraw itself from the full immersion into its life-environs into the inner peace of Gelassenheit, this immersion has first to be broken through the excessive "stuckness" of the drive. Two further consequences should be drawn from this. First, that human finitude strictly equal infinity: the obscene "immortality"/ infinity of drive which insists "beyond life and death." Second: the name of this diabolic excess of willing which "perverts" the order of Being is subject. Subject thus cannot be reduced to an epoch of Being, to the modern subjectivity bent on technological domination - there is, underlying it, a "non- historical" subject. (Zizek 2007, p. 37)

When will is understood as Freudian/Lacanian drive, of course, the equation of a primordial "violence" with it no longer is quite so disturbing, indicating simply the irreducible event by which disorder must always reassert itself over that appearance of seamless totality that we call "reality." In other words, to Zizek, Heidegger's critics are mistaken when they point, for example, to the "strife" between earth and world in The Origin of the Work of Art as an indication of Heidegger's incipient political "error," something needing to be expunged. Heidegger himself may have later interpreted his own gestures in such a manner, but we should avoid it. It is precisely the presence of such violence which indicates Heidegger's greatest advance in articulating his insight.
Furthermore, Zizek's last point in the text I quoted above demands underscoring; for it is the key to his view of Heidegger's Nazi period that this advance marks an effort to think through the implications of the modern subject - to move beyond either Romantic or Rationalist appropriations of it toward a praxical, materialist understanding. As Zizek puts it at another point in the same essay, the persistence of the language of will in Heidegger's text,

• demonstrates the insufficiency of Heidegger's critical analysis of modern subjectivity - not in the sense that 'Heidegger didn't go far enough, and thus remained himself marked by subjectivity,' but in the sense that he overlooked a non-metaphysical core of modern subjectivity itself: the most fundamental dimension of the abyss of subjectivity cannot be grasped through the lense of the notion of subjectivity as the attitude of technological domination. (Zizek 2007, p. 34)

What, according to Zizek, was Heidegger's error in 1933? Precisely the one which typifies our response to the possibility of revolutionary change, change disruptive of reality itself - namely, anxiety and retreat. Or, to be more precise, Heidegger gives us the kind of retreat in the face of anxiety which seems like no retreat at all, a kind of "acting out" pretending to be a decisive "act." In its embrace of both an extra-individual "people" and a basic disruption of modern reality, Nazism seems to follow through on the promise of "will" and "violence," the promise of a "non-metaphysical core of modern subjectivity," but this appearance is false. Nazi "will" is, of course, merely the self-assertion of a larger, corporate but all the more metaphysical subject. Nazi violence is directed against people (Jews, Gypsies, etc.) who represent what cannot be integrated into a totalized reality and precisely not against totality itself. As Zizek puts it, perversely in his essay on Heidegger in 1933, "the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough, that his violence was not 'essential' enough" (Zizek 2007, p. 39).
Nazism, like all Fascism, remained a kind of show, a "pseudo-Event" filled with the appearance of change, but designed in the end to ensure that "nothing will really change" (Zizek 1999b, p. 21). On, the other hand, while the Soviet experiment may have failed dismally to transform the fabric of society, with horrific human consequences, that was not a problem with its intention. Quite the contrary, the Soviets really tried to overturn the existing social order, and it was their initial success in doing precisely that which produced the vehemence of the Stalinist backlash. Above all, the Soviet experiment tried to transform the very relationship between individual and society in the terms of the collective. Thus, for Zizek, we can express Heidegger's breakdown before his own conception of finitude as his failure to see that he really should have embraced the Soviet opportunity rather than the Nazi pseudo-alternative. For Zizek, "it was only Soviet Communism which, despite the catastrophe it stands for, did possess true inner greatness" (Zizek 2006b, p. 285). Had he remained "in the truth" of his own insight, Heidegger would have had to become a Communist!
Which, of course, indicates for Zizek not only how far Heidegger would have had to go to live up to the task given by anticipatory resoluteness, but also how effective the strategy of "acting out" proved; for Heidegger's staunch postwar anti-Communism could be taken to indicate the continuity between his choice of the 1930s and the "peace" of the later Heidegger. While Nazi-period Heidegger hides the radicality of his own insight about subjectivity from even himself by equating it with the Nazi pseudo-revolution, later Heidegger achieves the same result by erasing the very space for that insight. Indeed, the eventual effect of the entire Nazi episode for Heidegger was to make disappear the really disturbing possibility unearthed in his earlier work and brought to its most daring formulation in the crisis-period of the thirties. For the later Heidegger, as for Heidegger's followers, the only choices are between the violence of metaphysical subjectivism (the "danger" of modern technology) and a "thinking" which leaves the modern subject behind.
What drops out, of course, when we have only a choice between "self-assertion" and the open acceptance of destiny, is finitude itself, except as a residual skepticism demanding that we accept the cards dealt us. That for Heidegger himself (at least the Heidegger of Being and Time) we cannot sustain a philosophical finitude on the basis of the later, anti-modern position, indicates not only the content of Zizek's immanent critique of Heidegger, but also the role that Zizek takes for himself. His work can refuse the retreat from finitude that proved fatal to Heidegger's thought, can complete the task that Heidegger began, doing so by pulling the Heideggerian corpus in the direction of a subjectivity which is both collective and praxical.
While, as we'll see in the next chapter, things get more complicated for Zizek when we turn to the apparently marginal question of technology - the question by which Heidegger hid from the possibility of such a radicalized modern subject - still, the project here seems clear enough. Zizek suits himself up to play the "knight of finitude," to face the abyss of the Other's fictionality, in a way for which his first "teacher" remained unprepared.
With such a project in mind, we now turn from Heidegger's essays in finitude to the rigid structure of thought he eventually adapts in defense against the shock of his own insight. In doing this with an eye to understanding Zizek's path of thought, though, a second set of concerns must collect in the background: "technology" may be a mere symptom, a fundamentally mistaken direction in Heidegger's thought, but it also haunts Zizek, taking an increasingly important role in his recent writing. Indeed, Zizek seems to be spooked by Heidegger on technology, structuring whole sections of recent books as implicit critiques of "The Question Concerning Technology" - and this despite (or perhaps because) he has never developed an extended and careful reading of any of Heidegger's technology writings. In other words, the next chapter, which examines these flailing efforts to grapple both with technology and Heidegger on technology, amounts to a first step in figuring out the structure and meaning of this odd symptom in Zizek's own work.
​
To be continued...
Chapter 2
Zizek and the other Heidegger: technology and danger

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You'll go insane if you keep going like this. One more day and you'll be in the loonie bin. I just know you will. And for what, brother-man?
LIMBIC SYSTEM: Solving your little crossword puzzles? Doing your tasks, crossing names off your lists? Trying to become some sort of world-detector... It won't make it okay. It won't put smoke back in her mouth…

In a trashed room on the second floor of a hostel in Revachol, former capital of the world, a man wakes up on the hardwood floor. Aggressively hungover, he has forgotten who he is, where he is and why his necktie has begun yelling at him. A detective downstairs informs him that he is a criminal investigator tasked with finding the culprit behind a public lynching. For the next few days, our hero has to deal with muscle bound racists, trigger-happy authoritarian soldiers, and liberals.
There's only room for one detective in the man's psyche. Is he Lt. Harrier Du Bois, morose detective driven to drink from grief over a lost love? Or could he be Tequila Sunset, hedonist, junky and Superstar Detective? Or is he actually Firewalker, or Icebreaker, or Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, or any other deranged identity his drug-addled brain can produce? Only time will tell.
Terminology
Morale- A representation of our hero's mental health. If it reaches zero, he goes completely insane.
Red Check- An opportunity that cannot be retried. Examples include actions taken during a gun fight, time-dependent conversation choices or interacting with a fragile object.
White Check- Opportunities that can be retried if failed. Examples include getting past locked doors, extracting information from a person or interacting with a sturdy piece of equipment.
Passive Checks- Small observations made by one of his twenty-four inner voices. An Encyclopedia passive might see the Detective recall a piece of information about his surroundings, while a Perception passive would reveal something that he sees, hears or smells, etc.
Political affiliations- In broad strokes, ultraliberal means capitalist, moralist means liberal/centrist, Mazovianist means communist, although it's also just called communism. Fascism is usually just referred to as fascist or traditionalist.
Note: Due to lack of usable footage and the heavily text-based nature of the game, some feats will be presented in text form on Pastebin. I pulled directly from the game’s script using this tool, FAYDE. I tried to find gameplay footage for anything that the visuals would be important for, like physical showings, but the script is just as good for certain actions and scenes.

Physicals

Strength

• Pulled half the faucet off of a sink
• Threw a shoe through a window
• Beats a man with a clipboard until he's unconscious. The man can no longer walk after the attack.
• Can lift his partner Kim on his back
• Pulls on a monument’s horse head too hard, causing the metal poles to break and decapitate the horse statue
• See feats under the Physical Instrument skill

Endurance
Blunt Force

• Gets hit in the eye with a thrown key
• Punches a payphone until his knuckles bruise and bleed
• Drove a motor carriage halfway into an icy canal and crawled out unharmed, with this as the end result
• Dives backwards into a woman’s wheelchair, sustaining a trauma to the neck and a strained trapezius muscle. Despite this, the Detective shrugs off the injury.
• Falls around three meters, or ten feet, off of a ladder and onto a barrel, but gets up

Other

• Withstands sitting in a remarkably uncomfortable chair for an extended period
• Punches a tree covered in sharp thorns
• Recovers after an attack from a whole flock of seagulls
• Takes a gunshot from a rifle to the shoulder and remains standing. The rifle is designed to take out lightly-armored vehicles.
• After being shot by a revolver in the thigh, he takes two days to recover before standing and walking around unimpeded. Even after breaking his stitches, he can still walk, albeit with a limp.
• See feats under the Pain Threshold skill

Agility

• Climbs up an elevated monument of a man on horseback, traversing lengths of thin metal beams
• See feats under the Savoir Faire, Reaction Speed and Hand/Eye Coordination skills

Skills

Intellect

Logic

If it sounds like it makes no sense, that's because it doesn't.

His sense of problem solving and ability to connect the dots between pieces of information. This voice is what lets him answer questions.

• Gives him tips in conversations to better extract information from others
• Identifies two undercover mercenaries
• Thinks to use alcohol on a grimy piece of equipment to enhance connectivity
• Understands that if the Detective were to drink a jar of potent spirits, he would die
• Realizes that the killer was watching a woman through her window by observing flower petals at the scene from a flower that only blooms on the killer’s island

Encyclopedia

Nothing is unimportant, detective.

His ability to recall trivia, relevant and otherwise, about his world and surroundings.

• Gives the Detective a general sense of knowledge about his surroundings or history
• Recognizes the symbol and history of communism
• Recalls a great deal of information on a historic king
• Identifies the make and capabilities of an enemy’s gun
• [Limit] Being a representation of the Detective’s knowledge, it can sometimes just be wrong and feed him incorrect trivia

Rhetoric

I don't know what went wrong the last time. You have so many good ideas here. Make them all see they're puppets on a string.

Ability to hold his own in hostile conversation and understand when someone is trying to manipulate him. Also, let's him better manipulate others.

• Allows him to read between the lines and understand subtext during conversation
• Identifies the weak link in a group and provokes him, allowing the Detective to get the truth about the hanged man’s death
• Convinces a merchant to give him money
• Convinces a woman with a gun in her mouth to drop it by offering her a way out
• Can smell communism

Drama

Stop being such a fussy prude! You can't convince her without liessssss.

A sense of theatricality and deception, allowing him to better detect lies and more convincingly lie to others. Also, this voice refers to him as "sire" and speaks in old English.

• Informs the Detective when it senses other people lying or hiding information
• Identifies a gardener secretly keeping an eye on him and his partner
• Convinces a bookstore owner that he’s a para-detective experienced in dispelling curses
• Allows the Detective to perform in front of crowds, like when he sang karaoke
• Lies to his coworkers about losing his gun

Conceptualization

Interesting. You can immediately see multiple ways to interpret this piece. What is the experience that the artist is trying to create? What bodies and spaces are they seeking to explore?

A sense of creativity and artistic vision. Keeps the Detective from being boring.

• Allows him to think of and perform poetry
• Lets him add beauty to the city by painting graffito

Visual Calculus

You're not bad. It's as if the whole world darkens, everything else has a thin film of unimportance on it -- and the tracks burn in the middle of it, in a strange, beautiful way.

Allows the Detective to perfectly reconstruct crime scenes in his head, measure distances and analyze minute pieces of evidence. Imagine Sherlock Holmes if he was an alcoholic instead of a cokehead.

• Scans a room and deeply analyzes seven men in around four seconds
• Identifies an approximate number of people by looking at footprints in the mud, then analyzes what kind of people they were by style of boot
• Visualizes the path of a car crash by observing tire tracks and the shape of surrounding wreckage
• Visualizes the path of the car crash later on, observing the path it took jumping over a canal and identifying two possible models of vehicle that it could’ve been
• Pictures how a mass execution went down
• Visualizes three possible trajectories of a bullet by observing the broken window that the bullet initially entered. He also estimates the percent chance of each trajectory being the true path of the bullet, using factors like ballistics information, the positions of light source and wind directions.
• Mentally reconstructs a stained-glass window after it had been partially shattered, successfully visualizing the full mural
• Looks through a firing aperture, determining line of sight between the sniper’s nest and the scene of the murder

Psyche

Volition

In honour of your shit, lieutenant-yefreitor. Which you kept together in the face of total, unrelenting terror. Day after day. Second by second.

A measure of his willpower and mental fortitude. Controls how many Morale points the Detective has.

• Keeps the Detective patient when listening to painfully uninteresting conversation
• Wakes him up at 7:30 every day until he dies, no matter how hungover he is

Inland Empire

Less talk, more feeling. Keep your eyes closed, soak in the closeness. See what the feeling entails.

A representation of his imagination and ability to see beyond the physical world. By my estimation, this voice spouts about 85 percent poetry or nonsense, but the other 15 percent is relevant, accurate information gained through a kind of sixth sense.

• Feels tension behind a locked door
• Tells the Detective what time a person will be at the docks until
• Touching a veteran’s medal gives the Detective flashes of traumatic wartime images
• Allows him to speak with an insect-like cryptid. This conversation happens within the Detective’s mind.
• Holds a conversation with a decomposing corpse. This lets him determine that the victim was a killer himself and that he died during sexual intercourse, both of which turned out to be true.
• Gets a strange feeling about a pile of roofing material, later revealing a hidden door behind it

Empathy

No. The tiny apes are doing all they can to be better. It's not their fault.

The degree of love the Detective has for those around him. Allows him to get a better bead on conversation partners by feeling what they feel.

• Identifies guilt and pride by looking at someone’s eyes
• Understands that one delinquent is a bad influence on the other, and separates the two to speak openly with the lesser delinquent
• Can identify the source of people’s shame
• Perceives imperceptible inflections in people’s voices during conversation
• Observes a corpse’s facial expression and decides that he was feeling pleasure when he died, which was later confirmed to be true

Authority

Take heed of these wise words. You're in charge. 'Sorry' is a beggar's plea reserved for those beneath you.

Compels the Detective to assert dominance on others, demanding respect from teenagers, gangbangers or tough guys alike.

• Establishes authority in front of a Union gang who hates cops
• Threatens Garte with arrest, successfully lowering his hostel bill

Esprit de Corps

Sometimes police work is about human dignity -- about giving back names to anonymous victims.

His knowledge of cop culture. This ability allows him to relate to cops better, sometimes allowing him to visualize the thoughts and actions of other cops in real time.

• Seems to be able to predict the thoughts of fellow officers in real time
• Upon meeting him, understands that Kim Kitsuragi is extremely loyal and heroic
• Can visualize what other faraway cops look like and what they’re doing
• Predicts what Kim is thinking, from the perspective of a police officer
• Visualizes what two cops are talking about six kilometers away
• Knows how far away his backup is and what they are doing in real-time
• While he’s preoccupied with a tantrum, his mind conjures up the image of two cops observing him from across the bay

Suggestion

Massage his ego, feed him a few grapes, make him like you.

The ability to charm others, influencing people to want what the Detective wants. He can turn enemies into supporters, and supporters into die-hard allies.

• Convinces an old woman to sign papers allowing the Union to build a street through her village. Just minutes earlier, she was strongly against the idea and expressed disdain for the Union leader.

Physique

Endurance

(Your pecs dance.) No more sleep it is. A frazzled ride through eternity without pause. Hissing pistons pushed to the extreme.

The measure of the Detective's physical health, both his response to injury and the health of his organs. Controls how many Health points he has access to.

• Endures the stench of a multiple day old corpse

Pain Threshold

It would take a million years of evolution -- or a total reversal in the condition of the world -- for your pain to end.

Keeps his body and mind in line when he's hurt. Silences the cries and yelps when he's beaten, including those born from emotional pain.

• Blasted by a sound cannon that produces a highly painful noise using hundreds of radio stations. Once turned down a bit, the Detective can cross the distance and break the sound cannon.
  • After prolonged exposure, the machine causes his ears to bleed and veins to rupture, possibly
• Gets his skull grabbed and squeezed by a huge racist
• Gets his hand crushed by the same huge racist until his bones begin cracking, but he withstands the pain and continues speaking
• Breaks down a locked door by ramming into with his shoulder twice
• Nods hard enough to crack some vertebrae
• Fractures tiny bones in his toe just to make a joke

Physical Instrument

Son, you've really let yourself go -- it's a disgrace. But Coach Physical Instrument is going to get you back in prime condition. Even if it takes a million push-ups!

Influences the power behind his muscles, skeleton and organs. Along with providing strength, this skill also influences his ability to use his body, whether it be performing push ups or roundhouse kicks.

• Hits Measurehead, the eight foot racist, with a punch to the throat, followed by a 360-spin kick, knocking the opponent out
• Lays out a twelve-year-old with a punch
• Punches a young communist as hard as he can, nearly breaking the man’s jaw and teeth
• Smashes a lorry window with his prybar. By passing a more difficult check, he can shatter the window with a punch, instead.
  • The lorry window was possibly shatter resistant
• Deadlifts a barbell that weighs around 60 kilograms, or about 130 pounds
• Breaks into a locked dumpster with a prybar. By passing a more difficult check, he can also open it with just his bare hands.
• Kicks a barred door in, breaking the length of wood
• Throws a petanque boule into the sea about 23 to 24 meters
  • A shot put ball is a suitable replacement for the lost petanque boule, and current, real life records for men’s shot put are 23.37 meters

Electrochemistry

A golden sun melts down your throat, its rays filling your nostrils with sunshine. Your stomach melts from it -- into a happy gooey mess! So does your mind, all the bad things are melting. You're you again. A real cop. A real detective. Incredibly well done.

The desire to drink, smoke and fuck. Temptation itself. Also provides insight on the psychology of drug users or other need-driven individuals.

• Identifies what drug a man is on
• Identifies the drug in his bloodstream administered while he was unconscious

Shivers

Your shirt sticks to your chest. The shoulders of your jacket grow heavy. The cold finds its way under your skin. You shiver, and the city shivers with you.

The ability to communicate with the city itself. A genuinely supernatural ability to see past events or listen to clues provided by proud Martinaise.

• Despite coming to the Detective as a voice, shivers is comprised of shifts in pressure and temperature
• Listens to the wind in order to get a perp’s location, as well as a vague description of the location’s layout
• Can give him vague flashes of information on events happening within the city, down to the street they’re happening on
• The wind tells him that the city he’s in will be destroyed by a nuclear blast in 22 years
• He’s told to look under the floorboards, where he finds a clue
• The wind whispers to him “neigh”, telling him to make use of a statue of a man on horseback

Half Light

Look at his shit-eating grin... He knows there's nothing you can do to him. He's bullying you and you are helpless. Kill him. Kill him now. He won't see death coming.

The voice that tells him when to be afraid of incoming danger, as well as how best to intimidate his enemy. The paranoia provided by this skill lets the Detective remain on his toes.

• Frightens two wannabe gangsters by telling them that they’re on the path to lead the gang, causing them to hand over their gang sign-marked jackets
• Interrogates a racist by getting loud and physical

Motorics

Hand/Eye Coordination

At last! The fastest hand in Revachol reunited with the slickest tool in the North. You're gonna be the envy of the town, baby!

The sense of precision, allowing him to catch, throw or shoot accurately. Essential for when the bullets start flying.

• Catches a thrown die with one hand
• Catches a flower petal as it begins drifting away
• Plans out how to disarm a gun-wielding woman, before noticing that it’s unloaded
• Shoots a belt buckle with a handgun, allowing the Hanged Man to fall to the ground
• Quick-draws and shoots a soldier in the face

Perception

You inhale. The cilia along your olfactory epithelium tingle with excitement as they sift through the swirling morass of industrial odours...

The degree of information gleaned from the Detective's senses. Focuses specifically on sight, sound and smell.

• Notices a hidden door behind a too-orderly pile of debris
• Can identify a pair of woman’s shoes by the sound of footsteps
• Can identify which cigarette brand a man smokes by smelling his breath
• Spots the crab-man hiding in the shadows of a church’s rafters
• Can tell a conversation is happening about 70 meters away

Reaction Speed

Dodged the bullet there. For a moment it seemed like you were just wasting time.

Controls the speed at which the Detective's body and mind operates at. Keeps him alert, ready to dodge bullets or hurtful remarks.

• Spots a man’s concealed weapon
• Makes an accurate assessment in a millisecond
• Helps recognize when enemies are moving to draw their guns
• Evades a rifleman’s gunfire within 0.4 seconds

Savoir Faire

It ain't easy, but you do it. Day in and day out. You didn't make the rules but you won't lose! You're a cop and a sprinter and a money printer.

Sense of acrobatics and stealth. With this skill, he can pickpocket, shoplift, sneak away from confrontation or leap between rooftops.

• Slips away from a conversation unnoticed
• Leaps from a rooftop to a nearby ledge
• “Teleports” up a particularly rusty, decrepit ladder
• Can "hear" opportunities to grow his wealth

Interfacing

You like moving things around. Moving things around is calming.

The skill that controls how well the Detective understands and interacts with machines, including simple machines like locks and pens.

• Gives the Detective a degree of mechanical knowledge, identifying minute details about his partner’s car
• Disentangles some magnetic tape from a tree’s branches
• Shoplifts a book and a raincoat
• Realizes that the person who tampered with a trap had smaller hands, narrowing it down to the local juvenile delinquent
• Pulls at the head of a monument, accurately directing an antenna to pick up a radio signal
• [Tells a DJ to manipulate an audio compressor in such a way that produces a harder-core beat](https://imgur.com/a/aANkyxU
• Secretly swipes a container of pills in front of his partner
• Pickpockets a sleeping man’s ID card
• Picks a bullet out of a corpse’s brain with his fingers
• If attempting to cut a chain lock without the chaincutters equipped, the detective will pull the chain off the door through brute force

Composure

Not even a flinch. That must take willpower. Yet below it, some little crack starts running in the foundation.

This skill keeps him from cracking under pressure, at least outwardly. It allows him to swallow his feelings and better read the body language of others to un-swallow their feelings.

• Allows the Detective to analyze other people’s body language and concealed expressions
• Realizes that a man’s clothing is ill-fitted and becomes suspicious
• Gives him tips in a fistfight by reading the opponent's pose
• Allows him to steel himself and shoot a child

Equipment

Weapons

• The Villiers 9mm Pepperbox Pistol, a three-shot revolver
• Ruby's Nachtwey A80 Pepperbox Pistol, a double-barreled, durable pistol
• The Deserter’s Triangong 4-46, a bolt-action sniper rifle, confiscated from the killer of the Hanged Man. The Detective never fires this gun, however.
• The Spirit Bomb, a homemade molotov cocktail made from a jar of potent alcohol and a necktie
• Standart 115mm Sabre, a noticeably dull sword earned after successfully getting through a date while sober

Tools

• A heavy-duty prybar used to open locked doors or containers
• A flashlight with a virtually limitless dynamo battery, able to illuminate dark areas indefinitely
• Chaincutters, a two-handed tool that can cut wires, locks and especially chains, with ease. He can cut a steel-reinforced cargo belt with the chaincutters.
• The Kvalsund KR+2 Multi-Tool, a high tech device with a strengthened prybar able to open a frozen container that other prybars can only be bent upon

Clothing

• The Fairweather T-500 ceramic armor set, impervious to punches, swords or bullets, as well as prybars, electric currents, or esoteric frequency-based attacks
  • Achieves its high durability by redistributing kinetic energy along its many ceramic plates
  • Sure enough, the chestplate redistributes a gunshot from a mercenary’s rifle. The rifle is built to take out lightly-armored vehicles.
  • Strikes with the T-500's armored gloves still deliver maximum force, while minimizing the force on the Detective's hands
  • Extremely lightweight, compared to a bag of cotton
  • [Limit] The eye holes are the only part of the armor set that does not protect the wearer from harm. Additionally, the Detective never finds the armor’s leggings at any point in the game, meaning he remains vulnerable to hits below the belt and above the knee.
• A horrific necktie that speaks to the Detective and tries to get him to do more drugs
• The FALN series of sportswear includes an aerodynamic hat, a pair of gloves that increase grip and high-traction sneakers
• The RCM Patrol cloak is nearly wind-and-waterproof, aside from the couple of bullet holes in the fabric
• The Polar Anorak is a very thick winter coat

Consumables

• Nosaphed and Drouamine, painkillers that restore health
• Magnesium and Hypnogamma, medicine used to heal the Detective’s morale
• Cigarettes temporarily raise the Intellect stat, but harm the Detective’s health
• Pyrholidon, a psychedelic drug, can temporarily increase the efficiency of his Psyche skills at the expense of his health
• Alcohol, whether it’s beer, wine, or liquor, will temporarily raise all of the Detective’s Physique skills when drunken, but at the expense of his morale
• Speed or other amphetamines can temporarily increase the efficiency of his Motorics skills at the expense of his morale
• A ham sandwich, for healing

Thought Cabinet

• Actual Art Degree- Passively heals morale when noticing art or sources of creativity
• Anti-Object Task Force- Damaging inanimate objects heals the Detective’s wounds. Although, since punching furniture and mailboxes usually damages the Detective, this thought basically keeps his health at the same level as before he hits the object.
• Bankruptcy Sequence- Failing an Intelligence check grants the Detective one reál
• Bringing of the Law (Law-Jaw)- Succeed all Hand-Eye Coordination passives
• Coach Physical Instrument- Grants an innate knowledge of physical fitness, as well as a small physical boost if the Detective is not wearing a shirt
• Col Do Ma Ma Daqua- Grants near-superhuman hearing, sensitive enough to hear a bug moving in another room or a wrapper falling on the ground
• Indirect Modes of Taxation- Gain one reál for every capitalistic dialogue option spoken
• Kingdom of Conscience- Heal morale for every centrist dialogue option
• Magnesium-Based Lifeform- Produces magnesium-receptive glands, allowing him to take more drugs and raising Volition
• Opioid Receptor Antagonist- The Detective receives no negative effects from alcohol, but as a tradeoff, he receives no positive effects from speed or psychedelic drugs
• Remote Viewers Division- By tapping into the supernatural, all Psyche checks are made slightly easier
• Revacholian Nationhood- By being racist, alcohol gives more physical benefits to the Detective
• Rigorous Self-Critique- Failing Physical and Motorics checks restore health, while failing Intellect and Psyche checks restore morale
• Searchlight Division- Makes the Detective more perceptive, specifically towards missing persons
• The Jamrock Shuffle- A childhood of treasure hunting gives the Detective the chance for better loot in locked containers
• The Suicide of Kras Mazov- Failing at certain tasks fully restores the detective’s morale
• White Mourning- See further
• Wompty-Dompty Dom Centre- Grants two reál for every passed Encyclopedia check

Miscellaneous

• Has been a cop for eighteen years, has solved 216 cases, and killed three people, a very low kill count compared to the rest of his precinct
  • Impressive when considering 85% of murder cases in his district go unsolved
• His rank is ‘lieutenant double-yefreitor’, which is the highest rank one can obtain and still perform field work. He has also declined promotions to ‘captain’ twice.
• Before he was a cop, he was a gym teacher, which explains why he knows a bit about fitness and is adept at running around
• He’s so poor that when he stands next to a multi-billionaire, the laws of physics collapse and light itself warps around the richer man
• Survived childhood polio without being vaccinated

You are a violent and irrepressible miracle. The vacuum of cosmos and the stars burning in it are afraid of you. Given enough time you would wipe us all out and replace us with nothing -- just by accident.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You'll go insane if you keep going like this. One more day and you'll be in the loonie bin. I just know you will. And for what, brother-man?
LIMBIC SYSTEM: Solving your little crossword puzzles? Doing your tasks, crossing names off your lists? Trying to become some sort of world-detector... It won't make it okay. It won't put smoke back in her mouth…

In a trashed room on the second floor of a hostel in Revachol, former capital of the world, a man wakes up on the hardwood floor. Aggressively hungover, he has forgotten who he is, where he is and why his necktie has begun yelling at him. A detective downstairs informs him that he is a criminal investigator tasked with finding the culprit behind a public lynching. For the next few days, our hero has to deal with muscle bound racists, trigger-happy authoritarian soldiers, and liberals.
There's only room for one detective in the man's psyche. Is he Lt. Harrier Du Bois, morose detective driven to drink from grief over a lost love? Or could he be Tequila Sunset, hedonist, junky and Superstar Detective? Or is he actually Firewalker, or Icebreaker, or Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, or any other deranged identity his drug-addled brain can produce? Only time will tell.
Terminology
Morale- A representation of our hero's mental health. If it reaches zero, he goes completely insane.
Red Check- An opportunity that cannot be retried. Examples include actions taken during a gun fight, time-dependent conversation choices or interacting with a fragile object.
White Check- Opportunities that can be retried if failed. Examples include getting past locked doors, extracting information from a person or interacting with a sturdy piece of equipment.
Passive Checks- Small observations made by one of his sixteen inner voices. An Encyclopedia passive might see the Detective recall a piece of information about his surroundings, while a Perception passive would reveal something that he sees, hears or smells, etc.
Political affiliations- In broad strokes, ultraliberal means capitalist, moralist means liberal/centrist, Mazovianist means communist, although it's also just called communism. Fascism is usually just referred to as fascist or traditionalist.
Note: Due to lack of usable footage and the heavily text-based nature of the game, some feats will be presented in text form on Pastebin. I pulled directly from the game’s script using this tool, FAYDE. I tried to find gameplay footage for anything that the visuals would be important for, like physical showings, but the script is just as good for certain actions and scenes.

Physicals

Strength

• Pulled half the faucet off of a sink
• Threw a shoe through a window
• Beats a man with a clipboard until he's unconscious. The man can no longer walk after the attack.
• Can lift his partner Kim on his back
• Pulls on a monument’s horse head too hard, resulting in the metal poles to break and decapitate the horse statue
• See feats under the Physical Instrument skill

Endurance
Blunt Force

• Gets hit in the eye with a thrown key
• Punches a payphone until his knuckles bruise and bleed
• Drove a motor carriage halfway into an icy canal and crawled out unharmed, with this as the end result
• Dives backwards into a woman’s wheelchair, sustaining a trauma to the neck and a strained trapezius muscle. Despite this, the Detective shrugs off the injury.

Other

• Withstands sitting in a remarkably uncomfortable chair for an extended period
• Punches a tree covered in sharp thorns
• Recovers after an attack from a whole flock of seagulls
• Takes a gunshot from a rifle to the shoulder and remains standing. The rifle is designed to take out lightly-armored vehicles.
• After being shot by a revolver in the thigh, he recovers for two day before standing and walking around unimpeded. Even after breaking his stitches, he can still walk, albeit with a limp.
• See feats under the Pain Threshold skill

Agility

• Climbs up an elevated monument of a man on horseback, traversing lengths of thin metal beams
• See feats under the Savoir Faire, Reaction Speed and Hand/Eye Coordination skills

Skills

Intellect

Logic

If it sounds like it makes no sense, that's because it doesn't.

His sense of problem solving and ability to connect the dots between pieces of information. This voice is what lets him answer questions.

• Gives him tips in conversations to better extract information from others
• Identifies two undercover mercenaries
• Thinks to use alcohol on a grimy piece of equipment to enhance connectivity
• Understands that if the Detective were to drink a jar of potent spirits, he would die
• Realizes that the killer was watching a woman through her window by observing flower petals at the scene from a flower that only blooms on the killer’s island

Encyclopedia

Nothing is unimportant, detective.

His ability to recall trivia, relevant and otherwise, about his world and surroundings.

• Gives the Detective a general sense of knowledge about his surroundings or history
• Recognizes the symbol and history of communism
• Recalls a great deal of information on a historic king
• Identifies the make and capabilities of an enemy’s gun
• [Limit] Being a representation of the Detective’s knowledge, it can sometimes just be wrong and feed him incorrect trivia

Rhetoric

I don't know what went wrong the last time. You have so many good ideas here. Make them all see they're puppets on a string.

Ability to hold his own in hostile conversation and understand when someone is trying to manipulate him. Also, let's him better manipulate others.

• Allows him to read between the lines and understand subtext during conversation
• Identifies the weak link in a group and provokes him, allowing the Detective to get the truth about the hanged man’s death
• Convinces a merchant to give him money
• Convinces a woman with a gun in her mouth to drop it by offering her a way out
• Can smell communism

Drama

Stop being such a fussy prude! You can't convince her without liessssss.

A sense of theatricality and deception, allowing him to better detect lies and more convincingly lie to others. Also, this voice refers to him as "sire" and speaks in old English.

• Informs the Detective when it senses other people lying or hiding information
• Identifies a gardener secretly keeping an eye on him and his partner
• Convinces a bookstore owner that he’s a para-detective experienced in dispelling curses
• Allows the Detective to perform in front of crowds, like when he sang karaoke
• Lies to his coworkers about losing his gun

Conceptualization

Interesting. You can immediately see multiple ways to interpret this piece. What is the experience that the artist is trying to create? What bodies and spaces are they seeking to explore?

A sense of creativity and artistic vision. Keeps the Detective from being boring.

• Allows him to think of and perform poetry
• Lets him add beauty to the city by painting graffito

Visual Calculus

You're not bad. It's as if the whole world darkens, everything else has a thin film of unimportance on it -- and the tracks burn in the middle of it, in a strange, beautiful way.

Allows the Detective to perfectly reconstruct crime scenes in his head, measure distances and analyze minute pieces of evidence. Imagine Sherlock Holmes if he was an alcoholic instead of a cokehead.

• Scans a room and deeply analyzes seven men in around four seconds
• Identifies an approximate number of people by looking at footprints in the mud, then analyzes what kind of people they were by style of boot
• Visualizes the path of a car crash by observing tire tracks and the shape of surrounding wreckage
• Visualizes the path of the car crash later on, observing the path it took jumping over a canal and identifying two possible models of vehicle that it could’ve been
• Pictures how a mass execution went down
• Visualizes three possible trajectories of a bullet by observing the broken window that the bullet initially entered. He also estimates the percent chance of each trajectory being the true path of the bullet, using factors like .
• Mentally reconstructs a stained-glass window after it had been partially shattered, successfully visualizing the full mural
• Looks through a firing aperture, determining line of sight between the sniper’s nest and the scene of the murder

Psyche

Volition

In honour of your shit, lieutenant-yefreitor. Which you kept together in the face of total, unrelenting terror. Day after day. Second by second.

A measure of his willpower and mental fortitude. Controls how many Morale points the Detective has.

• Keeps the Detective patient when listening to painfully uninteresting conversation
• Wakes him up at 7:30 every day until he dies, no matter how hungover he is

Inland Empire

Less talk, more feeling. Keep your eyes closed, soak in the closeness. See what the feeling entails.

A representation of his imagination and ability to see beyond the physical world. By my estimation, this voice spouts about 85 percent poetry or nonsense, but the other 15 percent is relevant, accurate information gained through a kind of sixth sense.

• Feels tension behind a locked door
• Tells the Detective what time a person will be at the docks until
• Touching a veteran’s medal gives the Detective flashes of traumatic wartime images
• Allows him to speak with an insect-like cryptid. This conversation happens within the Detective’s mind.
• Holds a conversation with a decomposing corpse. This lets him determine that the victim was a killer himself and that he died during sexual intercourse, both of which turned out to be true.
• Gets a strange feeling about a pile of roofing material, later revealing a hidden door behind it

Empathy

No. The tiny apes are doing all they can to be better. It's not their fault.

The degree of love the Detective has for those around him. Allows him to get a better bead on conversation partners by feeling what they feel.

• Identifies guilt and pride by looking at someone’s eyes
• Understands that one delinquent is a bad influence on the other, and separates the two to speak openly with the lesser delinquent
• Can identify the source of people’s shame
• Perceives imperceptible inflections in people’s voices during conversation
• Observes a corpse’s facial expression and decides that he was feeling pleasure when he died, which was later confirmed to be true

Authority

Take heed of these wise words. You're in charge. 'Sorry' is a beggar's plea reserved for those beneath you.

Compels the Detective to assert dominance on others, demanding respect from teenagers, gangbangers or tough guys alike.

• Establishes authority in front of a Union gang who hates cops
• Threatens Garte with arrest, successfully lowering his hostel bill

Esprit de Corps

Sometimes police work is about human dignity -- about giving back names to anonymous victims.

His knowledge of cop culture. This ability allows him to relate to cops better, sometimes allowing him to visualize the thoughts and actions of other cops in real time.

• Seems to be able to predict the thoughts of fellow officers in real time
• Upon meeting him, understands that Kim Kitsuragi is extremely loyal and heroic
• Can visualize what other faraway cops look like and what they’re doing
• Predicts what Kim is thinking, from the perspective of a police officer
• Visualizes what two cops are talking about six kilometers away
• Knows how far away his backup is and what they are doing in real-time
• While he’s preoccupied with a tantrum, his mind conjures up the image of two cops observing him from across the bay

Suggestion

Massage his ego, feed him a few grapes, make him like you.

The ability to charm others, influencing people to want what the Detective wants. He can turn enemies into supporters, and supporters into die-hard allies.

• Convinces an old woman to sign papers allowing the Union to build a street through her village. Just minutes earlier, she was strongly against the idea and expressed disdain for the Union leader.

Physique

Endurance

(Your pecs dance.) No more sleep it is. A frazzled ride through eternity without pause. Hissing pistons pushed to the extreme.

The measure of the Detective's physical health, both his response to injury and the health of his organs. Controls how many Health points he has access to.

• Endures the stench of a multiple day old corpse

Pain Threshold

It would take a million years of evolution -- or a total reversal in the condition of the world -- for your pain to end.

Keeps his body and mind in line when he's hurt. Silences the cries and yelps when he's beaten, including those born from emotional pain.

• Blasted by a sound cannon that produces a highly painful noise using hundreds of radio stations. Once turned down a bit, the Detective can cross the distance and break the sound cannon.
  • After prolonged exposure, the machine causes his ears to bleed and veins to rupture, possibly
• Gets his skull grabbed and squeezed by a huge racist
• Gets his hand crushed by the same huge racist until his bones begin cracking, but he withstands the pain and continues speaking
• Breaks down a locked door by ramming into with his shoulder twice
• Nods hard enough to crack some vertebrae
• Fractures tiny bones in his toe just to make a joke

Physical Instrument

Son, you've really let yourself go -- it's a disgrace. But Coach Physical Instrument is going to get you back in prime condition. Even if it takes a million push-ups!

Influences the power behind his muscles, skeleton and organs. Along with providing strength, this skill also influences his ability to use his body, whether it be performing push ups or roundhouse kicks.

• Knocks out Measurehead, the eight foot racist, with a punch to the throat, followed by a 360-spin kick, knocking the opponent out
• Lays out a twelve-year-old with a punch
• Punches a young communist as hard as he can, nearly breaking the man’s jaw and teeth
• Smashes a lorry window with his prybar. By passing a more difficult check, he can shatter the window with a punch, instead.
  • The lorry window was possibly shatter resistant
• Deadlifts a barbell that weighs around 60 kilograms, or about 130 pounds
• Breaks into a locked dumpster with a prybar. By passing a more difficult check, he can also open it with just his bare hands.
• Kicks a barred door in, breaking the length of wood
• Throws a petanque boule into the sea about 23 to 24 meters
  • A shot put ball is a suitable replacement for the lost petanque boule, and current, real life records for men’s shot put are 23.37 meters

Electrochemistry

A golden sun melts down your throat, its rays filling your nostrils with sunshine. Your stomach melts from it -- into a happy gooey mess! So does your mind, all the bad things are melting. You're you again. A real cop. A real detective. Incredibly well done.

The desire to drink, smoke and fuck. Temptation itself. Also provides insight on the psychology of drug users or other need-driven individuals.

• Identifies what drug a man is on
• Identifies the drug in his bloodstream administered while he was unconscious

Shivers

Your shirt sticks to your chest. The shoulders of your jacket grow heavy. The cold finds its way under your skin. You shiver, and the city shivers with you.

The ability to communicate with the city itself. A genuinely supernatural ability to see past events or listen to clues provided by proud Martinaise.

• Despite coming to the Detective as a voice, shivers is comprised of shifts in pressure and temperature
• Listens to the wind in order to get a perp’s location, as well as a vague description of the location’s layout
• Can give him vague flashes of information on events happening within the city, down to the street they’re happening on
• The wind tells him that the city he’s in will be destroyed by a nuclear blast in 22 years
• He’s told to look under the floorboards, where he finds a clue
• The wind whispers to him “neigh”, telling him to make use of a statue of a man on horseback

Half Light

Look at his shit-eating grin... He knows there's nothing you can do to him. He's bullying you and you are helpless. Kill him. Kill him now. He won't see death coming.

The voice that tells him when to be afraid of incoming danger, as well as how best to intimidate his enemy. The paranoia provided by this skill lets the Detective remain on his toes.

• Frightens two wannabe gangsters by telling them that they’re on the path to lead the gang, causing them to hand over their gang sign-marked jackets
• Interrogates a racist by getting loud and physical

Motorics

Hand/Eye Coordination

At last! The fastest hand in Revachol reunited with the slickest tool in the North. You're gonna be the envy of the town, baby!

The sense of precision, allowing him to catch, throw or shoot accurately. Essential for when the bullets start flying.

• Catches a thrown die with one hand
• Catches a flower petal as it begins drifting away
• Plans out how to disarm a gun-wielding woman, before noticing that it’s unloaded
• Shoots a belt buckle with a handgun, allowing the Hanged Man to fall to the ground
• Quick-draws and shoots a soldier in the face

Perception

You inhale. The cilia along your olfactory epithelium tingle with excitement as they sift through the swirling morass of industrial odours...

The degree of information gleaned from the Detective's senses. Focuses specifically on sight, sound and smell.

• Notices a hidden door behind a too-orderly pile of debris
• Can identify a pair of woman’s shoes by the sound of footsteps
• Can identify which cigarette brand a man smokes by smelling his breath
• Spots the crab-man hiding in the shadows of a church’s rafters
• Can tell a conversation is happening about 70 meters away

Reaction Speed

Dodged the bullet there. For a moment it seemed like you were just wasting time.

Controls the speed at which the Detective's body and mind operates at. Keeps him alert, ready to dodge bullets or hurtful remarks.

• Spots a man’s concealed weapon
• Makes an accurate assessment in a millisecond
• Helps recognize when enemies are moving to draw their guns
• Evades a rifleman’s gunfire within 0.4 seconds

Savoir Faire

It ain't easy, but you do it. Day in and day out. You didn't make the rules but you won't lose! You're a cop and a sprinter and a money printer.

Sense of acrobatics and stealth. With this skill, he can pickpocket, shoplift, sneak away from confrontation or leap between rooftops.

• Slips away from a conversation unnoticed
• Leaps from a rooftop to a nearby ledge
• “Teleports” up a particularly rusty, decrepit ladder
• Can "hear" opportunities to grow his wealth

Interfacing

You like moving things around. Moving things around is calming.

The skill that controls how well the Detective understands and interacts with machines, including simple machines like locks and pens.

• Gives the Detective a degree of mechanical knowledge, identifying minute details about his partner’s car
• Disentangles some magnetic tape from a tree’s branches
• Shoplifts a book and a raincoat
• Realizes that the person who tampered with a trap had smaller hands, narrowing it down to the local juvenile delinquent
• Pulls at the head of a monument, accurately directing an antenna to pick up a radio signal
• Tells a DJ to manipulate an audio compressor in such a way that produces a harder-core beat
• Secretly swipes a container of pills in front of his partner
• Pickpockets a sleeping man’s ID card
• Picks a bullet out of a corpse’s brain with his fingers
• If attempting to cut a chain lock without the chaincutters equipped, the detective will pull the chain off the door through brute force

Composure

Not even a flinch. That must take willpower. Yet below it, some little crack starts running in the foundation.

This skill keeps him from cracking under pressure, at least outwardly. It allows him to swallow his feelings and better read the body language of others to un-swallow their feelings.

• Allows the Detective to analyze other people’s body language and concealed expressions
• Realizes that a man’s clothing is ill-fitted and becomes suspicious
• Gives him tips in a fistfight by reading the opponent's pose
• Allows him to steel himself and shoot a child

Equipment

Weapons

• The Villiers 9mm Pepperbox Pistol, a three-shot revolver
• Ruby's Nachtwey A80 Pepperbox Pistol, a double-barreled, durable pistol
• The Deserter’s Triangong 4-46, a bolt-action sniper rifle, confiscated from the killer of the Hanged Man. The Detective never fires this gun, however.
• The Spirit Bomb, a homemade molotov cocktail made from a jar of potent alcohol and a necktie
• Standart 115mm Sabre, a noticeably dull sword earned after successfully getting through a date while sober

Tools

• A heavy-duty prybar used to open locked doors or containers
• A flashlight with a virtually limitless dynamo battery, able to illuminate dark areas indefinitely
• Chaincutters, a two-handed tool that can cut wires, locks and especially chains, with ease. He can cut a steel-reinforced cargo belt with the chaincutters.
• The Kvalsund KR+2 Multi-Tool, a high tech device with a strengthened prybar able to open a frozen container that other prybars can only be bent upon

Clothing

• The Fairweather T-500 ceramic armor set, impervious to punches, swords or bullets, as well as prybars, electric currents, or esoteric frequency-based attacks
  • Achieves its high durability by redistributing kinetic energy along its many ceramic plates
  • Surely enough, the chestplate redistributes a gunshot from a mercenary’s rifle. The rifle is built to take out lightly-armored vehicles.
  • Strikes with the T-500's armored gloves still deliver maximum force, while minimizing the force on the Detective's hands
  • Extremely lightweight, compared to a bag of cotton
  • [Limit] The eye holes are the only part of the armor set that does not protect the wearer from harm. Additionally, the Detective never finds the armor’s leggings at any point in the game, meaning he remains vulnerable to hits below the belt and above the knee.
• A horrific necktie that speaks to the Detective and tries to get him to do more drugs
• The FALN series of sportswear includes an aerodynamic hat, a pair of gloves that increase grip and high-traction sneakers
• The RCM Patrol cloak is nearly wind-and-waterproof, aside from the couple of bullet holes in the fabric
• The Polar Anorak is a very thick winter coat

Consumables

• Nosaphed and Drouamine, painkillers that restore health
• Magnesium and Hypnogamma, medicine used to heal the Detective’s morale
• Cigarettes temporarily raise the Intellect stat, but harm the Detective’s health
• Pyrholidon, a psychedelic drug, can temporarily increase the efficiency of his Psyche skills at the expense of his health
• Alcohol, whether it’s beer, wine, or liquor, will temporarily raise all of the Detective’s Physique skills when drunken, but at the expense of his morale
• Speed or other amphetamines can temporarily increase the efficiency of his Motorics skills at the expense of his morale
• A ham sandwich, for healing

Thought Cabinet

• Actual Art Degree- Passively heals morale when noticing art or sources of creativity
• Anti-Object Task Force- Damaging inanimate objects heals the Detective’s wounds. Although, since punching furniture and mailboxes usually damages the Detective, this thought basically keeps his health at the same level as before he hits the object.
• Bankruptcy Sequence- Failing an Intelligence check grants the Detective one reál
• Bringing of the Law (Law-Jaw)- Succeed all Hand-Eye Coordination passives
• Coach Physical Instrument- Grants an innate knowledge of physical fitness, as well as a small physical boost if the Detective is not wearing a shirt
• Col Do Ma Ma Daqua- Grants near-superhuman hearing, sensitive enough to hear a bug moving in another room or a wrapper falling on the ground
• Indirect Modes of Taxation- Gain one reál for every capitalistic dialogue option spoken
• Kingdom of Conscience- Heal morale for every centrist dialogue option
• Magnesium-Based Lifeform- Produces magnesium-receptive glands, allowing him to take more drugs and raising Volition
• Opioid Receptor Antagonist- The Detective receives no negative effects from alcohol, but as a tradeoff, he receives no positive effects from speed or psychedelic drugs
• Remote Viewers Division- By tapping into the supernatural, all Psyche checks are made slightly easier
• Revacholian Nationhood- By being racist, alcohol gives more physical benefits to the Detective
• Rigorous Self-Critique- Failing Physical and Motorics checks restore health, while failing Intellect and Psyche checks restore morale
• Searchlight Division- Makes the Detective more perceptive, specifically towards missing persons
• The Jamrock Shuffle- A childhood of treasure hunting gives the Detective the chance for better loot in locked containers
• The Suicide of Kras Mazov- Failing at certain tasks fully restores the detective’s morale
• White Mourning- See further
• Wompty-Dompty Dom Centre- Grants two reál for every passed Encyclopedia check

Miscellaneous

• Has been a cop for eighteen years, has solved 216 cases, and killed three people, a very low kill count compared to the rest of his precinct
  • Impressive when considering 85% of murder cases in his district go unsolved
• His rank is ‘lieutenant double-yefreitor’, which is the highest rank one can obtain and still perform field work. He has also declined promotions to ‘captain’ twice.
• Before he was a cop, he was a gym teacher, which explains why he knows a bit about fitness and is adept at running around
• He’s so poor that when he stands next to a multi-billionaire, the laws of physics collapse and light itself warps around the richer man
• Survived childhood polio without being vaccinated

You are a violent and irrepressible miracle. The vacuum of cosmos and the stars burning in it are afraid of you. Given enough time you would wipe us all out and replace us with nothing -- just by accident.

Hello strangers!
Who are you?

We are ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) and ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ, two characters that are currently hanging around Berlin and have been doing various things for many years that people choose to call vandalism and art.

What does cmwn stand for?

cmwn stands for creative minds without names. It’s not supposed to be about our actual names or aliases that we keep changing, but just what we do. For this form of our work we have currently chosen the above mentioned name.

What is art for you
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

I always find the concept of art a bit difficult. For me there is no such thing as “the art”, but that is essentially also dependent on the people who declare something to be art. Some interpret a lot into nothing and for others nothing is a lot. A blank canvas can be art, a dance can be art, an installation of trash can be art, graffiti on a train can be art, beautiful words can be art, fireworks can be art, a mathematical equation can be art, a sweater you sew yourself can be art, an elegant code can be art, a twill can be art, a closet can be art, anything and nothing can be art.

ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

Essentially, I see it as ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Whenever someone makes an effort to create something and puts thought into it and implements it, then it has an artistic claim, even if art can sometimes be destructive and random.

Now a bit more concrete, what is 139colors4peace all about?
ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

That’s where I’ll start. First, the question Why only individual colors? I always find it amazing how quickly the complexity of a complete work can be forgotten. **Colors are the notes for our composition. Colors are the letters for our poetry.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

I’ll pick this up at this point. With the right notes, beautiful pieces can be composed, but it depends on many other factors how the overall work will look later. The musician, the instruments, the place of the mood of the listener and so on. People’s mood alone has a significant impact on how something affects that person at that moment.

ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

Taken by themselves, all colors are neutral and a painter is then faced with the questions: which colors do I use? Do I take blues, greens, yellows, what exact hues? With which tool do I paint? Do I paint with my fingers, a marker, chalk, a pen, a can, a paint roller, a brush with wax crayon or specific brushes in Photoshop or MS Paint? What am I painting on? Do I want to paint on a piece of paper, a train, a house wall or digitally? There we also approach the 139 colors …

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

exactly. So we both had our first serious experiences and confrontations with colors through graffiti. I also had early contact with computers and my first electronic games, back then on an NES could only depict relatively few colors compared to today. That all developed further and more and more colors could be displayed in a better and better resolution. A few years later I started programming and concerning colors, the 140 colors of the CSS color palette played a special role for me. For reasons I don’t want to name here, we wanted to have the number 139 for our color project. We painted 139 small canvases in the appropriate colors and created 139 NFTs on opensea.io.

ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

At the beginning of the year we planned what else we wanted to do this year and as it often happens with ideas and nice conversations we came from one to the other. When we wanted to meet again to implement the first plans, I had to stop first because I got an unwanted visit from Corona. Then war broke out in Ukraine and we decided to dedicate this project to peace. Not because we think it has any impact on it, but because we wish it had. We have never been lucky enough in our lives to experience the misery of war first hand, and we wish for peace with all our hearts.

You have written that you want to exhibit the pictures that were not sold on November 9, 2022 in public places in Berlin. Why did you choose the 9th of November?
ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

We had already written that in our short project text, even if we don’t look further at other events that happened on November 9, such as failure of the March Revolution in 1848, the November Revolution in 1918, and the Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch in 1923. If we look at the history of Berlin, I can’t think of any other day that I would consider more appropriate. First of all, November 9, 1938, the day on which the Nazis in Germany and Austria systematically began the expulsion and murder of Jews and the systematic destruction of their property and religious premises. A day for which it is difficult for me to find words and which triggers deep sadness in me. Then November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall came down and with reunification was a day of hope and new beginnings for many.

Why NFTs?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

We mainly make things that are relatively ephemeral, how durable and long-lasting NFTs will be, only the future will tell. But we, for one, find it interesting to leave something on the blockchain that is more durable than a graffito on a train in Berlin, and it lends itself wonderfully to what we call treasure hunting. More on that in a moment.

What do you want to express and accomplish with this?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

We would like that through this project people will find each other, no matter what gender, origin and religion they belong to and will have a nice time together before this day and can commemorate together on this day.

How do you want to achieve that through this people find each other?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

That’s where the treasure hunt comes in, which we’re introducing here for the first time. So there are 139 small painted canvases in 139 different colors. These 139 different paintings are represented by 1 NFT each. So the NFT DarkGreen represents the painting in DarkGreen. Each NFT costs 0.139 ETH, if all 139 NFTs are sold the sum is 19.321 ETH. With each sale, the proceeds of the sale minus the fee from opensea.io will end up on a wallet. There is now still credit from us on it, but that will be deducted in the coming days, so that really only the sales proceeds of these NFTs on this wallet. You have access to this wallet through 12 seed words. We have written one of these words with the number in which it is used as a seed word in our metamask wallet on the back of a painting. So 12 out of 139 paintings have a number and a word written on the back, whoever uses all 12 words in the right order has access to the entire proceeds. If no painting is sold, all paintings will be displayed/hidden in various public places on November 9, 2022 and the seed words will reveal an empty wallet. It will be most interesting if the paintings are bought as diversely distributed as possible. Then individuals have an NFT and a painting, maybe also a seed word, but they cannot get access to the “treasure” without cooperation with others. If people get together and cooperate later, they could jointly get access to the ETH and we would be happy if it is decided that these are donated to one or more non-profit organizations. This is then out of our hands, but we would like it to be and hope that others see it similarly.

ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

Again in a nutshell, only with the matching colors will you get beautiful paintings and only with the matching paintings will you get the numbered seed words on the back of the paintings to the metamask wallet with all the proceeds from this sale.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

If someone buys a NFT and the painting should not be exhibited in Berlin, but sent by parcel to any address. Write a mail to: 139colors4peace@protonmail.com We ship worldwide with DHL, but shipping costs must be paid by the buyer and originate from the wallet where the particular NFT is located. Starting with June 23, 2022, a riddle will be published every day that gives a hint at which place a picture will be hidden on November 9, 2022 (if it did not go to someone via package before).

ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

That’s exactly 139 days and the last puzzle will be published on November 9, 2022. May the treasure hunt begin.

Project related contact: 139colors4peace@protonmail.com Non-project related contact: cmwn@protonmail.com
The translation of the interview in several languages is available here.

Hello strangers!
Who are you?

We are ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) and ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ, two characters that are currently hanging around Berlin and have been doing various things for many years that people choose to call vandalism and art.

What does cmwn stand for?

cmwn stands for creative minds without names. It’s not supposed to be about our actual names or aliases that we keep changing, but just what we do. For this form of our work we have currently chosen the above mentioned name.

What is art for you
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

I always find the concept of art a bit difficult. For me there is no such thing as “the art”, but that is essentially also dependent on the people who declare something to be art. Some interpret a lot into nothing and for others nothing is a lot. A blank canvas can be art, a dance can be art, an installation of trash can be art, graffiti on a train can be art, beautiful words can be art, fireworks can be art, a mathematical equation can be art, a sweater you sew yourself can be art, an elegant code can be art, a twill can be art, a closet can be art, anything and nothing can be art.

ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

Essentially, I see it as ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Whenever someone makes an effort to create something and puts thought into it and implements it, then it has an artistic claim, even if art can sometimes be destructive and random.

Now a bit more concrete, what is 139colors4peace all about?
ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

That’s where I’ll start. First, the question Why only individual colors? I always find it amazing how quickly the complexity of a complete work can be forgotten. **Colors are the notes for our composition. Colors are the letters for our poetry.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

I’ll pick this up at this point. With the right notes, beautiful pieces can be composed, but it depends on many other factors how the overall work will look later. The musician, the instruments, the place of the mood of the listener and so on. People’s mood alone has a significant impact on how something affects that person at that moment.

ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

Taken by themselves, all colors are neutral and a painter is then faced with the questions: which colors do I use? Do I take blues, greens, yellows, what exact hues? With which tool do I paint? Do I paint with my fingers, a marker, chalk, a pen, a can, a paint roller, a brush with wax crayon or specific brushes in Photoshop or MS Paint? What am I painting on? Do I want to paint on a piece of paper, a train, a house wall or digitally? There we also approach the 139 colors …

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

exactly. So we both had our first serious experiences and confrontations with colors through graffiti. I also had early contact with computers and my first electronic games, back then on an NES could only depict relatively few colors compared to today. That all developed further and more and more colors could be displayed in a better and better resolution. A few years later I started programming and concerning colors, the 140 colors of the CSS color palette played a special role for me. For reasons I don’t want to name here, we wanted to have the number 139 for our color project. We painted 139 small canvases in the appropriate colors and created 139 NFTs on opensea.io.

ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

At the beginning of the year we planned what else we wanted to do this year and as it often happens with ideas and nice conversations we came from one to the other. When we wanted to meet again to implement the first plans, I had to stop first because I got an unwanted visit from Corona. Then war broke out in Ukraine and we decided to dedicate this project to peace. Not because we think it has any impact on it, but because we wish it had. We have never been lucky enough in our lives to experience the misery of war first hand, and we wish for peace with all our hearts.

You have written that you want to exhibit the pictures that were not sold on November 9, 2022 in public places in Berlin. Why did you choose the 9th of November?
ʕ-ᴥ-ʔ:

We had already written that in our short project text, even if we don’t look further at other events that happened on November 9, such as failure of the March Revolution in 1848, the November Revolution in 1918, and the Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch in 1923. If we look at the history of Berlin, I can’t think of any other day that I would consider more appropriate. First of all, November 9, 1938, the day on which the Nazis in Germany and Austria systematically began the expulsion and murder of Jews and the systematic destruction of their property and religious premises. A day for which it is difficult for me to find words and which triggers deep sadness in me. Then November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall came down and with reunification was a day of hope and new beginnings for many.

Why NFTs?
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We mainly make things that are relatively ephemeral, how durable and long-lasting NFTs will be, only the future will tell. But we, for one, find it interesting to leave something on the blockchain that is more durable than a graffito on a train in Berlin, and it lends itself wonderfully to what we call treasure hunting. More on that in a moment.

What do you want to express and accomplish with this?
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We would like that through this project people will find each other, no matter what gender, origin and religion they belong to and will have a nice time together before this day and can commemorate together on this day.

How do you want to achieve that through this people find each other?
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That’s where the treasure hunt comes in, which we’re introducing here for the first time. So there are 139 small painted canvases in 139 different colors. These 139 different paintings are represented by 1 NFT each. So the NFT DarkGreen represents the painting in DarkGreen. Each NFT costs 0.139 ETH, if all 139 NFTs are sold the sum is 19.321 ETH. With each sale, the proceeds of the sale minus the fee from opensea.io will end up on a wallet. There is now still credit from us on it, but that will be deducted in the coming days, so that really only the sales proceeds of these NFTs on this wallet. You have access to this wallet through 12 seed words. We have written one of these words with the number in which it is used as a seed word in our metamask wallet on the back of a painting. So 12 out of 139 paintings have a number and a word written on the back, whoever uses all 12 words in the right order has access to the entire proceeds. If no painting is sold, all paintings will be displayed/hidden in various public places on November 9, 2022 and the seed words will reveal an empty wallet. It will be most interesting if the paintings are bought as diversely distributed as possible. Then individuals have an NFT and a painting, maybe also a seed word, but they cannot get access to the “treasure” without cooperation with others. If people get together and cooperate later, they could jointly get access to the ETH and we would be happy if it is decided that these are donated to one or more non-profit organizations. This is then out of our hands, but we would like it to be and hope that others see it similarly.

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Again in a nutshell, only with the matching colors will you get beautiful paintings and only with the matching paintings will you get the numbered seed words on the back of the paintings to the metamask wallet with all the proceeds from this sale.

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If someone buys a NFT and the painting should not be exhibited in Berlin, but sent by parcel to any address. Write a mail to: 139colors4peace@protonmail.com We ship worldwide with DHL, but shipping costs must be paid by the buyer and originate from the wallet where the particular NFT is located. Starting with June 23, 2022, a riddle will be published every day that gives a hint at which place a picture will be hidden on November 9, 2022 (if it did not go to someone via package before).

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That’s exactly 139 days and the last puzzle will be published on November 9, 2022. May the treasure hunt begin.

Project related contact: 139colors4peace@protonmail.com Non-project related contact: cmwn@protonmail.com

Here is a short story for you all. I welcome feedback on how to improve this story. Head and Shoulders By Jim Owens "Rapinoe, come here. I need you to run an errand." The girl at the desk knew his name, but he did not remember hers. As he walked over to the desk, Rapinoe searched his memory for the moment he had first met her, two days earlier, when she arrived from an enclave on the far side of Drigon City to work at the new bathhouse. She must have given him her name then. He remembered thinking how tall she was, and wondering how long it must take to braid all that brown hair, and admiring how she smelled of flowers. He did not remember her name. "What do you need?" he asked, setting down the wooden box of tools he was carrying. "Squire Gillam," she indicated a burly youth standing beside the desk, "says that when Sir Markhall left some items behind after he used the lower steam bath this morning." "It was a necklace, and a ring," the squire said. He was half a head taller than the girl, which made him easily head and shoulders taller than Rapinoe, who quickly nodded in deference. "Please go get them from the steam bath and bring them back down here," the girl said. Rapinoe noted that she smelled like flowers again. "Right away," Rapinoe replied, ducking his head again, and scooping up his toolbox. "Do you know where he would have left them?" "No," the girl said. "Just look around ... they should be easy to spot." "OK," he said, and hurried off. The new bathhouse was usually busy by mid-morning, and this day was no different. Rapinoe had already unstopped three drains, replaced a valve, and fixed two leaks. Twice he had been down to the furnace room for tools, and already his simple canvas robe was soaked. Still, his job as a handyman was better by far than the work he had been doing before the bathhouse opened, and he was grateful to have it. If nothing else, he did not have to worry about being cold. Even in the early morning hours, before the bathhouse opened, the residual heat from the furnace kept the place warm. Rapinoe was headed closer to the furnace now. The steam baths were built into the western side of the giant stone fireplace that formed the core of the bathhouse, and the lower steam bath was only one level above the main floor. Leaving his toolbox in the rear of the first floor office, Rapinoe headed up the wooden stairs to the western second level. Once there, he quickly walked down the elevated corridor towards the fireplace. On his left were semi-private rooms where wealthy commoners and poor nobles could soak in relative peace. On his right was a simple railing overlooking the large public tubs filled with naked commoners of every shape, size, age, and ability. On the eastern wall of the bathhouse was a similar set of open floors, three high, with ranks of private and semi-private bathing rooms. Above them was a floor of offices and dormitories for the staff. Rapinoe was dismayed to see people clustered around the entrance to the steam bath as he approached. The wardrobe was filled with robes, and there were at least five naked people standing outside the steam bath door. They were chanting quietly, running prayer beads through their hands. Rapinoe recognized one of them. "Sister Carlotte," he asked, approaching the older woman, "I need to go into the steam bath and get something. What is going on?" "We are performing a rite for the goddess today." "In the steam bath?" "Why not? It is more quiet in there." Rapinoe shrugged. "I need to go inside." "Today is the Rite of The Martyr for Arno," she replied quietly. "You will have to wait until we are done." "I can't wait," he said. "I need to get something Sir Markhall left in there." "You can't go in," she replied sweetly. "They are saying the second prayer now. No one else can talk inside. You will disturb them." "Oh," he said, "I don't need to talk. I just need to get it." Sister Carlotte looked questioningly over at another devotee, a younger woman who was also working some prayer beads. She shrugged. "Thanks," Rapinoe said, shrugging off his robe. He tossed it over a free hook in the wardrobe and pressed himself against the door. He carefully unlatched it, trying to be as quiet as possible. He slid the door open, and slipped inside. The steam bath was lined with dark wood, and illuminated only by four small skylights. Rapinoe pulled the door closed, and stood quietly for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The room was filled with people, all of whom seemed to be standing in rows and facing the far wall. From that direction came chanting. Rapinoe could see now why some of the devotees were outside; there was no room inside for anyone else. He considered going back down and telling the girl at the desk that she would have to wait. Then he remembered the burly squire, and decided to press on. He tried to imagine for a moment where a knight would have been, then he remembered there were steam vents on the sides of the bath. He sidled slowly toward the left wall, trying not to rub up against the listening worshipers. He reached the wall, where there was a thin wooden bench. Thankfully all the devotees were standing, not sitting. Rapinoe stepped up onto the bench. He remembered that there was a small shelf above the bench, and he found it by touch. Walking slowly and quietly down the bench, he slid his hand down the shelf. He walked all the way to the front of the steam bath without touching anything other than bare wood. The heat was stifling. For once Rapinoe was grateful that he was short, as the heat increased the higher in the room one's nose was. Having not found anything of note, Rapinoe retraced his steps to the back of the steam bath. Even though he had done nothing more strenuous than walking down the bench he was slightly out of breath. He was glad the rite did not require incense. He crossed over to the right side of the bath and stepped up onto the bench there. Just as he did this, the chanting at the front of the room stopped. He stood there a moment, concerned that he had disturbed their liturgy. Suddenly all the worshipers began chanting in unison. Rapinoe did not recognize the words they were saying, but his years in the cult allowed him to recognize the ritual language. He blessed himself with the customary sign and started walking forward on the bench. He got halfway there when he felt something on the shelf. It was some sort of chain. He took it and headed back for the door. He slipped out, closing the door on the end of a verse. Outside the steam bath the air felt cold on his damp skin, and his balls shriveled in protest. He looked at the thing he had found. It was a simple silver chain with a circular medallion on it. Rapinoe thought this a rather poor ornament for a knight, but his was not to judge. He snatched his robe off the hook and headed back down, pulling the wet garment on as he walked. The desk where the girl worked was on the main floor below, against the wall that separated the lobby from the public baths. Rapinoe padded down the stairs and up to the desk. His eye caught sight of the girl with the braided brown locks standing alone at the desk. She was folding towels. Unlike the more formal staff in the front lobby, she wore only a simple skirt. He noted the way it was knotted at the front to hang asymmetrically around her hips, and then remembered with joy that her name was Claret. As he approached she turned, and he realized that she was also wearing a necklace; a simple dyed and braided string with a wooden bead that dangled between her bare breasts. As was customary at the start of the holy season, she had the signets of the cult written on her shoulders and chest in ink. "I found it," he said, walking up and handing the chain to her. "Oh, good," she said. "I saw you up there, with the elders. What are they doing today?" "Some rite," he replied. "Prayers for a martyr." "Why in the steam bath?" "Why not? It is quiet in there." She shrugged, and nodded. She looked at the chain. "Was there a ring as well?" Rapinoe frowned. "I did not find a ring. Could he have meant that?" he asked, pointing at the medallion. "I don't know. I will ask when he gets back. Thanks for your help; this was kind of important." "You are welcome. Can I do anything else for you?" "Would you mind carrying these towels up to the third tier? They need them at the desk there." "In the service of the goddess, Claret" he replied, smiling at her. "For the goddess," she replied, smiling back. It was three errands later when Rapinoe spotted the squire walking in through the lobby. Rapinoe was on the eastern second tier, re-wrapping a wicker joint. The squire headed straight to the desk. Rapinoe stopped working on the repair he was making to watch. Claret greeted him and reached under the desk. She pulled out the chain. To Rapinoe's distress, the squire did not take it. Claret frowned, and Rapinoe could faintly hear the stress in the squire's words as he spoke. The squire turned and walked away, his face dark. Claret immediately looked straight up at Rapinoe. She slipped out from behind the desk and started his way. With a sinking heart he started toward her. "This is not Sir Markhall's necklace," she said once she met him, worry on her face. "Whose is it?" he asked, then immediately regretted the irrelevant comment. "Can you go look again?" she asked, ignoring his gaffe. "The squire was quite angry that we had not found it. Sir Markhall will be leaving town today on business for Duke Drigon, and has to have the ring, and the necklace." "I will go look again now," Rapinoe said, and together they headed for the stairs going down. "Thank you for being so helpful," she said, her brow furrowed. "I have to go tell Brother Rimbault that we have a problem. When you find them, please bring them to the desk right away!" He nodded, and then she hurried off. He crossed the main floor to the western staircase and headed up. At the far end he again tossed his robe over a peg. There were no naked elders standing there this time, and only a few robes on the pegs. He started to go in, then remembered how dark it was in the steam bath. He decided to take a lamp in, to help the search. There were lamps hanging in sconces on the tiers, but daylight was coming in through skylights and none were lit. Rapinoe walked down the hall, looking carefully out of the corner of his eye at the booths on his right, looking to see if any of the patrons had a fire, either of an incense burner or a brazier. He found one four booths down. He backtracked and grabbed a lantern, taking out the wick and setting the rest on the floor. He walked back to the booth where an older man sat in a tub of hot water with a middle aged woman. "Is everything satisfactory?" he asked the man as he approached. Rapinoe bent down and blew on the coals of the brazier, touching the wick to them and lighting it. "Can I get you anything?" "No, we are good," the woman said, smiling politely. Like Claret, she had cult writing on her breasts, but hers were days old, faded and broken. Rapinoe nodded and backed away, shielding his flame. He quickly set the wick back into the lamp before it could flare up and burn his fingers. He trimmed the lamp, and carried it back up the hall to the steam bath. He opened the door and slipped in. There were fewer people in the steam bath, and a few of them looked up with disinterest as he entered. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment. There seemed to be a few elders still in the room, clustered at the far wall, praying. There were two men laying head to foot on benches in the middle of the room, and there was a woman and two children in the near west corner. Rapinoe repeated his route, holding up the lamp for light and carefully examining the shelf again, working his way around the woman and her young. This time he found nothing. He retraced his steps, holding the lamp close to the wall, then again holding the lamp low and looking at the floor. He was becoming worried, as the floor was not tightly built, but had slits between the boards. The lamp was not good for throwing light down between the boards. He wondered how he could better see down there to search. He looked around the room, and realized that there were also small shelves scattered among the several wooden pillars that reached up into the rafters. He moved among them, checking each, and finding nothing. Some of the occupants followed his movements with languid interest. Rapinoe paused, and addressed the two men. "Did either of you happen to see some jewelry here?" he asked. "No," the one man replied. "Until you brought the lamp in, I did not see much of anything at all." Rapinoe nodded. He walked over to the woman. She had a small pot of oil and was rubbing it over her younger child. The older one looked up at Rapinoe with curiosity. "Are you looking for something?" the older girl asked. "Yes," Rapinoe replied. "Have you seen any jewelry in here? Someone lost some." "No," she replied, smoothing oil over her arms and belly. She looked at her mother and brother, who both shook their heads. Rapinoe noted with some surprise that the girl had cult markings painted on her, while her mother and brother had none. She seemed rather young to be a devotee. "Thank you," Rapinoe replied. He turned and walked down to where the elders were praying. He hesitated, not wanting to disturb them. Several of them looked up at him, still chanting, and looked at each other, and shrugged, looking back at him and shaking their heads as well. Both disappointed and relieved, Rapinoe took some time and searched the fireplace wall. To his dismay, it was quite roughly finished in rock, and had many small shelves and nooks where something could be hidden. He went over it carefully, but did not see anything. Rapinoe stepped outside the bath, perplexed. He looked over the rail and down at the desk, both hoping to see Claret and dreading to see the squire. He saw neither. Instead he saw Sister Sharonala standing behind the desk in her formal robe of white and gold. His heart clenched at the sight of the priestess working the desk in place of Claret. He looked over the public tubs and the various tiers but did not see Claret anywhere. He backed away from the railing, hoping Sharonala did not see him. He needed to find that jewelry, and soon. How could he shine a light down into the slots between the boards? He needed a mirror. Rapinoe walked back up the hall and set the lantern back in its sconce, leaving it lit, and then headed for the front of the bathhouse. The wood in the front half of the bath house was more carefully finished than the wood back by the public baths. From the top of the staircase Rapinoe could look down into the lobby, across the marble floor there. He gazed a moment at the image of the goddess, a larger-than-life statue of a naked woman, her perfect parts covered with spring wheat, holding a staff and cradling an infant. Pleasant aromas drifted up to him, reminiscent of Claret's perfume. He did not see her anywhere there. Two patrons walked up the stairs and passed him, the woman of the couple letting her eyes linger curiously over him. Suddenly Rapinoe felt his nakedness, standing at the top of the stairs without his robe. It was less that he was without his robe -- that bit of cloth was off and on all day depending on his task at the moment -- as it was that his work brought him less often to the more polished areas of the bath house. He walked further toward the front of the building, passing a number of private chambers as he went. He came to one where the door was open, and he looked in. Two women were inside in white cult robes, one with a silver sash and one with a green sash. A third woman was laid out on a narrow table, nude save for a towel across her legs. All three looked over at Rapinoe as he glanced in. "Latera," Rapinoe said, "would you have a mirror I could borrow?" "A mirror?" The woman with the silver sash turned away from the other two and stepped over to where some toiletries were arrayed on a small cart. "I might. Let me look." Rapinoe stepped up to the other two women. He could see that the woman on the table was having cult script drawn on her skin. Fine tracings in ink looped across her chest, belly, arms, and thighs, shining wet in the dim daylight from the skylights. "What are you up to, Rapinoe?" she asked, lifting her head curiously. "Someone lost some jewelry in the steam bath," he said, "and I think it may have fallen down between the boards. I need a mirror to shine a light down in there to look." The two women nodded sagely in agreement. The one standing, with the green sash, looked over Rapinoe's chest and traced a line across it with her finger. "You should stop in here later," she said, "and I could touch up your lines. They are fading. I can hardly read them anymore." "I'm always accidentally rubbing them off, Loran" Rapinoe said. "If you are too busy in the day, we can do it in the evening," the woman on the table said, her finger following a fading line down his thigh. "I can do that, Berae," he said. "I would need to come up after I am done with Brother Cantrall's sermon." "It is important to keep the goddess's words clear and clean," Loran said. "I will be painting some of the new girls tonight ... you could come up and get done with them." "Is Claret one of them?" "No, I did her already. Why? Did some of hers rub off already?" "No, I was just wondering. I forgot her name this morning, so her name was on my tongue." "Talk to Elder Sansit. He is good for helping you learn how to remember names." "I will talk to him." "Will this one work?" Latera said, walking over and holding out a small bronze mirror. "I think so. Thanks!" "Good luck," Latera said, rising up on tiptoe and kissed him on the top of his head. Loran repeated the gesture, reminding Rapinoe that all three were taller than he was. From the table Berae gave his hand a quick squeeze. "Goddess be with," the three chorused as he walked out. Rapinoe hurried back to where he hung the lantern, then carried it back to the steam bath. Outside on a wooden bench the mother and her two children were seated. The mother was helping her youngest put on his sandals while the older child, already shod, held the trio's robes. She smiled and nodded as Rapinoe slipped past and into the steam bath. Rapinoe got down on his hands and knees with the lantern and mirror. Using the mirror to reflect the light of the lantern, he tried to probe the spaces between the boards next to the benches on the wall. The mirror worked well to aim the light, but the slots were deep, and there were a lot of them. He worked as quickly as he could, moving across the boards in his reach, then moving down. More than once he spotted something down in the slot, but in every case it was just small bits of litter. He kept moving, backing down away from the door. The elders were still praying, and the two men seemed to be asleep. Rapinoe kept at it, making slow progress. He was two thirds of the way to the fireplace wall when the door opened. "Rapinoe?" Claret whispered. "Yes," he said, getting to his feet and going to the door. She beckoned him out. "Sir Markhall is downstairs," she said. "He is very upset. He needs that ring and necklace. Any luck?" "No," Rapinoe said. "I am still searching. Hey," he said, an idea striking him. "Can you help me?" "What do you need?" she asked. "Can you hold the lantern for me?" "Sure," she said. Together the two of them re-entered the steam bath. Rapinoe went to where the lantern sat on the bench where he had left off. "I am searching the floor, and I am using this mirror." he whispered, holding up the mirror, "to shine the lantern down into the slots in the floor. If you would hold the lantern for me, I can search faster." Claret nodded, and they both got down on hands and knees. Claret pushed her braids over one side of her neck and held the lantern up with one hand while holding herself up with the other arm. Rapinoe nodded and started searching again. As he moved she followed. It wasn't long before sheets of sweat were rolling down her skin. She paused to untie her skirt. In the orange light of the lamp Rapinoe could see that the lines on her breasts were indeed new. She slipped the skirt off and laid it on the bench, and he could see that, unlike the most of the other women in the cult, she still wore her pubic hair, trimming it instead of shaving it. Relieved of the garment, she smiled quickly and leaned back down toward him with the lantern. Her necklace swung below her neck, and Rapinoe could see that the bead on her necklace carried the name of the goddess. He took the mirror and went on with his search. Working together they moved much more quickly, and were able to search both sides of the room. They found nothing. "I'm going to have to go tell Brother Rimbault that we don't have them," she said as they reached the fireplace wall on the far side. The elders had finished and left, and only the two men remained. "I don't know what he is going to say." "I will stay here and keep looking." She surprised him with a quick sob. He suddenly felt very helpless and confused. He hesitated, then touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said, her hands over her mouth. "I'm new and Sister Sharonala can be a bit intimidating. I mean, Brother Rimbault is nice enough, but I ... I don't know what they will say." "It's going to be OK," Rapinoe said. She put her own hand on top of his hand, nodded, then turned for the door. He watched her go, then got down on hands and knees and started searching the center of the floor, moving across from one side to the other. It was only after he found her skirt on the bench that he realized she had left without it. Some time later, Rapinoe's back, knees, and palms were aching and he had still only covered half the floor. The two men had woken up, and had sat and watched him work for a while before silently leaving. He stood and stretched, wiping the sweat from his chest and belly down across his perfect parts and then down his legs. He thought about the drawings on his own chest and wondered if he had rubbed any more off. Rapinoe blessed himself with the sign of the goddess, then walked back up to the fireplace wall, holding the lantern up to shine into the nooks and crannies. He wished he were taller. He noted some lines scratched into the surface of one of the stones. He grinned when he realized it was a graffito of a rat. The grin faded when he remembered his task. He got back down on his knees to continue looking, and had not gotten far when the door opened again. It was Claret. She slipped inside. "Did you find it?" she asked, her voice tight. "No," he said, still kneeling. She walked up to him, looking down. He held up the lantern, and it cast a strange, ominous light up into her face, throwing her shadow up among the rafters. "Rapinoe," she said, then paused. "Rapinoe, Sir Markhall is saying that maybe someone stole the jewelry. He is very angry." "Stole it? Who would steal it? I mean, maybe someone found it and just does not know how to return it. Maybe ..." "Rapinoe," Claret interrupted, "Sir Markhall is talking like he thinks maybe you stole it." " ... me?" Rapinoe opened his mouth again, to protest, and closed it again without saying anything. Suddenly he felt very, very naked again, the kind of naked that mere clothing could not cover. Despite the heat he could feel his balls flatten completely against his crotch. "How ... why ... I ..." "He is really upset. He even suggested that maybe I was involved. I ..." she out her hands over her face. Rapinoe felt his stomach twist with helplessness. He had nothing he could say. He lay his hand on her foot. After a moment she emerged again. "Rapinoe, he is sending for Arbogast now." The name of the patron of the cult, the powerful and mysterious man who led the building of the bath house and who protected the cult with his influence, drove all the breath from Rapinoe's lungs. "Let me go explain the situation," he said. "It's all just a misunderstanding." She nodded. The flickering light glinted off moisture on her face that could equally have been tears or sweat. He got up and together they walked to the door. Outside the relative cold gave him goosebumps. "Arbogast is a good man," Rapinoe said. "He will listen." Claret stopped suddenly in front of him and he bumped into her. He looked up at her face and saw her staring, shocked, at the floor below. He stepped to the rail and followed her gaze and was equally shocked to see two men in full traveling gear standing with lances at the desk below talking to Sharonala. Rapinoe felt Claret grip his arm tightly. Below, Sharonala pointed up towards them, and the two men turned to look up. Claret pulled Rapinoe in front of her, like a shield. He could feel goose-flesh on her skin, and her nipples felt like two leather buttons against his back. Almost as one they both turned and hurried back into the steam bath. "What do we do? What do we do?" She whispered urgently, still clutching his arm. "It's here ... we'll find it," he said, going back to where he had left off. He dropped to the floor and took the lantern. She followed him, and he held it up to her. "If you help ..." "They hang thieves," she said in a high, tight voice. "They hang thieves. I watched ..." Fear choked off her words. He could see Claret's lips moving but he could not hear anything but the blood rushing through his ears. A vision of horror flashed in his mind, he and her, standing naked before a jeering crowd, nooses around their necks, with no one listening to their pleas. His own throat closed in sympathetic terror. His hand holding up the lantern began to shake, and Claret's shadow began to leap and lunge across the wooden beams over their heads. Suddenly, Rapinoe looked straight up. The image of Claret standing beside the squire came into his head. He straightened. "Claret, how tall is Sir Markhall?" "What?" Claret asked. Urgency gripped him, and he pushed up to his feet, looking straight up. "How tall is Sir Markhall?" he asked again, looking up at the rafters just above their heads. "He is very tall," Claret said, following his gaze. Rapinoe leaped up on the bench nearest him, and reached up for the rafter. His fingers fell just short of it. Suddenly Claret was standing on the bench beside him, her right arm wrapped around his shoulder, pulling him into her, her left arm straining upward. Using him for support and standing tiptoe she reached as high as she could. In that moment Rapinoe learned three things. First, he learned that in a moment of stress, modesty was a secondary issue. Second, he learned that the bead on the necklace she wore between her breasts did not feel good when pressed hard against his cheek. Third, he learned that on tiptoe she could only reach halfway up a rafter. "Let me put you on my shoulders," he said. She snorted. “I’ll put you on mine.” She jumped down onto the floor, and then hunkered down, her bare back to him. He swung one leg over her shoulder and set his hands on her head. He paused, uncertain if this was the best way to mount her. She straightened up before he could decide, dragging him upward with his other leg trailing down her back. Rapinoe levered himself up and swung his other leg over her shoulder. He had a moment of panic when he realized his perfect parts had gotten trapped under him, and there was an awkward moment as he fought to free them, his and her mingled sweat both helping and hindering the effort. She staggered momentarily under his weight and he steadied himself on her head, her braids smooth and hard under his hands as. Then she spun around and lurched forward, and he reached up and clutched at the rafter. "I have it," he said. He steadied himself with one hand, and ran the other along the top. He immediately ran a large splinter right into his palm, and had to pull it out. He tried again, more cautiously. He looked around the room, seeing with new eyes by the orange light of the lantern. "Move over towards the center," he said. "Towards that bench." Together they moved, following the rafters, towards the benches where the two men had been lying together. Rapinoe moved his hands rapidly, steadying and searching. She held his legs under her arms. He could feel her slowly sinking under his weight. He was about to suggest they switch places when his finger suddenly touched something cold. He recoiled for an instant before clutching wildly around. He cried out in delight as his hands came away from the rafter holding a thick necklace and a heavy ring. The sun was long set, and many lanterns were lit when Sharonala walked into the room on the second floor where Rapinoe lay on the table, Latera drawing cult script on his hip and Berae rubbing his shoulders. Sharonala still wore her gold-sashed robes, and carried a dark glass bottle. Rapinoe started to rise but Berae held him down, and the older woman shook her head in dismissal and smiled. "Arbogast was pleased that the issue with the jewelry was resolved so well today," she said. "He told me to be sure to reward you for your hard work and quick thinking." She held out the bottle. "Thank you, Sister," Claret replied from the table where she sat as Loran painted lines on her back. She carefully reached out and took the bottle. "I will be sure to bless the goddess, and share this kind gift with those who also worked to find the jewelry." "May the goddess bless you," Sharonala said, kissing Claret. "May the goddess," replied Claret, and the other four echoed the phrase. Sharonala gave Rapinoe's bare foot a gentle squeeze as she walked out. "All done," Loran said, putting down her brush. "Give it a moment to dry." "You work so fast," Latera said, carefully laying down a thin line of black ink that swept in an ornate curve from Rapinoe's right hip to his left. "I still have three stanzas to write." "I can help," Loran said, coming over to Rapinoe's side. He looked up at her, then at Latera. "You both look so tall, from down here." He admired the graceful scroll-work that graced both of them from shoulder to thigh. "You are short enough that even I look tall to you," said Berae, leaning forward to look down at him, giving him a clear view of her own body art. He could feel the warmth of her body as her belly pressed down on the crown of his head. "It is a good thing you are small," Claret said, coming to the foot of the table and beginning to massage his feet. Her hands were warm and gentle. "Otherwise I could not have carried you on my shoulders." "If I were bigger then I would have just carried you on my shoulders," he replied, smiling. She smiled back, and for just a moment it felt to him like the sun arise early. "Or maybe you could have just gotten a ladder," suggested Berae. They all laughed. "Praise the goddess you found it when you did," said Latera. "Praise the goddess!" They all said together, smiling in relief and satisfaction. 

Gaius Maecenas was an extremely wealthy advisor to the first emperor Augustus. His resources and excess were embodied by the construction of a "garden estate" on top of both Servian-era city walls and a pauper's cemetery. By expensively simulating the serenity of the countryside in such an urban and storied context, Maecenas made himself a target for "conservative" and Stoic writers like Seneca. This lavish setting also facilitated his cultural influence, providing an idealized backdrop for the exchange of views and works among the most elite members of Roman social and political culture.
As aforementioned, the so-called Auditorium was a Roman triclinium; in actuality, it was not strictly accommodative of the group recitations themselves. Still, the stepped fountain at the apse, exotic cult-evocative frescoes, and a subterranean ramp offered both a spectacular setting for a meal and a surreal ritual site for nature spirits.
Callimachus was a Greek poet who was renowned for his use of epigrams, legitimizing the cheeky and succinct verses as a Hellenistic literary genre beyond item inscriptions. Ironically yet fittingly, one of his works is found inscribed over 200 years after his death at the center of this Roman creative retreat. This passage was a graffito written on Maecenas' building:
"If, Archinus, I sang freely at your door, blame me a thousand times, but if I came against my will, forgive my rash act. Strong wine and love compelled me: the one dragged me there and the other suppressed my wise heart. But when I came, I did not shout who I was, or whose son, but kissed your doorpost. If this is wrong, I’m guilty."
The Latin elegist Propertius was "discovered" by Maecenas when his book of love poems made a splash. He branded himself the "Roman Callimachus" in his own writing, so it is no surprise that he retooled this passage in his own writing, circa 25 BCE:
"...although a twofold frenzy had laid upon me, and the two inexorable gods, Liber and Amor, urged on this side and on that..." (Prop 1.3.13).
Across the centuries, countries, and materials involved, the tale remained centered on an indifference to the loss of self-control. Flouting masculine norms in the name of emotional fulfillment was to be embraced, albeit up to a point of tension with Augustan moral propaganda. It is impossible to confirm that Propertius saw or wrote the surviving graffiti - it comes in his First Book, written before he seems to have been a member of the patronage circle - but one can still dream.
Sources:
Henriksen, Christer (2018). "A Companion to Ancient Epigram". John Wiley & Sons
Wyler, Stéphanie (2013). "An Augustan Trend towards Dionysos: Around the 'Auditorium of Maecenas'". In Bernabe, Alberto; Herrero deJáuregui, Miguel; San Cristóbal, Ana; Martín Hernández, Raquel (eds.). Redefining Dionysos

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
 
Everything will begin…

∞ ETERNITIES AGO

When I say everything, I mean everything. It'll all start on that day.
Back then, one would dub this day the twentieth of April, sixty-nine thousand and sixty-nine, or 4/20/6969. To some this date would've seemed humorous, perhaps funny. And, well, it is a little. But it wasn't funny to one person in particular. That person was Adolf J. Hitler. 5000 years earlier, in his Führerbunker, he headed into his study with his wife at his side, his heart pounding restlessly. He knew it was the end. That's what he told everyone. Except… the end of what? He intentionally left that detail vague.
The date was the 20th of April, 1969. That's the date when Hitler disappeared. Not one day earlier or later. I think.
But of course, Hitler, as always, had one last Karte up his Ärmel, as they say. He had dabbled in the dark arts some time earlier in the year, and found a spell that he knew early on would come in handy, and this… this was the time to use it. 5000 years of slumber in the astral plane, before he will abruptly return to his old reality, reborn into a new state of existence. He would hold power greater than that any mortal being had ever witnessed before!
The year will be AD 6969.
AD, meaning "Anno Domini" (Latin for "in the year of the Lord"), is of course the opposite of BC, or "Before Christ." A common misconception is that, like BC, AD comes after the year number, but it should actually come before it. Just a bit of trivia.
Anyway, the year'll be 6969 AD, 5000 years after Hitler's vanishing. It's hard to say precisely what state the Earth was in. It's all a blur to me. But not long after the spell had finally worked its way into Hitler's heart, we land in the beginning, and in the end. When all that will happen is happening, but all that happens comes later. It will be time itself.
It was most unfortunate that Hitler did not manage to fall asleep in the astral plane. As the curse coursed through his veins, he coarsely cursed, yet he never dreamt. For 5000 years he had nought to do but wait for the time to come, and after a mere 200 years it was starting to piss him off.
Figuring the only solution to this rage was to take revenge on time itself, the only barrier between his old life and his newer, he vowed to destroy time as soon as he'd acquired the power to do so. And that's exactly what he'll do. The year'll be A 6969 D. The date will be 4/20 (fuckin americans). The time will be 13:37. This will all happen. It is the only thing that "will" ever happen, because it'll all happen once and once only. For one Planck time, everything was together, living in harmony, singing the last song of time, before it'll all break apart.
And then it'll happen.
The next Planck time, everything will freeze. A new face will emerge, and it'll stare at every thing that exists, ever existed, and ever will exist, right in the eyes. That'll include you, at this very moment, as you read through the lines of this anti-anti-joke.
The next Planck time, the face becomes real. It is that of the darkmage Xakh'ath'akh'arus, and as his mighty body rises from the mountain it once rested on, and his eyes blink open revealing two glowing white sockets, a shudder creeps through the core of the Earth itself. Without time to define velocity, and indeed velocity to define space, the universe is plunged into a state of nothingness, and for the first time in many millions of years, no one has the time to care. Literally. Xakh'ath'akh'arus soon realizes this problem, and so he creates a new temporal system, one so vaguely defined as to be skippable at will. No longer will eternity be a block that you cannot pass through—for now, you can wait an eternity using a supertask!
Consider this: Do you want to wait one eternity in 2 minutes? Simple! Wait 1 second in 1 minute, then wait another second in 30 seconds, then another second in 15 seconds, and another one in 7.5, and another one in 3.75, and so on, always waiting for half the time left. Although there is always another second left to wait in eternity, you can always cut the remaining wait time in half, and so, when 2 minutes have passed, you will indeed have waited infinitely many seconds—one eternity in just 2 minutes. How about that?
And what about old time, you say? Old time can stay behind us. The past shall stay where it is; the future shall simply be the one Planck time in which Xakh'ath'akh'arus was born; and the present shall be allocated for everything that exists after the future, in the new temporal system. Perfectly balanced, blah blah blah.
It is now that our story begins.
 
 
 
Just kidding. Fast forward to

FIFTY-FOUR ETERNITIES LATER

Society is still trying, and failing, to cope with this newfound reality. Bars are a thing of the past—the only thing left are alcohol-free restaurants. You see, being intoxicated within this temporal system enables one to accidentally wait several eternities into the future, thereby missing out on an entire life without wanting to and thus possibly losing family and relatives. As such, it is agreed upon the remainder of surviving civilization to share one universal law: NO BARS. To avoid ambiguity, prison bars are also outlawed, as well as sick rap bars and chocolate bars. Prisons are to use bullet-proof glass instead, raps must not consist of more than one line, and chocolate is banned. This last decision was the most controversial of them all because it was put forward by a black guy.
Suddenly, two people, a silver-haired man and a brunette-haired woman, materialize out of thin air on a roof in a graffiti-laden street, both leaning forward rather uncomfortably, their lips touching. Not long after, they both open their eyes, and quickly flinch away from each other.
"Who the hell are you?" asks the woman.
"W-what… who the hell are you?!" the man retaliates.
"I'm… I… I don't know, actually."
"Wait. Me neither. Sorry for shouting at you."
"It's okay. Don't stress about it."
The man inspects their surroundings. Dull, grey buildings cover the landscape as far as the eye can see. Not a single skyscraper impedes the view. "Where are we?" he asks.
The woman looks down below the roof. A good five yards above ground level, for sure. She is not as athletic as she used to be. Wait— "Wait. I think I'm remembering who I am," she says.
"You are?" asks the man.
"Yeah, yeah. It's coming back. But it's slow. I think I'm a… a vegetarian?"
"Oh. Cool." The man, still not recalling his identity, envies her speedy recollection. "Do you hear that?"
"The voice that said that you envy my speedy recollection?" Whoops.
"What? No, those Latin shouts. At least I think it's Latin." He's right. Those are Latin shouts. And they're getting louder. Realizing what is to come, he grabs the woman's hand. "Come with me!"
"What? Where—"
The roof hatch suddenly bursts open, and a short surly-looking nun emerges with a shotgun in her arms.
"Come on, come on!" the man yells, running across the roof tiles as gunshots boom behind them.
"SPERO HOC SONAT FORMIDULOSUS, TRUX N-WORDS!"
The woman screeches as he jumps off the roof and onto another, bolting with her hand and ducking behind a solar water heater.
"NUNC EGO NON REPREHENDO, SI RECTE DE FIDELI TRANSLATIONE CONSTET NAM SI PATI LASSUS SUM!" the nun shouts in what definitely sounds like Latin.
"Jesus Christ," the man yell-whispers, breathing heavily. "Are you okay?"
The woman's eyes are wide open with fear, and yet, thrill. "Wow. That was fun."
"It… was?" he breathes. "Huh. Yeah. It was fun." A smile climbs onto his lips. "Wanna do it again?"
The woman returns a hearty grin. "Hell yeah."
They jump again onto an adjacent roof, and for the few moments her feet hover above the ground, the woman feels her younger days coming back. What is her name? "What's yours?" she asks the man after their feet hit the concrete.
"Huh?"
"Your name."
"Oh. Uh, I still haven't gotten there." They jump to another roof. "I'm just starting to remember my profession. I think I was… like a bartender or something? Or a waiter?" Another roof. "No, definitely a bartender. I worked behind a counter." Another jump. "What about you?"
"I was a mathematician, I think. And a highschool teacher. I taught English. Whoop!" She makes that sound after every leap. "I used to go to the gym on the weekends, but I stopped a couple years in. Teaching is exercise in and of itself. Whoop!"
The man laughs. "Why are you making that noise?"
"It's fun! Whoop! Wait, wait, I think I'm remembering my name…"
They stop in their tracks. The building they are standing on is only a few feet tall. The man climbs down to the ground and helps the woman on the way down.
"Thanks," she says.
"You're welcome. Are you remembering your name?"
"No, it just fleeted away. I think it was Chloe or something."
"Then I'll call you Chloe for now."
Chloe for now nods in approval, and scans the street. On the wall opposite them a graffito boasts the words "CONTUMELIIS AFFICIUNT" followed by a series of seemingly unrelated letters and apostrophes.
"Hey, uh, what is… Zack-ath-ac-arus? Zackathacarus? Ksacathacarus?"
"Hmm," muses the man. "That name sounds familiar."
"Is it your name?"
"Yeesh, I hope not. I don't think it is though. Do I look like a Zack?"
"You're too old to be a Zack." She giggles.
"Yeah, that's… thanks." The old man's decrepit belly rumbles. "Man, I'm starved. Wanna go get something to eat?"
"Sure."
The pair begin searching for a restaurant around the area. A restaurant is a lot like one's soul—if you give it money, it feeds you. Or, uh, if it gets no money, it'll either disappear or relocate, but you'll only know which once it's already happened. I don't know. A restaurant is similar to a soul in lots of ways. You could even say that what these two are doing right now is… soul-searching.
The walls of this seemingly abandoned street are covered in graffiti, with the threatening capitalized message reappearing many times in different styles, colors and fonts. CONTUMELIIS AFFICIUNT XAKH'ATH'AKH'ARUS. Sometimes there is only one I in the first word; sometimes the apostrophes are missing from the third; but the same tone of urgency and hatred is shared among them all.
"Say," says Chloe (for now), "where do you think all the—where are you?" She looks around the place, but the man seems to have vanished without a trace. Perhaps he was never there at all, and was simply a figment of her lonely imagination. "Sigh," she says, leaning back on a wall of text. "One day…" She doesn't feel that hungry anymore. In fact she was never hungry—she just didn't want that strange man to leave her. But now he has, and she's left with nothing to do and nowhere to go. So what should she do?
Well, as the great Empedocles once said, "When there is nothing left to do, wait." So she makes herself comfortable in the corner of the alley and sets to work. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi, seven Mississippi, eight Mississippi, nine Mississippi, ten Mississippi, eleven Mississippi, twelve Mississippi, thirteen Mississippi, fourteen Mississippi, fifteen Mississippi, sixteen Mississippi, seventeen Mississippi, eighteen Mississippi, nineteen Mississippi, twenty Mississippi, twenty-one Mississippi, twenty-two Mississippi, twenty-three Mississippi, twenty-four Mississippi, twenty-five Mississippi, twenty-six Mississippi, twenty-seven Mississippi, twenty-eight Mississippi, twenty-nine Mississippi, thirty Mississippi, thirty-one Mississippi, thirty-two Mississippi, thirty-three Mississippi, thirty-four Mississippi, thirty-five Mississippi, thirty-six Mississippi, thirty-seven Mississippi, thirty-eight Mississippi, thirty-nine Mississippi, forty Mississippi, forty-one Mississippi, forty-two Mississippi, forty-three Mississippi, forty-four Mississippi, forty-five Mississippi, forty-six Mississippi, forty-seven Mississippi, forty-eight Mississippi, forty-nine Mississippi, fifty Mississippi, fifty-one Mississippi, fifty-two Mississippi, fifty-three Mississippi, fifty-four Mississippi, fifty-five Mississippi, fifty-six Mississippi, fifty-seven Mississippi—
Suddenly, she is struck with a brilliant idea. Instead of counting one Mississippi at a regular interval, in this case once per second or so, she instead can count at an accelerating rate, such that the pause between each Mississippi is halved in time after every Mississippi. If she began with one Mississippi in one minute, she would then count the next one in half a minute, and the next in a quarter of a minute, the next in an eighth of a minute, then a sixteenth, a thirty-second, a sixty-fourth, a hundred-and-twenty-eighth, a two-hundred-and-fifty-sixth, a five-hundred-and-twelfth, a thousand-and-twenty-fourth, a two-thousand-and-forty-eighth, a four-thousand-and-ninety-sixth, an eight-thousand-one-hundred-and-ninety-second, a sixteen-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-fourth, and so on! Since the sum of all non-positive powers of 2 is, indeed, 2, to her it would seem as if no more than 2 minutes had passed, but to the outside world…?
Excited by this notion, Chloe wastes no time and picks up an outrageously convenient stopwatch from the dirty cement. Surprisingly, and again, conveniently, it still works.
"Mississippi."
She starts a timer and sits right back down, her face staring inches from the screen. As the seconds begin to pile up, a thought occurs to her—what if instead of saying the word "Mississippi" after every count, she instead would alternate between "Mississippi" and "Elephant"? If she does, the question arises—what would she say on the last count? Of course, since she would do this infinitely many times, there isn't really a "final" count—and yet, there is a very specifically defined point at which she literally stops counting, since at said point she would have counted infinitely many times. It makes no sense that her last count would be a Mississippi, since every Mississippi is followed by an Elephant, and neither does it make any sense that the last count would be an Elephant, because every Elephant is followed by a Mississippi.
1 minute. "Elephant." It seems there is only one way to find out, she thinks, delightfully thrilled.
Another thought occurs to her. After a good number of counts, would she still be able to keep up with the timer? Mississippi and Elephant are long words—both 3.5 syllables long. The average speaking speed is around 4 to 5 syllables a second, meaning in roughly five counts, she would have to significantly up her talking speed. The world record for the fastest talking speed, in your time, was 15 syllables per second, at least on average.
30 seconds. "Mississippi."
It is most fortunate, then, that she suddenly remembers it was her who broke the world record, a long, long time ago, when she accidentally uttered the word "a" in infinitesimal time during a lecture. A record-obsessed audio engineer had attended that lecture, recorded her voice, and after years of rigorous analysis, confirmed that she had indeed spoken at a speed of ∞ syllables per second.
15 seconds. "Elephant."
So it is indeed possible, she realizes, but she has only ever done this once in her lifetime. Now, she shall have to do it infinitely many times. Infinity times infinitesimal time equals two minutes.
7.5 seconds. "Mississippi."
Of course, back in old time, there was already a shortest possible unit of time—the Planck time, which is unfortunately only finitely short. Still, it's quite remarkable just how short it is. It's a bit difficult to visualize its incredible briefness, but here's an attempt:
3.75 seconds. "Elephant."
Let's say we count one second, and in each Planck time during that second we place a single grain of sand on the ground.
1.875 seconds. "Mississippi."
By the time we finish counting that one second, we'll have a whole lot of sand at our hands. How much, do you reckon? Enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool? Perhaps even the Grand Canyon? The entire state of New Mexico?
0.9375 seconds. "Elephant."
Actually, it turns out we would have enough sand to make a true-scale sand replica of our Sun… 1,600 times.
0.46875 seconds. "Mississippi."
We would still have some sand left over, enough to make 45 trillion replicas of all the planets in the solar system…
0.234375 seconds. "Elephant."
…and then, if you're feeling patriotic, 7 million sand-made copies of both the Earth and the Moon, and finally after that…
0.1171875 seconds. "Mississippi."
…well, you would still have a shit load of sand, more than you could possibly imagine. I just ran out of analogies.
0.05859375 seconds. "Elephant."
I think my point was that there's a lot of sand in the world and not enough people to mold it.
0.029296875 seconds. "Mississippi."
If we all molded sand every day of the week, imagine how great that would be.
0.0146484375 seconds. "Elephant."
We could make a new species, made entirely of sand, and have it succeed us humans when we succumb to Mother Earth's kiss of extinction.
0.00732421875 seconds. "Mississippi."
I'm sure the sand people would be fine.
0.003662109375 seconds. "Elephant."
Anyway, these Mississippi's and Elephant's are getting quite short, aren't they?
0.0018310546875 seconds. "Mississippi."
I think you get the point. Let's skip forward.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

0 seconds. "Maleficent."
Chloe opens her eyes slowly. She's in a different place now. The graffiti is gone. In fact, the whole weird grey Latin town is gone. She is now in a silent, barren desert, not a single indication of any kind of life as far as the eye can see. Just dunes. Horrible, unemotional, unresponsive dunes. Everywhere.
"Oh," she says quietly. "Oh, no. No, no, no, this can't be! Did I just…" She searches for something to kick at, but the ground is nothing more than sand. So she kicks the sand. "Fuck! I'm a fucking idiot. God fucking damnit." She sighs and sits down on the sand. The watch is still there—it reads 2:34. She stops the timer and flings it away from her.
"Ow!" She turns around. From below the dune, that strange man she saw in the grey town emerges, holding the stopwatch in his one hand and rubbing his face with the other. "We should keep this, you know. It might come in handy."
Her eyes light up, and the next moment she bolts at him and wraps her arms around him. "Oh my god, I thought I'd lost you forever!"
He smiles and returns a hug. "No. I'm starting to get this place. People don't disappear here—they just live in different times."
"What do you mean?"
"How did you get here? Did you do the halving-time trick?"
"Yeah. How did you know?"
"I don't think there's any other way to skip eternities other than that."
"No, I mean… how did you know it would work? The supertask? You didn't say you're a mathematician, or a philosopher."
"Well, no, but being a bartender means you hear a few nerdy jokes here and there. I try to learn what I can. There's this one joke—come on, let's go."
"What? Where? There's nothing but sand in this whole place."
"Nah, I was in a western town just some time ago. I'm sure we'll find it in a sec."
She scouts the area again. Not a single man-made or animal-made building anywhere, at least as far as she can see.
"C'mon!" The man begins walking, and Chloe comes to his side.
"How long have you been in this place?"
"Uh, a few weeks, I'd say? It's hard to keep time. These stopwatches aren't a dime a dozen." He drops the timepiece into his pocket and zips it up.
"And you waited… in this exact spot?"
"Nah, I went to get some drinks. Here." He hands her a bottle of water. It's warm. "The folks at that place were real nice. Hope we can find them again."
Chloe takes a sip, but then she realizes she's not thirsty yet. "Why did you come back, then? Why didn't you stay there?"
"Well, I figured you'd pop up eventually. You seemed smart, and, uh, I guess I didn't really want to lose you."
She pauses and looks at him. He returns a modest smile.
"Thanks," she says quietly.
"No problemo."
The pair stroll for some time, and although Chloe doubts he really knows where he's going, she begins to feel quite comfortable at his side. "Do you remember your name now?" she eventually asks.
"Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention it. It's Bart Ender."
She laughs. "Sure it is."
"God, I wish. That'd be awesome. Nah, my actual name is Brian van der Ende."
"Cute. Are you Dutch?"
"I guess so. I don't remember any of my childhood. All I remember from my past life is that I was a bartender. I guess that was more important to me than anything else. What about you?"
"Oh, I haven't had that much time to recollect, but… I think my name is Clie. But I don't remember much else."
"Okay. Nice to meet you, Clie." He holds out his hand.
"Nice to meet you too," she says and shakes his hand, "Brian."
"Please. Just Bart."
"Bart."
He smiles in approval and takes a scan around the area. "Okay, we are definitely lost. Darn."
Clie sighs nihilistic-like, aye. "What are we gonna do?"
"Well," he says and sits on the ground, "as the famous Aristotle once said, 'When you're out of ideas, wait.'"
She sits on the ground beside him. "Did he actually say that?"
"What? 'Course not, silly. It was in Greek." He pulls out the stopwatch. "How long do you wait for the first one?"
"Just a minute."
"A minute? Why not, like, 10 seconds?"
"I guess that works too."
He turns on the stopwatch and watches the watch wash away the first second, the second second, and so on.
20 seconds later, they're gone.
That was quick.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Slender Man (also known as Slenderman) is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forums user Eric Knudsen (also known as "Victor Surge") in 2009.[1] It is depicted as a thin, unnaturally tall humanoid with a featureless head and face and wearing a black suit.
Stories of the Slender Man commonly feature him stalking, abducting or traumatizing people, particularly children.[2] The Slender Man is not confined to a single narrative but appears in many disparate works of fiction, typically composed online.[3][4] Fiction relating to the Slender Man encompasses many media, including literature, art and video series such as Marble Hornets, wherein he is known as The Operator. Outside of online fiction, the Slender Man has become an internet icon and has influenced popular culture, having been referenced in the video game Minecraft with the Enderman character and generated video games of his own, such as Slender: The Eight Pages and Slender: The Arrival. He has also appeared in Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, the film adaptation of the Marble Hornets YouTube series, where he was portrayed by Doug Jones, and will appear in an upcoming eponymous film, where he will be portrayed by Javier Botet.
Beginning in 2014, a moral panic occurred over the Slender Man after readers of his fiction were connected to several violent acts, particularly a near-fatal stabbing of a 12-year-old girl in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Contents [hide]
1 Origin 1.1 Development
2 Description 2.1 As folklore
3 Reasons for success
4 Copyright
5 Related incidents 5.1 Waukesha stabbing
5.2 Other incidents
6 References in media
7 See also
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links
Origin
The writings of H. P. Lovecraft influenced the creation of the Slender Man.
The Slender Man was created on June 10, 2009, on a thread in the Something Awful Internet forum.[5][6] The thread was a Photoshop contest in which users were challenged to "create paranormal images."[7][8] Forum poster Eric Knudsen, under the pseudonym "Victor Surge",[9] contributed two black-and-white images of groups of children to which he added a tall, thin, spectral figure wearing a black suit.[10][11] Although previous entries had consisted solely of photographs, Surge supplemented his submission with snatches of text—supposedly from witnesses—describing the abductions of the groups of children and giving the character the name "The Slender Man":
The quote under the first photograph read:
We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…
— 1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead.[11]
The quote under the second photograph read:
One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as “The Slender Man”. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.
— 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.[11]
These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequent posters expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions.[10][11]
Knudsen was inspired to create the Slender Man primarily by Zack Parsons' "That Insidious Beast", Stephen King's The Mist, reports of shadow people, Mothman and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.[12] Other inspirations for the character were the Tall Man from the 1979 film Phantasm,[13] H. P. Lovecraft, the surrealist work of William S. Burroughs, and the survival horror video games Silent Hill and Resident Evil.[14] Knudsen's intention was "to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and [which caused] unease and terror in a general population."[15] Other pre-existing fictional or legendary creatures which are similar to the Slender Man include: the Gentlemen, black-suited, pale, bald demons from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush"; Men in black, many accounts of which grant them an uncanny appearance with an unnatural walk and "oriental" features; and The Question, a DC Comics superhero with a blank face, whose secret identity is "Victor Sage", a name similar to Knudsen's alias "Victor Surge".[13]
In her book, Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology, Professor Shira Chess of the University of Georgia connected the Slender Man to ancient folklore about fairies. Like fairies, Slender Man is otherworldly, with motives that are often difficult to grasp; like fairies, his appearance is vague and often shifts to reflect what the viewer wants or fears to see, and, like fairies, the Slender Man calls the woods and wild places his home and kidnaps children.[13][page needed]
Development
The Slender Man soon went viral,[16] spawning numerous works of fanart, cosplay, and online fiction known as "creepypasta"—scary stories told in short snatches of easily copyable text that spread from site to site. Divorced from its original creator, the Slender Man became the subject of myriad stories by multiple authors within an overarching mythos.[3]
Many aspects of the Slender Man mythos first appeared on the original Something Awful thread. One of the earliest additions was added by a forum user named "Thoreau-Up", who created a folklore story set in 16th-century Germany involving a character called Der Groẞman, which was implied to be an early reference to the Slender Man.[13]:36 The first video series involving the Slender Man evolved from a post on the Something Awful thread by user "ce gars". It tells of a fictional film school friend named Alex Kralie, who had stumbled upon something troubling while shooting his first feature-length project, Marble Hornets. The video series, published in found footage style on YouTube, forms an alternate reality game describing the filmers' fictional experiences with the Slender Man. The ARG also incorporates a Twitter feed and an alternate YouTube channel created by a user named "totheark".[2][17] As of 2013, Marble Hornets had over 250,000 subscribers around the world and had received 55 million views.[18] Other Slender Man-themed YouTube serials followed, including EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve.[2]
In 2012, the Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages; within its first month of release, the game was downloaded over 2 million times.[19] Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slenderman's Shadow[20] and Slender Man for iOS, which became the second most-popular app download.[21] The sequel to Slender: The Eight Pages, Slender: The Arrival, was released in 2013.[22] Several independent films about the Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entity[23] and The Slender Man, released free online after a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign.[24] In 2013, it was announced that Marble Hornets would become a feature film.[18] In 2015, the film adaptation, Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, was released on VOD, where the character was portrayed by Doug Jones.[25] In 2016, Sony Pictures subsidiary Screen Gems partnered with Mythology Entertainment to bring a Slender Man film into theatres, with the title character portrayed by Javier Botet.[26]
Description
The "Slender Man symbol" introduced by Marble Hornets
Because the Slender Man's fictional "mythology" has evolved without an official "canon" for reference, his appearance, motives, habits, and abilities are not fixed but change depending on the storyteller.[27] He is most commonly described as very tall and thin with unnaturally long, tentacle-like arms (or merely tentacles),[3] which he can extend to intimidate or capture prey. In most stories his face is white and featureless, but occasionally his face appears differently to anyone who sees it.[27] He appears to be wearing a dark suit and tie. The Slender Man is often associated with the forest and/or abandoned locations and has the ability to teleport.[28][29] Proximity to the Slender Man is often said to trigger a "Slender sickness"; a rapid onset of paranoia, nightmares and delusions accompanied by nosebleeds.[30]
Early stories featured him targeting children or young adults. Some featured young adults driven insane or to act on his behalf, while others did not, and others claim that investigating the Slender Man will draw his attention.[13][page needed] The web series Marble Hornets established the idea of proxies (humans who fall under the Slender Man's influence) though initially they were simply violently insane, rather than puppets of the Slender Man. Marble Hornets also introduced the idea that the Slender Man could interfere with video and audio recordings, as well as the "Slender Man symbol", which became a common trope of Slender fiction.[13][page needed] Graphic violence and body horror are uncommon in the Slender Man mythos, with many narratives choosing to leave the fate of his victims obscure.[13][page needed] Shira Chess notes that "It is important to note that few of the retellings identify exactly what kind of monster the Slender Man might be, and what his specific intentions are- these points all remain mysteriously and usefully vague."[27]
As folklore
Several scholars have argued that, despite being a fictional work with an identifiable origin point, the Slender Man represents a form of digital folklore. Shira Chess argues that the Slender Man exemplifies the similarities between traditional folklore and the open source ethos of the Internet, and that, unlike those of traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, the fact that the Slender Man's mythos can be tracked and signposted offers a powerful insight into how myth and folklore form.[10] Chess identifies three aspects of the Slender Man mythos that tie it to folklore: collectivity (meaning that it is created by a collective, rather than a single individual), variability (meaning that the story changes depending on the teller), and performance (meaning that the storyteller's narrative changes to reflect the responses of his/her audience).[13][page needed]
Andrew Peck also considers the Slender Man to be an authentic form of folklore and notes its similarity to emergent forms of offline legend performance. Peck suggests that digital folklore performance extends the dynamics of face-to-face performance in several notable ways, such as by occurring asynchronously, encouraging imitation and personalization while also allowing perfect replication, combining elements of oral, written, and visual communication, and generating shared expectations for performance that enact group identity despite the lack of a physically present group. He concludes that the Slender Man represents a digital legend cycle that combines the generic conventions and emergent qualities of oral and visual performance with the collaborative potential of networked communication.[31]
Jeff Tolbert also accepts the Slender Man as folkloric and suggests it represents a process he calls “reverse ostension.” Ostension in folkloristics is the process of acting out a folk narrative. According to Tolbert, the Slender Man does the opposite by creating a set of folklore-like narratives where none existed before. It is an iconic figure produced through a collective effort and deliberately modeled after an existing and familiar folklore genre. According to Tolbert, this represents two processes in one: it involves the creation of new objects and new disconnected examples of experience, and it involves the combination of these elements into a body of “traditional” narratives, modeled on existing folklore (but not wholly indebted to any specific tradition).[32]
Professor Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark has described the Slender Man as being an exemplar of the modern age's closing of the "Gutenberg Parenthesis"; the time period from the invention of the printing press to the spread of the web in which stories and information were codified in discrete media, to a return to the older, more primal forms of storytelling, exemplified by oral tradition and campfire tales, in which the same story can be retold, reinterpreted and recast by different tellers, expanding and evolving with time.[28]
Reasons for success
Anonymous graffito of the Slender Man drawn on pavement in Raleigh, North Carolina
Media scholar and folklorist Andrew Peck attributes the success of the Slender Man to its highly collaborative nature. Because the character and its motives are shrouded in mystery, users can easily adapt existing Slender Man tropes and imagery to create new stories. This ability for users to tap into the ideas of others while also supplying their own helped inspire the collaborative culture that arose surrounding the Slender Man. Instead of privileging the choices of certain creators as canonical, this collaborative culture informally locates ownership of the creature across the community. In these respects, the Slender Man is similar to campfire stories or urban legends, and the character's success comes from enabling both social interaction and personal acts of creative expression.[31]
Although nearly all users understand that the Slender Man is not real, they suspend that disbelief in order to become more engrossed when telling or listening to stories.[32] This adds a sense of authenticity to Slender Man legend performances and blurs the lines between legend and reality, keeping the creature as an object of legend dialectic.[33] This ambiguity has led some to some confusion over the character's origin and purpose. Only five months after his creation, George Noory's Coast to Coast AM, a radio call-in show devoted to the paranormal and conspiracy theories, began receiving callers asking about the Slender Man.[34] Two years later, an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune described his origins as "difficult to pinpoint."[27] Eric Knudsen has commented that many people, despite understanding that the Slender Man was created on the Something Awful forums, still entertain the possibility that he might be real.[28]
Shira Chess describes the Slender Man as a metaphor for "helplessness, power differentials, and anonymous forces."[27] Peck sees parallels between the Slender Man and common anxieties about the digital age, such as feelings of constant connectedness and unknown third-party observation.[31] Similarly, Tye Van Horn, a writer for The Elm, has suggested that the Slender Man represents modern fear of the unknown; in an age flooded with information, people have become so unaccustomed to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand.[35] Troy Wagner, the creator of Marble Hornets, ascribes the terror of the Slender Man to its malleability; people can shape it into whatever frightens them most.[28] Tina Marie Boyer noted that "The Slender man is a prohibitive monster, but the cultural boundaries he guards are not clear. Victims do not know when they have violated or crossed them."[13][page needed]
Copyright
Despite his folkloric qualities, the Slender Man is not in the public domain. Several for-profit ventures involving the Slender Man have unequivocally acknowledged Knudsen as the creator of this fictional character, while others were civilly blocked from distribution (including the Kickstarter-funded film) after legal complaints from Knudsen and other sources. Though Knudsen himself has given his personal blessing to a number of Slender Man-related projects, the issue is complicated by the fact that, while he is the character's creator, a third party holds the options to any adaptations into other media, including film and television. The identity of this option holder has not been made public.[9] Knudsen himself has argued that his enforcement of copyright has less to do with money than with artistic integrity: "I just want something amazing to come off it... something that's scary and disturbing and kinda different. I would hate for something to come out and just be kinda conventional."[34] As of May 2016, the media rights to Slender Man have been sold to production company Mythology Entertainment.[26]
Related incidents
Waukesha stabbing
Main article: Slender Man stabbing
On May 31, 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin allegedly held down and stabbed a 12-year-old classmate 19 times. When questioned later by authorities, they reportedly claimed that they wished to commit a murder as a first step to becoming proxies for the Slender Man, having read about it online.[36] They also state that they were afraid that Slender Man would kill their families if they did not commit the murder.[37] The victim was able to crawl from the woods, where she had been left, to reach a roadside. A passing cyclist intervened, and the victim survived the attack. Both attackers have been diagnosed with mental illnesses[38] but have also been charged as adults and are each facing up to 65 years in prison.[39] One of the girls reportedly said Slender Man watches her, can read minds, and could teleport.[36]
Experts testified in court she also said she conversed with Lord Voldemort and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On August 1, 2014, she was found incompetent to stand trial and her prosecution was suspended until her condition improved.[40] On November 12, 2014, a doctor judged that her condition had improved enough for her to stand trial,[41] and on December 19, 2014, the judge ruled that both girls were competent to stand trial.[42] In August 2015, the presiding judge ruled that the girls would be tried as adults.[43] They were tried separately.[44] On August 21, 2017, one of the girls, now 15, pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree homicide, but claimed she was not responsible for her actions on grounds of insanity.[45] Although prosecutors alleged that she knew what she was doing was wrong, the jury determined that she was mentally ill during the attack. She will spend at least three years in a mental hospital.[46][47] On December 21, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren sentenced Weier, then 16 years-old, to be hospitalized for 25 years from the date of the crime, which would keep her institutionalized until age 37.[48]
In a statement to the media, Eric Knudsen said, "I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act." He stated he would not be giving interviews on the matter.[49]
On 25 September 2017, it was reported[50] that Morgan Geyser, then 15, had agreed to plead guilty to attempting to commit first-degree homicide in an arrangement that would allow her avoid jail time. In terms of the arrangement Geyser would remain at the mental hospital where she had been staying for the past two years for at least a further three years.
On February 1, 2018, the Associated Press reported that Geyser had been sentenced to 40 years in the Wisconsin mental hospital, the maximum sentence allowed.[51]
A documentary film on the incident called Beware the Slenderman was released by HBO Films in March 2016, and was broadcast on HBO on January 23, 2017.[52]
Other incidents
After hearing the story, an unidentified woman from Cincinnati, Ohio, told a WLWT TV reporter in June 2014 that her 13-year-old daughter had attacked her with a knife, and had written macabre fiction, some involving the Slender Man, who the mother said motivated the attack.[53]
On September 4, 2014, a 14-year-old girl in Port Richey, Florida, allegedly set her family's house on fire while her mother and nine-year-old brother were inside. Police reported that the teenager had been reading online stories about Slender Man as well as Atsushi Ōkubo's manga Soul Eater.[54] Eddie Daniels of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office said the girl "had visited the website that contains a lot of the Slender Man information and stories [...] It would be safe to say there is a connection to that."[55]
During an early 2015 epidemic of suicide attempts by young people ages 12 to 24 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Slender Man was cited as an influence; the Oglala Sioux tribe president noted that many Native Americans traditionally believe in a "suicide spirit" similar to the Slender Man.[56

Y'all remember Spouse-a-tron? Fuck that guy. Seriously, run him over with a bus. It'll be funny.
When you've forgotten that image, I'ma need you to bear with me because yes I done gone and found myself a fucking FPS. The times I have strained under the mashed potatoes of life for you guys and it's because you are the salted sweet cream buttery lubricant of life.
So Be me (Cheszilla)

Dieted and exercised like a boss, 130lb 5'9 punk creampoof tattoo shop-bitch.

Also Be Cat Man

6', 140lb tattooed Sex Pistols extra, covered head to toe in tattoos.

Please for the love of all that is sweet and good and sugar free in this world, DON'T be:
Gart

6' 280lb dumpster fire human

Rash

His 5' nuthin baked potato wife

It's ok if you be
Orko

longterm audience of Gart's antics (I hesitate to use 'friend' because nobody likes Gart.)

CatMOM

Catman's mom, she's awesome.

So last year in the run up to the holiday season, Catman and I decide we should probs do that whole meeting each other's families thing, so we some crazy how manage to bag cheap as hell flights on Chrimbob Eve to his parents' AND get time off work with no notice.

So Christmas eve I open at the shop and then we do this crazy leg it thing to the airport but somehow arrive 6 hours early? WTF airports, I will never understand you.

We get to Catmom's house safely. Catmom is all "OH CATMAN I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN FOREVER BUT I KNEW YOU'D COME HOME SOON." ETC. We're there for a week so I gear up for some hardcore pyjama olympics. The most effort I'm putting in is to change underwear at least once this week.

MF planning this whole vacation.

Day one goes by without a hitch, we open presents, eat a tonne of food, it's great.
Day two.

Boxing Day

So around lunchtime, I'm ass deep in a lazyboy watching Emperor's New Groove with nephew on my ipad and loving life when Catman gets a phone call.

Who the fuck even calls these days
LOL.1956
text like a real person

After a few minutes he reenters the room looking a little crestfallen.

Catman face when he tells me that was Gart
MFW he says "That was Gart
WTF is Gart? I have never met only heard stories.
Gart was childhood friend of Catman. Or rather, Their dads were friends and would plop the little rug rats together in diapers and they've kind of been around each other ever since. Let me be explicitly clear, nobody actually likes Gart, we're not even sure his wife Rash does. But he's one of these people that's such a dumpster fire you can't leave him unsupervised. Catman doesn't enjoy seeing him and his wife, hates interacting with him and just occasionally feels this guilt of "I knew you at 5 years old I guess I'm supposed to like you or something and I feel bad that I don't." Gart at least is kind of treated like a black sheep member of the family, and Rash is just...largely ignored until Gart makes a mess and nobody wants to clean it up. Then Rash steps in. She's just as garbage as he is though.

Gart is in town too, and has insisted we're meeting him for dinner and drinks tonight. Catman quickly adds that Orko will be there. Orko is pretty awesome so I think, "How bad can it be?" Besides, It's my first time in the city where Catman is from, so I figure a night of playing tourist is going to do wonders at keeping everyone calmed the fuck down.
On our way there, Orko texts us to tell us Rash is going to be there too.

MFW we're only a block away and you tell me this now.

We arrive and greetings are made.

GetOffMyFoot.fatass

Having never met Gart and Rash before, I don't really know what to expect, but a sad mashed potato pile with a button down shirt stretched around it's lumps and it's sidekick mini Double Baked potato mumu are not it.

ElbowMeOneMoreTime.Asshole

These are not the vibrant punks and graffitos of Catman's childhood. The closest thing to colour on these two is Diabetes that rampages through Rash's body leaving her constantly slightly pink with infection and the wino glow that flushes Gart's alcoholic face purple.

Rash told me all about her diabetes in her introduction. I couldn't stop her.

Dinner starts uneventfully, Rash and Gart are gross but not embarrassing yet.

Low Bar there

My history of living abroad comes up, and before I can specify that I lived in the UK, Gart and Rash start talking about how great Ireland is and how they want to live there because they're Irish. Loudly.

Oh ok
IS THAT WHY YOU CHOSE AN IRISH PUB FOR DINNER YOU OBVIOUS PLANKS?

Rash starts telling me graphic details about her diabetes and her family. She wants to move back to Ireland because they were wrongfully pushed out in the Famine.

She says this while shovelling corned beef and gravy into her face. She eats only the meat.
weird.exe

I cautiously ask her about the potatoes, thinking hahahahahaha I'll make a potato joke.

because irish and potatoes GEDDIT?
fuck it.

Rash gives me a confused look. "What potatoes?"

Nevermind, BACK THE FUCK AWAY

I look at the ceiling in hopes that a portal to another dimension has opened up so I can throw myself into it. Rash continues chewing in my ear and spraying food particles all over the table. "Oh I don't eat potatoes, it's an intolerance all REAL Irish people have since the Famine."

lolwat
What did I juts hear?

Rash proceeds to explain to me that the Potato Famine in Ireland was a hoax created by the English to corner the potato market and subjugate the Irish. The Irish were told that the potatoes were poisoned and the REAL Irish just stopped eating Potatoes and in the 150 years since the potato famine, a REAL Irish person will be unable to digest potatoes because they've not had to process them in their diet for so long. Since she is "real" Irish, she cannot digest potatoes and some kinds of vegetables, she explains, and they make her really really sick if she eats them. It's also apparently where her Diabetes stems from.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
Can't say anything she might take it as encouragement

Let's take a short break to process what Gart and Catman are up to right now. At this same table, Gart starts out buzzed and goes from buzzed to hammered fairly quickly. Gart has become an offensive bully, but as Catman and Orko have known each other for so long, they both know how to shut him down. Orko is on form and just deflating his enormous egotistical belly with sarky little one liners. Orko really only associates with Gart and Rash because he finds them so entertaining to watch.
Rash at this point has figured out that Gart is drunk. The three of us are wondering when she's going to make the call to take him home since we had already made that call about four drinks back when Gart was still mostly coherent. Rash is just ordering another plate of corned beef.

Clearly you're not done here.
Some of us would like to leave
like tonight maybe.
PLEASE?
nah bro she eating for two - Her inner crazy and her.

I start doing the whole yawn, stretch, "OH GOD IT'S SO LATE WILL WE HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO SLEEP BEFORE THAT SUPER EARLY THING WE GOT TOMORROW, GUY?" And Rash gets the hint.

Ok maybe not really.
She asks for the second plate to be brought out in a to go bag.

"I want to eat on the go" She tells the waiter.

REALLY

Within about half an hour of waiting for Rash's food, we've paid the bill and we're outside walking back to our various modes of transport. Gart gets a second wind out of nowhere, and demands we go to this bar called Lava Lounge. It's a popular sort of young people bar, it's not too expensive but I don't think I've seen anyone over 35 in there. It's nearby, so I would normally be up for it, but given how hard we just had to play at being tired to get Gart and Rash to leave, we just all roundly say "NO", except Rash who grabs me and says "You'll have a drink right?" and drags me off in the direction of the bar.

AWWW HELL NAW.
Nobodys gonna challenge her on this?
REALLY Y'ALL JUST LET ME GET DRAGGED OFF BY A STRANGE CRAZY POTATO?
Fine.

Lava Lounge is dim, it's loud, made louder by Gart awkwardly rubbing his fleshy limbs across my face and neck every time he reaches for a beer or glass. The drunk idiot has wedged himself in a corner and Rash has wedged herself between his corner (which he is too big for) and myself (who doesn't have any room on the seat because of these two clowns). Rash asks me if I'd like to hear how she met Gart.

How Do You Politely Say FUCK YOU GROSS and leave?

She tells me anyway, and I ignore it and tune out. She doesn't seem to notice that I'm not so subtly signalling to Catman and Orko that I want out ASAP. I tune back in again when she rounds back on Gart for "eyeing up other women" in the bar.

I didn't think he could see anything given how much he's drunk.
Like, I'm genuinely surprised he's conscious.
How can he see anything behind her giant body either, as she's sitting on his chest practically and blocking his view.

Rash doesn't let Gart complete a sentence. He doesn't interrupt again which makes it seem like he's used to this. I become the unfortunate and unwilling witness to their domestic dispute.
"Look Gart, you have to accept you're married to me now and that I'm the best you're gonna have. Nobody is gonna have the body that I do."

Half baked potato half human genetically spliced experiments are usually rare, yes.

"But Rash you're a fat slob."
"Shut up Gart, that's not what you said on Halloween about my sexy nurse costume."

Puke.mp4
Orko leans across the table to show me a photo on his phone. It's a potato in a sexy nurse PVC number.

Guys, I wish I truly could show you this photo. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, but I wish I could show you. There are gleams where there shouldn't be gleaming. There's bulges where a bulge should not be. There's duct tape holding this costume shut across the back because the sides to the zip don't physically meet. Guys, there's sweaty fat rolls over everything. And pit stains even where armpits can't reach.

HOW.WHY
NOPE.WTF
SearThisInto@mybrain.com

I attempt to extricate myself because I realise this is what my limbs are trapped under. Also I have to pee. Rash and Gart don't like that something is moving undenext to them, so they look at me and tell me to stop elbowing them and interrupting them.
"Sorry I have to pee." I mutter as I try to stand up.
I don't stand up. Gart is complaining that there's no room and Rash is giving me a look like I just stabbed a puppy. "Can you keep your personal events to yourself, we're trying to have a discussion and you're being GROSS."

Dagger staring champion 2015 bitches
MFW

I get up, go to the bathroom and clean up, then purposely sit down on the other side of the table with Orko and Catman. Orko gets up like a gentleman without being asked, to let me scoot in next to Catman, and to also shield my outer defenses from the potato people.
Rash and Gart carry on uninterrupted. Gart calls her some names, commenting that he can't be physically attracted to a fat roll, since she doesn't have curves, she is A curve. She calls him a drunken fat gut who doesn't realise she's the best he's ever going to do.

The only truth in that sentence was the part where they're the best each other can hope for.
Such awful people.

While this entire argument progressed, she ordered skittles drink after skittles drink. Every cocktail was bigger, rainbow-ier and sweeter than the last.

I would be worried about her diabetes but I've long ago stopped caring about her as a person.

After about an hour of this Catman and I leave with Orko to meet up with Catman's siblings who want to have drinks too and are nearby. We don't even say goodbye, Catman and Orko assure me this is pretty normal and we should just go.
The rest of the night was a blast.
A few days later, the friend requests come. Rash wants me to be her buddy on FookBook.

gross

no

Ugh but it's for Catman so....ok

She messages me instantly about the night we went out to dinner. Not a "it was great meeting you" or a "lets do it again sometime", but a warning to stay away from Gart. Because SHE was married to Gart and she didn't appreciate some stranger telling him to stop his diet and cut drinking and how touchy feely I was with him all night.
I show Catman. "Did you go out to dinner with them again or something?"

I made a backhanded comment about how I couldn't drink as much as Gart did since graduating college. Only comment made about eating or drinking habits all night that wasn't from Rash or Gart.

Rash tells me that she's made sure to tell the entire family about my behaviour that night so that Catman's family all know what a dangerous person I am.

OK

Rash lambasts me for ordering so much food and rubbing it in the face of two poor sick people struggling with diabetes and obesity. "How dare you, rubbing it in our face like that, we get it, you can eat whatever you want."

I was at that exact moment eating the leftovers of the one plate of salad I ordered and couldn't finish while sitting on the couch with Catman's mom.

Rash: "I am onto you. You can't steal my Gart from me."
I show Catman the message.
Catman laughs and says "Shit they've met some of my exes, even being a ho you're a vast improvement."
I give him a look. "Do we have to see these fuckers ever again? Catman shrugs. "I'd rather not, personally, if you don't want to."

....nah

TLDR
Five friends with big egos and slightly arrogant attitudes who run a neighborhood Irish pub in Philadelphia try to find their way through the adult world of work and relationships.

Index

Tapes 00
Tapes 01
Tapes 02
Tapes 03

Dramatis Personae

The Party
The Black Phoenix Gang

• Walter Black - Oathborn Soldier
• Vice Black - Slothborn Soldier
• Kheign Black - Fearborn Head of Security
• Archie Black - Oathborn President of Gang
• Flinch Black - Shadowborn Dealer
• (Not Present) Violet Black - Warborn Poisoner

The NPCs

• Nick The Pig (Mr. Nicholas) - Boss of St. Jabber's Mound
• Relgok - The Pig's Chief of Security
• Sweaty Freddie with the Rusty Machete - Barkeep at the Choked Goat
• Tophin - Self-styled King of the Orphans in St. Jabber's Mound
• Chopper - A talking feral dog (now deceased)
• Brickhouse - Dealer for the Black Phoenix Gang
• Tinpot - Archer. Friend of Brickhouse. Guard for Brickhouse.
• Dr. Lump - Pimp
• Tommy Tightlips - Pimp
• Brock - Blockrunner for Nick the Pig
• Ella - Negotiator for the 15th Street Killers
• Ghost - A pit bull

Session Background

A bit of an update on the date system. I finally found my calendar for Drexlor, so I've changed back to my weird 16 month annual system. Its not important, but just know that Grumbles is the first spring of the year, and the campaign started on the 6th Grumbles (a Fishday) and nine days have passed.
Long break since the last session - 4 weeks instead of 3, so I had a lot of time to ruminate on the current situation. The party was doing ok, mostly. They murdered a talking dog and displayed his head for all to see, and covertly (and blatantly in 2 more incidents) killed some rival Murderboys in the area. Their businesses, fledgling as they are, are at least working as intended, and Mr. Nicholas hasn't summoned them to chew them out for at least a day.
I had a think about ol' Chopper, our magical mutt. Who was he? Where was he from? I pulled out one of my many maps of Galron and had a look at the district of Crud itself, and the surrounds. Abutting this district is Dogshit, a smaller and even more poverty-stricken slums, only this one had a culture - they were dog lovers. In all senses of the word, ya dig? The people who lived there call themselves Running Fang, or the Wolfpack, sometimes, and they all owned dogs, an ancient breeding pool of the meanest and the touched-by-Jumble. They were feared, and rightly so, because all who wronged them were subject to the Wild Hunt - when massive packs of hundreds of dogs were set loose in the streets.
Their Jumble-touched were called The Moon, and they all spoke, being awakened to their canine identities. They formed the backbone of a covert network of Moon spies who lived among the Fang's enemies and lived as dumb dogs. Some were found out, of course, and became tools of those who held power, much like our old friend Chop Chop.
So that's my play. The blatant murder and grotesque display of one of the Moon would not, could not go unpunished, or unremarked. That's how I would open. With the neighborhood dogs all howling in unison, mournful and would go on for many minutes. Then, the next morning, a whole slew of dogs would be sitting, quietly, outside the HQ door, in the street. They would just stare at the party, not interacting, and then a pitbull would give its only warning, by speaking - "Running Fang", and then the whole lot would peel off leaving the street empty again.
I had one other piece I needed to extrapolate, and that was, what happens when Nick the Pig (as agent of Jimmy the Jake) makes a mistake. I like to have my villains make mistakes, mostly because its more interesting than the omnipotent ones we always seem to meet in D&D.
The Jake's hubris wouldn't allow him to turn away a tribute from a rival power, and I had been thinking about the moving engines all around the party's tiny little world (as they see it), and the collective known as the 15th Street Killers, once a ruthless street gang (and still operates one), now a full fledged city power, wanted the Jake's territory, according to a tiny engine I built to move the drama around.
So a diplomat would be sent with a gift, something known to be too valuable to say no to, to throw the Jake off the real play, which was to cut off one of the Jake's many "cut outs" - false bosses that keep him insulated from real danger. The 15K knew about the Pig's true purpose, a result of some arcane meddlings in the Dream Realms. They planned to use another gang - a bunch of technofreak rogue engineers who called themselves The Banghammer - to attack the diplomat and "try" to steal the gift, while also leaving a gift of their own, as an apology to the Pig for bringing violence to his territory. This new gift would be a bomb, a fucking big one.
So my question to myself was, "Would Nick fall for this?" and I didn't know. I wouldn't know until it played out in the game and I made the decision, as Nick. You feel me? I gotta do it that way or I feel like I'm cheating. If I decide beforehand what Nick would do or not do, then that's a railroad - at least how I define it. Anyways. Enough set up. Let's get to it!

Slowday - 15th Grumbles

Started with the last session's recap
Oh, I should mention the party is Level 3, and everyone took the Thief archetype until we can homebrew some tweaks onto them to suit their character roles.
After a long and weary few days, the party is just glad to be home, the doors are locked, the shutters are closed and barred, and they leave Flinch awake to stand guard while the rest sleep. Flinch takes to the roof and tries to stay awake.
Oh. Violet is not with us again this session. She's just a figment of their imaginations, yes?
All of a sudden all over the neighborhood, dogs begin to howl. Flinch says "Oh fuck" and listens for the many minutes it takes for this to end. He's fully freaked and descends to the main floor and wakes everyone up. The rest are up and talking - and they immediately think of what Walter did to poor Chopper, I didn't have to say anything, they immediately came to that conclusion, and were deciding what to do, when Archie opened the front door and saw the Assemblage of Doggos. About 100 of them, all breeds and sizes. A crowd had built up on both sides, unwilling to walk through them, and as Archie and the others walk out, some of the crowd starts to abuse them - "This is YOUR fault!" and "What have you done?!"
As they walk out among the dogs, the animals give way, moving fluidly away every time anyone tries to get near any of them. Archie tries to feed them, to no avail. Now everyone is starting to get tweaky, and as the tension builds as they talk about WHAT THE FUCK, I wait until they are about to bolt and then I peel the pack off, leaving only a single pit bull directly across from the open front door, just staring at them. Archie is about to speak and I cut him off with, "Running Fang" and then the dog runs off. Walter stands in the middle of the street and shouts, "What the HELL does THAT MEAN?!"
The crowd is furious now, some of them throwing stones and shouting "You are supposed to protect us!" and "You stupid, stupid assholes!" and none of the party have any idea what is happening but they are in full-flight mode now. They flee to Pig Manor, being shunned and harassed by the locals along the way. Once they arrive, they have a bit of banter with Relgok, the Pig's Blockchief, and then are admitted to a sitting room on the ground floor.

The Choice

One of Nick's bodyguards, Mr. T. (the other being Mr. K.) is waiting for them and asks in a weary voice, "What is the crisis this time?". This does not go over well. There is some shouting and such, and he fucks off and Mr. Nicholas comes in a few minutes later and they tell him the tale. He's not too fuckin happy, and berates them for bringing him "bags of shit to hold" (thanks, Al). He explains who Running Fang are and what this all means, explaining the Wild Hunt and telling the party they have two choices, and they aren't negotiable. He looks Archie right in the eye when he says this. The party laughed. I laughed too. Cause I was serious. Mr. Nicholas said, "You can either get the fuck out of my patch or you can do a job for me after I hide you."
He gave them time to talk amongst themselves, and we took a break, being an hour in already.
They decided to do the job. Mr. Nicholas looked a bit pained, sighed and said, "Be ready in an hour. I will send a man." They said, "Ok" and they split.
Back through the streets, the locals are giving them the cold shoulder, with only one or two of the bravest shouting insults. They ignored it and got home and disarmed the trapdoor trap - with Flinch nearly getting shot. They dig up their narcotics and gather what meager possessions they have, and wait for The Man. They talk awhile, about the situation and their businesses, not knowing how long this whole ordeal was going to take. Vice says he's gonna go to the Choked Goat and talk to the gang's dealer, Brickhouse, and he's gonna participate in The Feast of Desires, a festival of Shakendul, his deity of Lust, Indulgence and Gluttony while he's gone. The party tries to talk him out of it, but says it will be fine, and wanders out into the streets.
I normally don't mind party splits. They tend to happen organically and make sense within the context of the situation. I'm comfortable running splits for up to an hour. After that I get tired and if I haven't been able to steer the party member back to the group by then in subtle ways, I'll just flat out ask them if they are going back. I didn't have to in this instance, but it was a near thing lol.

Slow and Sloppy

Vice takes a leisurely stroll to the Goat, ignoring the snide looks from the locals, and when he arrives he sees Brickhouse getting hassled by some dreamshit addicts ('shitheads), and they are getting violent. Vice jumps in and they turn on him and its short bloody work, but Vice leaves them steaming in the street, taking some coin from them to boot. Brickhouse complains that he's been getting a lot like that today and its getting worse, and wants to know when he's gonna be resupplied. Vice explains that its all part of the new business strategy, and not to worry, and on that note, "Where's Tinpot, your backup?". Tinpot is Brick's on-again-off-again 'shithead buddy who's great with a bow, when he's sober. They turn to look at where he's usually positioned on the rooftops, and he's not there. Brick makes some vague noises to his whereabouts, being genuinely unaware, and Vice goes to have a looksee.
I jump back to the rest of the gang, and they don't have much more to say to one another, so I have The Man show up. His name is Brock and says to follow. He asks where Vice is and when they tell him, he loses his shit. Orders two of his men to go find him and bring him back, and threatens the party with torture if his boys can't find their brother. Was a tense walk.
They walk South on Crooked Jack Lane and cross over the main road into unmapped (hostile) territory, to a basement safehouse, through a few doors and a few guards. They are locked in a windowless apartment with enough food, water, and fuel for 3 days. They groan. Not even a pack of cards between them.
I jump back to Vice. He's up on the rooftop now and the only sign of Tinpot is his broken-in-half bow and a few scattered arrows. Where is he? (The DM does not know at this time)
He goes back and says to Brick to hang tight for a few days, there won't be any resupply, and Brick is distraught, needing work, but is reassured that he'll soon have all the work he can handle. The big man seems appeased and Vice leaves, searching for his people, the Slothborn. He stills his mind and lets some internal guide lead him on a meandering path until he hears the sound of revelry.
A large group of Slothborn is celebrating the Feast with a street orgy-slash-drug-extravaganza. Vice has not taken any substances and refuses to be fed any by the succession of men and women who come to welcome him. Instead, he tries to sell them dreamshit! I had explained before the campaign had begun that Slothborn don't really "do" commerce, but all I can say is, he must have forgotten? He tries several times and my NPCs were "totally not into that kind of relationship" with Vice, and he said fuck it and as he was leaving, he was mugged, but the mugger was not a good one, and Vice leaves him bleeding out in the street. After the man died, there was an act of carnal lust which I will not detail here, by Vice and another Slothborn, but that's the kind of game we agreed upon and nothing was taboo. Anyway. We faded to black after Vice said what was up (ba-dum-tish), and afterwards he went back towards the HQ.
He's eventually met by Brock's men and escorted to the safehouse, where he's locked in with the others. They joke about boredom and cannibalism. They talk a bit. I tell them they sleep twice, and Archie freaks out because Titheday is almost here and he's got to advance his vendetta against the Pig. 2 days have passed.
The guards open the doors and they ask what happened. They say the Wild Hunt tore through the district, some say it was 300 dogs or more. Almost 100 people were torn apart. Tophin and some orphans were among the seriously wounded. The party swears violently for a minute or so. The guards tell them to wait for Brock, who shows up shortly after to tell them the Job.

Nothing Up My Sleeve

Brock says the gang is to go to the Malbog Temple and find a woman wearing a purple dress, and then escort her, and a case she is carrying, to Pig Manor, unharmed.
They said they needed to stop at their HQ first, and off they went. When they got there, they saw the place had been trashed and vandalized, with the same graffito painted over and over inside and out - "MBKAB". They didn't know what to make of it, but they said it was probably time for a new home.
This is my escalation with the Murderboys. They found no one home, and left a tag - "MurderBoys Kill All Bastards". Be fun to see where this goes.
After a few questions, which Brock did not answer, they were off. They decided to catch a jitney the long way 'round as to avoid scrutiny and they met a grumpy driver with Remade mounts pulling an enclosed carriage. (The "Remade" are a worldbuilding idea from the Bas-Lag novels of China Mieville and are vivisectioned creatures (and people sometimes)). The mounts were horses with ostrich legs and they negotiated passage while bantering with the driver, whom they seemed to like. I gave him a cool voice and for once I feel like I nailed the roleplay.
They set off and once near the Temple, they asked the driver to wait, and he said he would for 1 hour, no more. They made their way inside and found the woman, no problem. She was wearing ostentatious jewelry and a finely crafted purple dress. Her hair was long and braided and her two front teeth were gold. She was carrying a large case (I said it was the size of a bass guitar case, as I like to use real-world analogues instead of giving precise dimensions). She asked if they were from Mr. Nicholas, they assented, and she said her name was Ella, and off they went.
Two events occurred as they were leaving, and the party was aware of both. First, Kheign noticed that the pit bull was in the temple, peeking at them from behind a pillar, watching. Second, Flinch noticed a temple priest start to follow them.
They got really freaked out and started to run. The dog and the priest both followed, at a distance. Once back at the carriage, they skedaddled and I said the dog and the cleric were no longer in sight. Yes, these will both come back into play later. Archie rode on top of the carriage, against the protests of the driver, whom he ignored.
The driver took them as close as he dared toward Pig Manor, his carriage not suited for secondary streets (too narrow and too many things underfoot of his mounts), and as they were stopping they were suddenly blocked by three people in the street, and then they were attacked from the rooftops as small incendiaries streaked towards the carriage and there was a big explosion. (I'm pretty sure I yelled, "RPG!")
The carriage was knocked over, and Archie was tumbled to the street. The driver was killed. Archie saw three in the street and two more on flanking rooftops.
This was the Banghammer. Part of the plot I described in the intro. These guys were rogue scientists and craved technology, which is mostly illegal in the city. The three in the street each had different armaments.

• One had a vibro-sword, made of stone, the party thinks, and was wearing a chest plate with a small glass half-dome in the center of it.
• One had a vibro-hammer, same material, and wearing strange metallic boots.
• One had a metallic mesh net and a weird helmet.
• The two on the rooftops had metallic bows with tubes welded to them.

The battle was on. Vice took one building and began to scale it, while the rest deal with the street attackers. Flinch grabbed Ella and took off towards the Manor. The chase was on as the Hammer fighter gave chase, turning on his magic boots ("Mama always told me I had magic shoes") which gave him increased speed.
The fight took awhile, so I'll paraphrase what happened.

• Vice dumps the sniper off the rooftop and spends 8 rounds failing his Use Magic Device skill (something I gave them last session? or two sessions ago), and unable to activate the item. He does take it, however.
• Archie spends the entire time missing trying to stab the sniper who fell, but eventually kills him.
• Kheign and Walter clean house, killing Sword and Net, but taking some damage in the process.
• Hammer and Flinch are in a running battle, each trading heavy blows to one another, and I thought maybe Flinch was going down, it was that close. The case had been taken and re-taken twice during this fight. The last time it was taken, Hammer pulls a box/chest from his back and lays it in the street saying its "A gift for the Pig, for violating the Treaty", and is left there during the rest of the fight.
• The corpses of Sword and Net explode 2 rounds after they die. My way of showing their commitment to the cause. The net and helmet are destroyed, but the sword and chestplate were looted before the body exploded.
• The second sniper disappears and is not found by the party.
• Flinch finally overcomes and takes down Hammer. The boots and hammer are both looted.

The party, illegal loot in hand, books it with Ella and her case to Pig Manor, and everyone is bloody and exhausted. Flinch took the Banghammer "tribute" and gave it to Relgok outside the Manor. He tells them to wait and yells at one of his men to "fetch the twins".
The party is told to go inside, and as they do, they pass The Twins, two huge dudes with their heads on backwards and headpieces with two angled mirrors on struts sticking out from it, allowing them to see as they walk, to their perception, backwards. They have specialized tools in their hands, and the party is duly freaked. Walter wanted to stay and watch what they were doing as they neared the Tribute, but were told to hurry inside.

The Diplomat

Mr. Nicholas meets the party in his office and Ella, upon seeing him, bows to the man and says "The 15th Street Killers wish you good fortune and long life, Sire".
Sire. Should have seen the looks on the party's faces.
She says "As promised, we bring our gift to you" and she puts the case on the Pig's desk. As he opened it, all smiles and sweet words, the party leaned forward in their chairs and someone said and laughed that they expected to just see glints of gold light bouncing off the Pig's face, a la "Pulp Fiction".
But no. This was no plot device. This was real. The Pig pulled an object out of the case and closed it. It was a large hilt of a sword, carved in bas-relief of leaves and vines with strange fey creatures leering from between the foliage. I said there was an outline, a hint, a mere inkling of a blade, where the blade should be.
Mr. Nicholas grinned. "A Ghostblade! I can't believe it!"
The party all peppered me with questions, but I told them jack squat. The party told the Pig about the Tribute, which he said he already knew about. He told them to get lost and poured he and Ella a drink.
The party left and asked Relgok what happened to the Tribute, since the Twins and the box were nowhere to be seen. He said they took it inside and to fuck off.
Yes. In his hubris, I decided the Pig would take the Tribute into his inner sanctum. Delicious.

The Judgement

Its late and the party is heading back to the HQ, when someone notices the pit bull. Its up on a roof this time, watching them. Walter flips his shit. "What do you want!?!" and the pit bull says, "Justice".
The party is silent for a minute and then Walter blows all our minds.
He steps forward, his hands empty, arms in the air, and says, "Ok. I'll go with you. I'm ready."
The party explodes, and everyone is like "nononono, what are you doing?" Walter explains that he has to pay for what he did. It was quite a touching scene. He and the pit bull go back and forth for a bit and the dog says that Walter must be judged by the Pack and his sacrifice will pay the blood debt for the murder of Chopper.
Well. This doesn't go down well with anyone but Walter, and I'm thinking, fuck me, how am I gonna get out of this? They party can't die, as part of the campaign conceit, and I was at a loss as to how I could have the Man in the White Coat redirect this bit of narrative, and part of me didn't want to, because it was so heavy and good.
The party gave me an out and I had a brainstorm. They were talking about fighting, about trying to kill all the dogs (which was laughable), and I said, as the pit bull, "There is another way that justice can be served."
They jumped at that.
"You must run the Gauntlet and survive." I explained that to do this, they would be dropped somewhere in Galron itself and have to get home. If they did that, the stain would be expunged and the Running Fang would become an ally of the Black Phoenix. They thought that was pretty cool, and someone actually said they didn't think it could be that hard!
They agreed to the Gauntlet. I tried really hard not to rub my hands and cackle like an old-school villain but my eyes were definitely gleaming.
I also needed to decide where exactly they were going to have to get back from. Another thing I heard them mention is not coming back at all. Which isn't a terrible idea, since they didn't have anything to really go home to, seeing as they had no home, no allies, and lots of enemies.
As we were wrapping up, I said that there was a massive explosion that rocked them on their feet. It was coming from the direction of Pig Manor.
We wrapped there and I grinned and shut my goddamn mouth as they started chattering amongst themselves.
Looks like next session will be June 10. Sorry for the long delays, but you know what its like to herd cats.
Please leave a comment and thanks for reading!

Every intention, interaction, motivation, every colour, every body, every action and reaction, every piece of physical reality and the thoughts that it engendered, every connection made, every nuanced moment of history and potentiality, every toothache and flagstone, every emotion and birth and banknote, every possible thing ever is woven into that limitless, sprawling web.
It is without beginning or end. It is complex to a degree that humbles the mind. It is a work of such beauty that my soul wept...

• China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

The Little Gods that hide in the crowded places of the world are myriad and their followers bubble, rise, and burst as favor and status waxes and wanes among the fickle sensibilities of the Street Folk. Some are whispered to, over grates in the rushing gutters - fervent prayers to the little god of the sewers, that noxious and burbling entity that will sometimes return lost treasures in exchange for a drowned sacrifice; some prayers are lifted skyward over steaming crucibles full of molten metal - gears and cogs dissolving in the blessed liquid, and the little god of machines sends a dream with the answer to a long-standing frustration. Eureka for the mercy of the machina!

The Cult of the Wheel

The clatter of rim over cobblestone is said to be a holy noise, one that reminds the faithful of the gift of the Holy Wheel, a divine inspiration that lifted man from the mud and allowed him to command dominion over all the earth. Devotees are most often merchants, naturally, whose midnight meetings often start with a rocking motion of interlocked hands and a fervent whisper to the small gods that watch over human commerce.
Students, however, often have brief, passionate forays into the faith, as the Wheel is seen as the ultimate symbol of the inevitability of death - always a draw for the young who have no concept of mortality. They will sometimes paint graffito on drunken sprees, interlocking wheels, as a crude devotion.
The wheels themselves, physical and uncounted, are often carved with blessings or adorned with ribbons on which prayers for safe travels, or swift journeys, are printed in blessed inks. Some whisper of a race of tiny folk who venerate the Wheel as much as any fat merchant and travel with those who are properly blessed, to ensure even more protection on the dangerous roads.

The Cult of the Gutter

There are urban streams, if you look to your feet. They swirl with grey water and leaves and dead rats. They sing and gurgle the secrets of the city, for those who know how to listen. Children whisper secrets to the Holy Gutter, and those wishes, those dreams, those blasphemies travel the length and breadth of this urban jungle, and if the churning waters are benevolent, those prayers are answered.
Gutter witches chant litanies over bubbling grates and sacrifice twitching rodents into the black waters. The small gods of waste, and feces, and bloated corpses often return the favors in kind, and half-chewed things often crawl from the darkened drains in the small hours and scratch at clapboard doors to serve their new masters.
On dark moons, sometimes the forlorn will build waxed paper boats, masted with tallow dips that smoke and flicker as they sail into the still night. The boats are scrawled with blood and ashes, fervent devotions to secret desires. Often the target of the prayer will have strange dreams filled with passionate kisses and echoes of love in the deepening dark.

The Cult of the Wastes

Mountains of refuse, cast-offs from unwanted hands, molder in the noonday sun. Cats and rats and dogs and raggamuffin orphans scrabble for scraps and wage their tiny wars. Sometimes Holy Icons are found by the trashmen and nightsoil haulers, built from scrap metal and flaps of cloth and ringed with the heads of pigeons. Midnight tinkerings can be heard echoing across the man-made dunes and there are those who dare to live within their depths.
The waste of urban life is staggering, and there are those who passionately argue that such waste is a Sin, and the dumps, Holy Ground - a place where the trash is recycled into artefacts and relics devoted to the Unseen Truth. The faithful build shrines and return all that is still whole to the wider world, as an act of love and compassion.
The Ragpickers, so named by their refusal to live in the stinking towerblocks and fish-stained shanties, run in secret tunnels beneath the Holiest of Holies, and carve out ritualistic chambers where there are shrines to bicycle wheels, to broken barrels, to one-legged chairs. Tinkers are their most devout faithful, and their gifts are sought out by all who seek higher wisdom. The tools and forges of the Tinker's art are held in high reverence, and tin buttons can often be found pinned to the lapels of those who support them.
The Little Gods. Myriad in their domains, and important to the locals. What other Little Gods have your travels exposed?
Comments as well as content are welcome!

First of: Although I speak as a mod I may not speak for all of the mods - we had a short internal discussion about this topic and I try to cover the consesus.
 
As many of you may already have seen, reposting content here is quite common around here. We don't want to prohibit this completely, sure, but having the same picture popping up every day and even multiple times a day (once there even was the same post twice with no other in between) is kind of unpleasant and actually unnecessary.
It is obvious that such posts will be deleted with no further notice, especially the "popular" ones. Down below you can find a list of those popular reposts; some of them gathered quite big amount of karma, some others were just common practice to post, you name it. Also, you should have a look into the Top submissions, every now and then a Top-repost pops up also (be it coincidental or intentional), those are about to get deleted upon reposting aswell.
By the way, removing/adding the comments section from Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and so on (or a similar kind of "loophole") does not make it a "fresh" post.
 
A repost every now and then is not that much of a problem but please, for Jaden's sake, at least try to check if it has been in the last few pages of the Popular posts. There's always content waiting in the depths of social media waiting to be thought about.

Popular reposts as of August 26 2016 (sorted alphabetically)

 
"2015 Without Religion" Adults Have No Hearts aka "What Life Does To You" / Money Version / Brain Version Burning Man Babies / Several Different Versions Cell Phone Prison Cell Phone Parents "Dad Why Do I Have To Go To School?" Earthglobe's Memories "Empty Minds" / "Empty Vessels" Make The Most Noise / "Inner Growth" Hangman "He's Empty Without Her" "I'm Fine" Tattoo "If Bees Go Extinct" Monopoly aka "Their Little Game" Missing Pieces aka "Deep" ^{+10 points for Jewlluminazis} "My Mind Is A Mess" "Name These Plants" "Not Available On App Store" Screwdriver In Election Social Media Needles / Alternative Version "So Many Selfies" "The Brain Is An App" / Impact Font Version "There Will Always Be" Graffito "This Is Why The Dog Is Happier" "Time Doesn't Exist" / Free Thought Project Version "Watch What They Photograph" "You Can't Eat Money"
 
This list is not by any means complete. Some entries have seen massive reposting, others are just otherwise noteworthy reposts.
PS: Yes, I know that many reposts only come in waves only to be forgotten about just a few days later. As the list is a living one, entries may be added/removed/edited any time. So be sure to check for updates every now and then.
 
Feel free to approach us for suggestions.

This is the continuing saga/advice/mindpeek of my current campaign. I hope you find some use for it if you are looking into trying a low-prep/improv DM style. This is just MY WAY and its not the One True Way.

Game Day

Had a long train ride to think about the day. I had deliberately run through a bunch of scenarios in my mind, especially the scene with the War God appearing to Barhador, the War Cleric. It needed to be pitch-perfect. It was going to set the tone of the whole day. So I had that down pretty cold by that point. I'd had about 2 weeks to prepare, and beyond my setting notes and the maps I had drawn, I had no other preparation done. Except the one I was doing right now, in my head.
You see, I had the opening scene set at the Baron's Conclave - an annual meeting to discuss political matters, and, well, I sucked at political matters. Every DM has a host of weakness and political roleplay was a glaring one for me. I needed to talk trade, internal politics, and other government-type matters. I didn't know boo about any of that stuff beyond a superficial level. Been in plenty of business meetings, but I didn't have the lingo, the pattern down, to make it seem convincing. I knew that much. But I would have to do something. I was sweating. I decided I was going to fall back on the Can't Roleplay'ers coup de grace - the "Description Conversation". This is where you simply talk about what the NPCs are chatting about, instead of actually doing the dialogue. It feels cheap, and I hate it, but I'm no actor, and sometimes things are just too damn hard. I muddled through. But that comes a bit later.
Right now, I'm still visualizing. I'm picturing the village where the council is being held. A clifftop habitation with the tongue-twisting name of Kenkennerinken (I think of it as a strange orgy between loving cousins - Ken Kenner in Ken - and it keeps the pronunciation straight in my head :P).
I saw the wooden buildings, and the many carved art pieces that lined the switchback up to the top of the hill and the crowds and the noise that would be there to greet them. I thought about the Council Building itself - a large, rambling edifice, with wings and basements, not unlike the great old taverns of fantasy novels. I considered the people that would have accompanied the Barons - all the entourage and servants.
I ran a few scenarios through my head of the Council Meeting itself. How was I going to do it? It circled and circled. This thorny problem.
I arrived.

Pre-Game

Greeted the boys, handshakes all around and bright smiles. Everyone was up, and we chatted and smoked, had some tea and talked about the premise again. I fielded a few questions, but for the most part, pre-game is social. To get that anticipation flowing and get to know each other a bit more. I learned a few things that would help me in-game - the level of interaction they would probably want from me (details for the cleric, politics from the fighter and a scary amount of nothing from the sorcerer - he was a slippery one, as you'll come to see), and tiny tidbits of backstory that they were willing to reveal to one another. I had received their full backstories over a private FB group that we set up (pretty handy, that) and based all my Setup Notes on their information, weaving it into what I already knew and didn't yet know about the Moon Elves in this place.

Kickoff

We planned on a 6-hour session, barring pre and post-game festivities.
I wrote down all their pertinents - stats, combat numbers, and skills. Clipped it to my shield (never called it a screen) and got my two pages of notes out (they were in a notebook, I've typed them out for these posts). Got out a full page of NPC names - first and last, but that's it, and clipped that to my shield. Current dice loadout in place.
Expectant eyes and open faces.
Deep Breath.
"The year is 506 in the Age of the Emperor. We are in the Great Forest on the continent of Gemseed, on the planet Drexlor. 40,000 years of history pre-date this moment, and your people have a long and storied past that stretches just over half of that time. The rest, lost to the Age of Mist. The date is the 21st of Swords, in the Season of Burning, and today is the solstice. The Conclave of Barons meets today in the village of Kenkennerinken, and you all have your reasons for being there in one capacity or another."
Oh. I should mention. The Fighter couldn't attend this session.
Yeah.
I ran with it. I think it worked out better in the long run, but you can judge for yourself.
"Barhador you are serving drinks to the Council members already arrived and Tellurian is among them, in conversation with the adviser to Baron Lake."
They took it from there. They interacted a bit, and I started the Council Meeting. I did my Description Conversation thing and it was shit, but it got the point across, and keeping it quick and to the point helped a lot. During a break in the meeting the Party separates. I can hear you groaning. But its cool. I got this.
Barhador (I should mention his name is pronounced Bar-slah-door at this point, I guess. Crazy elves.) goes a'wandering. Tellurian stays to mingle.
I introduce Barhador to a few of the NPCs on my Setup Notes. The lady miner, Amas, is the only one who sticks. She and Barhador get a banter going, and they agree to meet up for drinks later, purely platonic at this point, and he wanders off to see what else is going on in the town.
I switch back to Tellurian and throw him some rumors that I make up on the spot. One about the trade negotiations being sabotaged by Baron River, who's lucrative control of the trade to Reef Clan (who trades externally with the seaports of the rest of the Realms) has made her more and more power-hungry. I also talked about a sickness in Reef Clan's territory. I pulled that straight from my random encounter chart. How they might close their Forest Gate - something else I made up when I did the map. It was a lone archway between Hill and Reef Clan's territory. A symbol of good relations means the gate is "Open" and when its "Closed" there would be Reef Clan soldiers there to prevent anyone entering. The closing of the Gate was to prevent spread of the contagion. I also decided the first rumor was bullshit, but the second one was true. He asks questions and his eagerness gets him permission to visit the soon-to-be-quarantined area to see if he can help.
First plot hook just wrote itself. Rings the bell
Nice.
Barhador comes back and starts to talk to his mother, who is present as an Adviser to Baron Hill, when I felt the energy start to drain out of the room. The Council Meeting was going to start back up, and I had been pretty dull at this point. I didn't feel like I had made a good impression on these new players, and I recognized this moment. Oh yes, I did. The energy was draining like light from a sunset room. I had to do something. And fast.

The Raymond Chandler Method

Raymond Chandler invented the noir detective story. The hard-boiled, hard-nosed, hard drinking tough guy who always falls for the wrong kind of dame. You know the stereotype. This mad genius invented it. His books are poetry. I recommend them. The reason I bring him up is that I was reading something he said about the craft of writing itself. He said that he got writer's block from time to time (sound familiar, DMs?) and when he did, he always did the same thing to break the block. He "had a man come through the door with a gun."
A man comes through the door with a gun.
Like a lightning bolt through my mind. The pure, simple genius of it.
This was years ago and in my next session as a young DM, I felt the energy start to go. I had been DMing long enough at that point to detect its approach and I feared it. It had killed so many of my sessions. Robbed it of impact and remembrance.
Then I remembered Chandler.
I didn't literally have a man come through the door with a gun. An arquebus would have been funny, though.
I created a moment of action that could not be ignored. Something that the characters wouldn't talk about, or debate, but something that would immediately act upon. This jacked up the intensity and the energy in the room spiked. I can't remember the exact thing I did, but it would have been something grand - like a huge battle erupting, or a spaceship crashing, or the sun going black. Something way over the top when something smaller would have sufficed, but I was young :) Go big, yeah? :)
So I have been using that method for a long time, learning to temper it, learning what was appropriate to get the party moving, without also doing something so huge and grandiose that it would overshadow everything else.
In this present case, I chose a battle.
The Party is in the Council Meeting when the battlehorns on the watchtowers facing the monster-riddled Emerald Hills sounds three times - an emergency signal that calls all able fighters to the battlefield regardless of what they are doing now.
They ran for the watchtowers. Barhador's mom included - she is a 3rd level Ranger and commanded a small platoon of skirmishers.

THE CALL TO FAITH

This was what I had been waiting for. The scene with the God in the field of victory and the look he will give Barhador. I didn't know where it would come. I didn't have any fights planned out. I thought maybe it would be in a dream? But the Raymond Chandler Moment had come and tossed me the perfect stage.
Gibberlings were attacking the forest in force, and during the daylight - very peculiar indeed.
I let the Party do a bit of combat, nothing strenuous, and the Elves won handily in the background. The battle didn't matter. The aftermath did.
I took at deep breath and looked at Barhador.
"The gibberling drops to the ground, its arm severed, blood fountaining and it kicks its feet in its death throes. You look around the field of battle and there are no more enemy left standing. Tellurian and your Mother are both safe and unwounded. As you take a moment to catch your breath you notice a figure far out in the killing ground."
PC looking intensifies
"A man, clad in red scale mail, with black gauntlets, is hunched over the dead, and is pulling out the sweetbreads and stuffing them into his mouth. He chews for a minute and then raises his head. His face is scarred and broken. His eyes are a blazing blue. He stares right at you, not moving for a few moments, and your eyes dart to the golden medallion around his neck. It is the Fist and Hammer of Nathrak, the Warmonger, the Battlelord, and you catch his eye again and he nods at you"
I played this all out at the table. Using pauses and body movements to bring the moment to life.
The player playing Barhador was overawed. His eyes were shining and he immediately dropped to his knees and praised the Bloody One with all his fealty and humility, promising him many lives once he was sanctioned by his Clan to wear the Scout's badge. When he looked up, of course, the Avatar was gone, but on his chest was a burn, a deep scarification of the symbol of the God of War - a fist clutching a hammer (I had decided to throw that in at the last second. I'm glad I did, it drove a lot of story ahead of it).
Tellurian was not forgotten in all of this. We had talked a lot about how this guy was a real mystic. A sorcerer, sure, by someone who regularly pierced the veil with psychedelics, and I felt like this guy slipped in and out of Spirit Vision all the time, and it wasn't anything mechanical, just when I felt like it was warranted. This was one of those times. I described the Avatar to Tellurian as a murder of crows gollicking on a few corpses (gollicking is a word I'm pretty sure I made up years and years ago - to me its when birds get together and are hopping around and being really vocal). Then the murder took wing and became this dark tornado, made up of Unlight, like some anti-light substance, which then disappeared.
He stroked his chin, Spock-like, and muttered, "Interesting"

RNG ME

After the battle I started rolling random encounters on my chart.
Number 1 came up on my chart - "Tesh" graffiti on some buildings - 3 people have succumbed."
I realize I'll have to explain this to you. China Mieville is my favorite author. His praises cannot be sung too loudly, and I haven't the time anyway. In his book, "Iron Council" there is a war on between two cities. One is called New Crobuzon and its where this particular arc of narrative occurs. The enemy city is called Tesh. There is a bit of worldbuilding lore in an earlier book that the Ambassador from Tesh lives in New Crobuzon, by tradition, as a vagabond. Well this Ambassador appears in the book as a crazy homeless guy who likes to draw spirals on walls - chalk, paint, blood, feces, whatever. Stick with me for a minute. By drawing all these spirals he's creating an arcane focus for some seriously heavy magic. Apparitions start appearing in the city. Really fucking strange haunts, like a rocking chair hovering in mid-air and spinning slowly on all 3 axes. Or a slowly rotting piece of fruit. Whomever looks at these weird manifestations has crazy shit happen to them - far worse than dying or slipping into an irreversible coma, as some do.
That long explanation is needed to explain why this encounter was put down as a lark, and then became the focus of everything. In the book, the Ambassador explains that he is calling the Phasma Urbomach (also called the murderspirit and citykiller), a powerful entity which would destroy the entire city. One of the "heroes" is a monk who can trade bits of himself for knowledge, and he tells the party that the Phasma Urbomach, in fact, had already destroyed the city in the future, and the manifestations were echoes backwards through time, of the future destruction.
So I dropped this little bit of craziness into my story. I told them that someone had been found in a coma on the streets, and that weird graffiti was seen on some buildings.
The Party split again. Barhador, still reeling from his meeting with the War Avatar, and this new burn on his body, raced to find his Uncle, the leader of the Eglan sect and a cleric of Nathrak himself, to find out what this all meant.
Tellurian decided to go try and find one of these pieces of graffiti.

STRAP IN

Barhador has some great roleplaying with his Uncle. Talking about the philosophy of war, the nature of defeat, the power of pride and a host of other amazing things that I, frankly, wish I could have recorded. There was some banter between him and his mother, and some more angry words with his father (whom he saw at the Gibberling battle, but did not acknowledge). It was quite moving. The player was playing this character as a teenager struggling with his identity, and desperately wanting to find a way to have meaning in his life, while struggling with not wanting to let down his family, and being utterly horrified at the rejection from his father. It was damn fine roleplaying and storytelling and I was even more happy I had stumbled into this amazing group of people.
Tellurian, however, had quite a different afternoon.
He found one of the graffito on the side of a random building. I had nothing prepared, and I was totally caught off-guard by this bold approach. I ran with it.
"You ostensibly see a painted sigil on the building, but your Spirit Vision drops over your eyes almost immediately and this thing appears 4 times larger than it does in the physical realm, and its a swirling knot of black tentacles, dripping smoke and swirling through dimensions that you cannot point to. It feels like acid in your mind and your psychic defenses slam down almost immediately."
"But not quickly enough. Roll me an Intelligence Save."
This could have been bad. I set the DC at 23. Dude rolls a 23. I knock his ass into unconsciousness and give him some scary dreams.
He comes to as Barhador finds him. Tellurian spills the beans and they race off to warn the authorities, and on the way Tellurian runs into an old Cave Clan elf that he knows and he questions him about this sigil that he saw. After a lot of back-and-forth where each Cave Clan Elf tried to extract as much info as possible from the other, while trying to reveal as little as possible (crazy elves), Tellurian learns that this sigil looks a lot like a War Sigil from the end of the Chaos Wars. One called a "War Spear" and that if the graffiti was appearing, then the weapon had already been deployed in the future, and its effects were echoing back through time. He also learned that there was a chance that it wasn't a War Sigil at all, but something else entirely, as some of the older magicks have had their specifics lost in time.
He forgot to mention this last part to anyone. Everyone forgot except me. I kept it in my back pocket. For a rainy day.

THE FECAL MEETS THE FAN

While the Party is trying to find someone to warn, more people succumb to the graffiti and fall into comas. Barhador's Uncle, freaked out by his nephew's close encounter with the Gods (and subsequent branding) that he's come looking for him with some soldiers to make sure his nephew is ok, as he was highly agitated, and the soldiers were there to protect the boy from himself.
Guess you can guess how this was perceived. Barhador immediately thought his Uncle had betrayed him and this was reinforced when he saw his mother AND father approaching him together (this never happened, they had a marriage of convenience only).
The Party rabbited.
They were in some thick woods, trying to get off the hill where the village was, when there was a hue and cry and a soldier came running towards them. The soldier had orders to just get Barhador to stop and come back. No one understood why he ran away.
Tellurian overreached and ended up killing the soldier with magic. Shocking Grasp maybe. Can't remember. But the deed was done and they bolted again. Barhador knew of a cave that they could maybe hide in for a while. Tellurian's home was on the way, a cabin far from the village, near the cliff, and they stopped their first to pick up some supplies. There was a lot of banter back and forth about what the fuck was going on and they were agitated and shaken. They made it to the cave. For those playing along, it is Rose Fox cave, on Weeping Hill, to the West of Kenkennerinken.
Just as night falls they reach the cave. Tellurian senses through Spirit Vision that there is a Carrion Crawler deep beneath them, and a nest of some other creature, Grell perhaps. They decide to stay in the mouth only and keep a watchful eye both outwards and behind them, down in the cavern.

END OF SESSION 1

POST-GAME

We wrapped and everyone took a breath. Praises all around. They loved it. Were intrigued. Baffled. Worried. All the good adjectives you want in your players. I was also effusive in my praise. They roleplayed me under the table. I didn't feel like I could keep up at all. Tellurian especially, was playing this very circular-speaking mystic guy. Never gave a straight answer. Always answered in riddles and used a cool accent. I felt like a bumbling fool and I was embarrassed. Yes, I hadn't played for a few years and I was rusty, but I felt really low. I said so, and they said my roleplaying was great. But we know people won't criticize us to our faces, usually, so I took that with a grain of pocket sand and resolved to lift my game.
We dissected what happened and I let them happily blue-sky. I answered no direct questions about the story or gave anything away. I let them ramble and I listened. They gave me a few ideas and some connections I hadn't considered. I love that part of the post-game. When the party writes your damn plot for you. Its incredible how often it happens. Simple misunderstandings and assumptions drive so much of my games. So much of the real world, yeah?
Magic.
Here is the plot map that I wrote after the session. You'll see a few minor things that I didn't mention but they'll probably come up in the next post.

Elbow deep, I was, on Fifthday, shoulder-to-hip with a stinking sea of dock scum, cutthroats, street rats, slinking temple servants, off-duty craftsmen, sailors with a few hours to kill, and the inevitable troublemakers found in every tavern that ever opened its doors in a city with that many poor, destitute, screwed-up fuckers as dwelled in the city in those days.
Like I said, it was Fifthday, and I was flush from three jobs all paid-up. I was here, in The Thorn, because I knew this place and I felt at home here. I finally caught Squint’s eye behind the slab of ironwood that passes for the trestle, and he hustled his fat ass over to me, dodging beneath the crush of patrons waving empty tankards
I nodded at him, not daring to smile, and asked for a Dox, real polite, and showed him my coin.
He squinted at me with those evil piggy eyes and for a second I thought he was gonna turn me away for sure, knowing my need, hoping like hell he couldn’t see the sweatline framing my brow.
I thought for sure he was gonna call over the Thugs and that would be the end, ya know?
‘Cause no way is Squint gonna let me slide this time, even though I hadn’t actually done anything, but just ‘cause I was there, that could be enough, if Squint said so.
In this place, his word was Law, and even The goddamn Owl knew it, and none of His Claws ever came in here. No Law, no militia, no squealers ever fucked with Squint, and the fat bastard knew it. He had enough ears, tongues, toes and cocks nailed up above the trestle to prove it, too.
I waited, and sweated, and tried to keep breathing through my mouth. The air was rank with blood and meat, seawater and spilled ale, and it was a hot night, shimmery-air kinda hot. The place was rollicking with drunken breaknecks and the great meaty bastards stank, like the asshole of the demon-whore Xxzzt stank, and I was swaying with the lot of them, one great big juggy sloshing bowl of drunkenfucks, like we was on some slaver weeks out t’sea. The babbling drunkchat was deafening, unbearable. The torches that spat on the walls threw greasy, choking smoke into the air and little light. It was dark and loud and full of stupid drunken men with lots of money. My kind of joint, ya know?
I’m still waiting and then I saw Squint’s brow relax, and I knew he wasn’t going to turn me away. He kind of half-nodded at me, not even meeting my eye and plucked the silver ducat from my trembling hands.
I waited until he was filling the ‘jack before I let out my breath real slow-like, and I could feel some of the icy fingers clutching my guts slip away. Squint turned with the tankard perfectly poured, a thick foamy head mushroomed slightly on top of the bitter brew and my mouth suddenly lost all of its moisture in anticipation, my tongue, all grit and fuzz, swiped over my lips and I could already taste the bastard, ya know? That feeling of gut-thirst? Like a goddamn hook in your belly.
I’m jammed up next to some noneck and I could see immediately that he was a Crudder, some filth from eastside, some legbreaker off-duty and I smiled. The Sheep Drop would bring down this ape, quicker than a whore’s drawers on Third-day.
As Squint hands across the ‘jack the fuckin’ noneck jostles my elbow and half the fuckin’ Dox leaps out and across the trestle, splattering me, Squint, the noneck and some stinking halfbreed crammed in next to me.
Squint shouldn't have cared, he’d already been paid, but all the same he bellowed like a sonofabitch and reared back a great hammy fist, ready to break jaw.
I immediately drop down off the stool onto the floor, a stupid stupid idea, I know, but I didn’t want no trouble that day, no trouble at all, I just wanted a goddamn drink, ya know? I hear the flat smack of Squint’s meaty fist breaking the noneck’s nose and the outraged bellow in response.
The halfbreed above me who also got splashed decides to open his drunken mouth.
Always a good idea.
I decide to get while the gettin’s good. I kick the stool out of the way and start to move away and stand up when the noneck fucker decides I was the problem after all and suckers me in the back of the head, felt like a goddamn sledge hit me, ya know? I stumble into the crowd, spilling ale, stepping on boots, and nearly go out. I know I’m gonna get shoved back towards the sonofabitch, and I know he’s waiting with another hammerblow that’s gonna knock me out, break my jaw and really fuck up my day, if I even survive, once I fall to the floor, but chances are I’d get stomped like a roach just for annoying these drunken psychopaths, ya know?
I got once chance. Sheep Drop was my play, and I gotta stick with it, even if the timing’s lousy. I get my hand into my tunic and manage to grab the pouch before I’m thrown back.
Fuckin’ lucky, I know.
I get pushed, hard, and as I’m turning I drop my head way down and throw my arms out, the pouch, upended, spills its bounty in a nice spray into the crowd, three dozen carefully weighted wooden discs, painted in gilt and embossed with the offical-looking profile of His Fucker, The Owl.
As I turn, I duck the haymaker, I even see the fucker’s eyes as he misses. It was nearly worth everything that came after on that day, and I crash into my stool and the trestle as the spray of ducats hits the ground. The crowd around me all does what they are supposed to do, they look at the ground and start grabbing and punching and slopping ale all over the floor trying to pick up the booty.
The noneck is among the grabbers and Squint has already turned away. The Halfbreed is arguing with someone else and didn’t even see the Sheep Drop. Crudders always carry their dosh on their belts, and this noneck filth is no exception. I see the pouch laying against his hip, nice and fat, and I think, “This chum’s just got paid”, and I lift the fat sack with the chock and snickety-snack I cut the tethers with my palm-cutter and push the dumb fucker as hard as I can and duck away into the crowd, past the halfbreed, and start squeezing through the bastards sideways and snake-like, slithering through the crowd, getting ready to call out “Imgonnabarf-watchoutmate-gonnathrowmygutsout”, when the crowd fuckin’ parts before me, like the floor was on fire and I can see the back door, out to the Trenchtown road, and the door was open and a mean looking bastard was standing there.
He was covered in blood and his clothes were shredded and the stink that poured from him instantly banished the putrid atmosphere in the place and set a new standard of disgusting. I had to hold my guts in, and no pretending, and he took a step forwards and when he did the whole place changed, ya know? It wasn’t silence, or electricity, or awe. It was way beyond that. It was … the power of … righteousness fulfilled. It was in my mind like the most perfect truth. I had no other thoughts in my head. It’s like I wasn’t there anymore, no mirror of self to reflect darkly, there was nothing but the truth of righteousness. I was the word, ya know, we were all the word, all of us there, even fatass Squint, and we knew this man.
This was a Speaker and he had a Tale.
Some were driven away, fleeing through the door with hasty excuses on their minds, some urgency that could not wait, and although the ones who stayed did not scorn them aloud, they somehow thought them lesser for not having the strength, the faith to stay and Listen. The feeling of the shared experience felt less without them there, but the Truth, did not. It was like a livewire into your soul. It could not be denied. I wanted to Listen. I felt like I had no other purpose, ya know?
A Speaker. I had been here many dozens of times, perhaps even a hundred, but I had never seen a Speaker enter. Many times I had been nearby and felt the pull. I always came, of course, and had Heard many tales, but this would be my first hearing of the Welcoming, and this Speaker had a tale that was immediate, and we could feel the power of the nearness of the event. The whole place was rapt, ‘jacks forgotten, fights discarded, the Sheep Drop of no importance now.
He walked into the taproom, quiet like. We all moved as he approached the trestle. Squint was behind the bar, as quiet as the rest of us and when the Speaker approached him, he did something I never thought I’d see, not from ol’ Squint.
He bowed to the man.
One meaty arm laid across his blubbering gut and one upturned hammy fist laid to his forehead. He leaned at the waist, his eyes seeking his feet, and he spoke in the Uu’uschlek, the holy cant of the Temple of Wrath. I found out later what he said in plain old Common, and it chilled me to hear it. He said, in the most deferential tone I ever heard fatass Squint utter in his entire, wretched existence, he said simply, “We the unknowing seek wisdom. Will you share it?”
At these words the Speaker returned, in Common, “I will. But may I have a ‘jack of Dox, first?”
This break in the ritual jolted the room. Laughter erupted, it splashed and rolled, and washed the room in a warm feeling I forgot existed, and for a moment I lived another life, in another place and these huge fuckers were all my best mates, celebrating the wonder of the Truth made real and suddenly the Dox was in the Speaker’s gut and he began to Speak and the laughter stopped as it if had never existed and the shadows and the weight of the heavy, dark timbers fell upon me, and the speaker’s voice had the same shade and mass, a heavy, rolling thing, suitable for the size of the man, who looked now, in the grimy light, like he had crawled out of some hellish place dreamt up by the Black Hand – those murderous priests of Abohar the Devourer.
His clothes were all torn up, and I could see was wounded, the cuts and rips suddenly standing out all over his body and I surmised that he had been attacked by a pack of very well-trained swordsmen, duelers no doubt, to be able to inflict so many wounds and yet still let their victim live. But as he spoke of his Wrongdoing – the sacred path of the betrayed – my mind wandered away from his words and I considered his demeanor as a whole.
He was young, but not youthful, perhaps 35 or 40 years old, and not unhandsome, but cursed with a farmer’s face, slim and sinewy. He was very tall, nearly 7 feet by my guess and lanky as all get out. But he did not look stupid or awkward, no, but there was no way to know if he was truly strong, for the Telling had a power of its own, but then the man was out of the Wrongdoing, and I caught some of it, a lover jilted and robbery gone bad, the reason was unimportant, and suddenly the room was a-hush again, all ears on the Tale…
…and the speaker said, “So after I discovered where the rat and the little whore were hiding and I had to ask the Dame Mistress for a key to the Under, and she said yeah, but I had to give three people the hex, and I said I didn’t want to and she said if I wanted to enter the Under without her permission, then I should just go ahead and start running now.
So I said “ok, ok” and I asked for the papers, but she said after, and I left, and headed straight across West Muckamuck until I neared the Dome. I paid the waterskell for the ride and soon found the pipe that would take me into the Under, and Gods, yeah I was scared to go down there, whole city of sewers down there, filled with the worst, the worst there is, we all heard the stories since we were kids, the were-vermin and living spells run amok, cannibal gangs of diseases, snot-toughs, and howling packs of dungspawn. Hell yeah I was scared, but I didn’t even wait, I just dropped inside, had to squirm most of the way, but when I finally dropped into the Under the dark was full of them big rats, the squealers. They jumped up on me pretty good until I remembered the sword and my torch. Guess I learned to keep thinking. To remember why I was in this shitty pipe in the middle of the night.”
At this, the crowd, myself included, murmured, “Purpose revealed” in one single voice.
He continued, “I hadda crouch the whole time, fighting squealers the whole way, a few bats bolted past my head, and the torch kept threatening to go out, the wind was terrible, I didn’t know there’d be wind, but with all the holes in the Under, it wasn’t too surprising when you thought about it. The breeze stank like rotten bodies, and it was cold, the wind, really cold.
Soon the pipe opened out into a five-way junction, one of the ways was straight up, but the surface substructure, the piss and water pipes, I mean, was destroyed during the Third City War, and the end was completely blocked, there was no way to get out in a hurry, if I needed it.”
“I knew this place. It was the place I was looking for, knowing it wasn’t like every other five-way junction in the whole rotting Under because of the painted sigil of the Betrayed. Like an organic stain, it was, the Wroth-Fingered Fist of Umbruk-the-Thorn, Lord and Master of the Wronged, and a puckered and flickering bubble of arcane magicks around the graffito sparked and buzzed with his fell power. “
“I have already told you of my Wrongdoing, but I will remind you of the name of my benefactor, Mister Dagus Marsh, who told me of the junction, and the sigil, and now here it was, good as promised.
According to Dagus, the treacherous bitch and that man were holed up in a tunnel to the west, some 2000 yards in a small antechamber. They were being helped by someone in East Muckamuck, Dagus said, someone connected to the self-styled king of the East Muck’ers, I won’t say his name, but we all know who I’m talking about, and if any of his men are in here, well…well I won’t say I’m sorry, because I’m not, but I sure am glad you boys are here to hear this. It’s gotta kicker of an ending.”
The Speaker coughed and rubbed his nose. His eyes were shining with the power of the Telling. We were getting to the thick of it now, it was close, and we all could feel it, like a fishhook in our minds, lured with a whispering promise, to feed the truth inside each of us here. The truth of Vengeance applied with a divine purpose and a clear mind. Its simple overwhelming power.
He continued, “All I had to do was to go down the west tunnel. Simple. Too bad I was born a Schlegel. That’s my pa’s name. I got his luck too, I guess. But in the end, I was aided by the Hand of Vengeance, and my prayers were fulfilled.”
The room mouthed, as one, “Wrath leads, through sacrifice, to redemption.”
“I went down the way I thought was west, but I passed through a four way and then as I came into another one I saw the other three tunnels were mostly blocked, packed up with debris and rocks. I thought maybe Dagus had forgotten to mention it, but then I remembered that he never forgot to mention anything and by the time I turned around started back a small tremor rocked the ground and a heavy grate crashed down over the way I had gone.”
“Then I heard the noise. Rats. Sounded like hundreds of them. Maybe thousands of them.
I know I pissed myself cause I could smell it, even in that black pit. The smell of warm piss and the alien organic sound of the swarm rising and rising in that hellish place. Coming for me.”
“They swarmed into chamber from everywhere, like the room had just reached critical mass and boiled over with rat. They were like a fecal wave of squealing, gnashing teeth with a haze of filthy parasites a-swarm above it. I could hear the buzzing of the flies and mosquitoes fill the room before they began to bat against my face and I knew that I would suffocate as well as be torn to pieces and I knew at that moment I shrieked and shrieked and wept and prayed.
Yes I prayed, to the almighty Wrath Lord, Umbruk-of-the-Thorn, The Redeemer, yes, I prayed, a fervent, desperate prayer, I promised him anything, I pledged myself, declared myself his pawn, his ever-humble servant for eternity if he would just grant me this, the strength to survive this and exact my rightful vengeance against that hateful bitch and the fucker who destroyed my whole life.”
“I remembered the look on Jay’la’s face and the way she sneered her mouth when she told me what she done and that man stepped out from behind the door. They both laughed, and when I remembered that feeling, the feeling that I had at that moment, something happened. Something…”
The Moment had come. The reason we had all gathered there. Junkies and their fix of justice.
The Speaker licked his dry lips again, a grey thing that didn’t look real when it slipped back into his mouth, and the skin around his mouth was dry and parched looking too, and since I was in the Listening, I was dry too, ya know? I remember wanting that Dox again, wishing I could have just one perfumed drop to relieve some of the sucking agony of my parched, dry, dusty ol’ gob.
Then He swallowed, and continued, his voice like the scrape of stone in a desiccated tomb to some ancient god, “When they were on me so thick I could not feel myself anymore, when I was just a wriggling mass under the sea of rats, I felt myself, my mind, grow still.
I remembered the look on Jay’la’s face. I remembered her laugh. I remembered the discovery of my life’s work destroyed, my life’s savings stolen. I remembered the words to my wife and her spitting in my face and that man stepping out from behind the door, and my beaten and bloodied son in his arms and Jay’la’s laugh again and her saying Tutob wasn’t my son and her laughing again. I remember the look in that man’s eyes, and the fear in my son’s, who wasn’t anymore, but still was, and the look in my son’s face, and the sick churning cold in my gut as I ran from the Watch the she-devil had paid off to make sure I cleared off or got dead quick.”
“I felt the cold thing in my stomach blossom and multiply, filling me, filling my mind with pure rage.
I knew that the Jagged Fist Himself had laid his hand upon me; the righteous anger of His Work filled me with such cold, patient soothing, that I suddenly lost all fear of the swarm devouring my body, and I knew what I had to do. I had to become what I could not fight.
My hands curled into claws and I felt myself become something very old, something forgotten, and I fought and bit and ripped and stomped and hurled myself about that wet, stinking chamber killing rats in the dozens and drinking their blood as they drank mine. I showed them what rodent hunger would never understand about human hunger. The insect cloud showed its true colors, centering their swarm on me, covered in food, as I was, and for a time I forgot myself and was a beast. I had only one thought. One sound. One image. I would be revenged.”
Well. We was all awake, now, ya know? Feeling the burn of the Telling, feeling the same shame and hot anger that the Speaker had felt, and the sweat rolled down our faces, and our guts churned with the Remembrance, but we all silently urged him on, knowing the payoff was coming, and some even forgot themselves and shouted into the sweaty, close confines, “Strength to the Wronged!” or “Umbruk’s Will!”, but the Speaker, he rolled on, his eyes wide and bright, his face flushed and as sweaty as the rest of ours were, his towering frame swayed on adrenaline-jittery legs, and the Speaker continued, “I don’t know how long I was there, it didn’t feel very long, but I don’t know. Hours, maybe."
“I still felt the Hand of the Wrathful upon me. I knew my body was ravaged and bloody. I knew that my belly was full of meat and it made me feel strong. Centered. I knew something else. I knew where the evil bitch was. Where she was exactly. I hadn’t missed her hidey-hole by much, but it would be a bit of a walk. I just had to get out of the dead-rat hole. The grate was old and I don’t think it was a trap. It was just really bad timing and bad luck for me. I grabbed a hold of it and knew that I wouldn’t be able to lift it had the Hand not been with me. With the Wrathlord’s blessed aid I lifted the grate as easy as I lifted that ‘jack of Dox earlier, and I was out of that butcher’s hole. It stank of death and blood. It was a sacred place. The place of my rebirth.”
“Like I said, I knew where Jay’la and her fuckman were hiding. The Hand showed me the way. I backtracked to the original five-way with the sigil and made the correct turn. My body and mind were full of the Fury, and I promised the Master that I would give him many lives if he would not desert me now. I would exact such a toll upon his enemies that Cyric, the Death Lord Himself, would not be able to keep up.”
“I soon found the right door. It was locked and barred, but my Fury was such that I battered the door off its frame. No one would be coming. Not in the Under. Not with the Fury of Umbruk upon me.”
A hushed, “the Power of the Jagged Fist” rippled across the crowd.
“The bitch and her man had been rutting. It stank with their drippings. I was beyond feelings or words. I strangled the bastard first, even as he pummeled me and the bitch chewed my legs. I crushed his throat and watched the light die in his eyes before I dropped him. The treacherous bitch had done a runner, but again, by the blessed grace of His Wroth I knew exactly where she was, running through the bad places in the Under, and I pursued. With glee”
He stopped here, and looked to Squint and did something no other Speaker had ever done.
He asked for a leatherjack of Dox. He even walked over and got it from the trestle after Squint had suddenly come out of the Listening and ran, ran, over to the taps, spilling a bit of it as he joggled his fat ass back quick to hand it to the Speaker, Squint’s eyes glazed over and slightly demented looking, as if he had just woken from a dream.
Very quickly, one by one, we came out of the Listening. Some were confused and angry. I’ve heard tale of Listeners who stay trapped in the Tale, unable to think or talk about anything else if the Tale has been interrupted and not completed. It’s a dangerous thing, a story, dontcha think? Anything can happen. Not to be just interrupted like that. Can really screw yer head up, ya know?
The Speaker sculled the ‘jack,1,2,3 and turned to face the crowd, who buzzed, annoyed, and one chuzza sang out, “Oy! What the fuck is all this then?”, but the Speaker was talking again and he said,
“I caught her and made her understand how badly she had hurt me. After it was over, after I was done and my mouth was full of meat and bone, after I accepted her apology, I saw one.
One of the Revenged.”
The room dropped to a quiet still again. The Listening instantly washed over us, as if we had never been disturbed.
“It was in the tunnel outside this dead end I had cornered Jay’la in. I turned my head and it was there, and I can’t, I can’t tell you what, what it looked like, because …well … I just can’t describe it. It was wrath, do you understand? It was wrath.”
The Speaker’s eyes filled with tears when he said this. Tears. Covered in blood and meat and he was weeping and dripping snot everywhere, just babbling, ya know? “Wrath, wrath, you can’t understand, you can’t understand, the horror of its beauty, the horror, like scissors in my mind.”
He went on like that for a few minutes I think, I’m not sure, the Listening has its own power and time isn’t always a sure thing. Crying and trying to explain what one of His Revenged looked like and not being able to, ya know? At the time we were all caught up in the Listening and didn’t really understand the full impact of what he was saying.
Then the Speaker gathered himself, wiped his face and said, “It voice filled my mind like scissors cutting out parts of me and putting in new thoughts, new ideas, new understandings. It destroyed me and made me whole again.”
And he smiled. Real big. Blood and scraps of meat clung to his raggedy teeth. He mugged at us the way you would a stupid mutt right before you booted him in the bollocks for being a bastard.
Again, we started coming out of the Listening, faster this time, and in groups, and there was real anger this time, and a few of the men took a step or two towards him, ready to kick his teeth in, Speaker or not, when we heard the sound.
The alien, organic sound of a rat swarm coming up from some ragged hole in the city’s understructure.
Old fatass Squint barked like some animal, kicked, and I looked at him and there was a mask there, ya know? Not one of burlap, but his own flesh, twisted somehow and unrecognizable as the bastard I knew and feared. Squint looked scared, do ya ken? The bastard was terrified and suddenly I felt that Dox come up, sour and fierce and I ran, Gods help me I ran as fast as I could, I knocked over dozens, still dazed and recovering and the sound of the rats, louder and louder beneath those rotten, beer-soaked boards.
I can't talk about the rest, I won't, not no more, and especially not here. But I can show you the scars. See here? That's right! They do look like a gnawed ear of corn. Them rats was filled with Vengeance, you see? Squint's guilt brought them, and I didn't find out till a long time after that the man who had seduced the Speaker's wife, and ruined his son against him, had been a thug-for-hire that Squint had known from way back. Did it as a favor to Dagus Marsh. Yeah! That's the same as the Speaker mentioned! All some damn trick, ya see? To get this guy out of the way so that Dagus could give the girl the old squeaky-freaky, ya know? The shit people do to get laid, I tell ya, its easier to just keep it palmgreasy, ya know? Anyway.
Them rats, though...
You've never seen so many. Swarm is too small a word. They were an act of Umbruk's Will, uhshatai shataiya, and the only reason I'm even here is cause I never had no guilt about nothing wrong I never did to no one, that didn't have it comin', ya know? Me and the Fist, we squaresway. Always.
Anyways. That's the worst birthday I ever had. How about you? Oh, I need another drink. You're buying, yeah?

This is the continuing saga/advice/mindpeek of my current campaign. I hope you find some use for it if you are looking into trying a low-prep/improv DM style. This is just MY WAY and its not the One True Way.

Game Day

Had a long train ride to think about the day. I had deliberately run through a bunch of scenarios in my mind, especially the scene with the War God appearing to Barhador, the War Cleric. It needed to be pitch-perfect. It was going to set the tone of the whole day. So I had that down pretty cold by that point. I'd had about 2 weeks to prepare, and beyond my setting notes and the maps I had drawn, I had no other preparation done. Except the one I was doing right now, in my head.
You see, I had the opening scene set at the Baron's Conclave - an annual meeting to discuss political matters, and, well, I sucked at political matters. Every DM has a host of weakness and political roleplay was a glaring one for me. I needed to talk trade, internal politics, and other government-type matters. I didn't know boo about any of that stuff beyond a superficial level. Been in plenty of business meetings, but I didn't have the lingo, the pattern down, to make it seem convincing. I knew that much. But I would have to do something. I was sweating. I decided I was going to fall back on the Can't Roleplay'ers coup de grace - the "Description Conversation". This is where you simply talk about what the NPCs are chatting about, instead of actually doing the dialogue. It feels cheap, and I hate it, but I'm no actor, and sometimes things are just too damn hard. I muddled through. But that comes a bit later.
Right now, I'm still visualizing. I'm picturing the village where the council is being held. A clifftop habitation with the tongue-twisting name of Kenkennerinken (I think of it as a strange orgy between loving cousins - Ken Kenner in Ken - and it keeps the pronunciation straight in my head :P).
I saw the wooden buildings, and the many carved art pieces that lined the switchback up to the top of the hill and the crowds and the noise that would be there to greet them. I thought about the Council Building itself - a large, rambling edifice, with wings and basements, not unlike the great old taverns of fantasy novels. I considered the people that would have accompanied the Barons - all the entourage and servants.
I ran a few scenarios through my head of the Council Meeting itself. How was I going to do it? It circled and circled. This thorny problem.
I arrived.

Pre-Game

Greeted the boys, handshakes all around and bright smiles. Everyone was up, and we chatted and smoked, had some tea and talked about the premise again. I fielded a few questions, but for the most part, pre-game is social. To get that anticipation flowing and get to know each other a bit more. I learned a few things that would help me in-game - the level of interaction they would probably want from me (details for the cleric, politics from the fighter and a scary amount of nothing from the sorcerer - he was a slippery one, as you'll come to see), and tiny tidbits of backstory that they were willing to reveal to one another. I had received their full backstories over a private FB group that we set up (pretty handy, that) and based all my Setup Notes on their information, weaving it into what I already knew and didn't yet know about the Moon Elves in this place.

Kickoff

We planned on a 6-hour session, barring pre and post-game festivities.
I wrote down all their pertinents - stats, combat numbers, and skills. Clipped it to my shield (never called it a screen) and got my two pages of notes out (they were in a notebook, I've typed them out for these posts). Got out a full page of NPC names - first and last, but that's it, and clipped that to my shield. Current dice loadout in place.
Expectant eyes and open faces.
Deep Breath.
"The year is 506 in the Age of the Emperor. We are in the Great Forest on the continent of Gemseed, on the planet Drexlor. 40,000 years of history pre-date this moment, and your people have a long and storied past that stretches just over half of that time. The rest, lost to the Age of Mist. The date is the 21st of Swords, in the Season of Burning, and today is the solstice. The Conclave of Barons meets today in the village of Kenkennerinken, and you all have your reasons for being there in one capacity or another."
Oh. I should mention. The Fighter couldn't attend this session.
Yeah.
I ran with it. I think it worked out better in the long run, but you can judge for yourself.
"Barhador you are serving drinks to the Council members already arrived and Tellurian is among them, in conversation with the adviser to Baron Lake."
They took it from there. They interacted a bit, and I started the Council Meeting. I did my Description Conversation thing and it was shit, but it got the point across, and keeping it quick and to the point helped a lot. During a break in the meeting the Party separates. I can hear you groaning. But its cool. I got this.
Barhador (I should mention his name is pronounced Bar-slah-door at this point, I guess. Crazy elves.) goes a'wandering. Tellurian stays to mingle.
I introduce Barhador to a few of the NPCs on my Setup Notes. The lady miner, Amas, is the only one who sticks. She and Barhador get a banter going, and they agree to meet up for drinks later, purely platonic at this point, and he wanders off to see what else is going on in the town.
I switch back to Tellurian and throw him some rumors that I make up on the spot. One about the trade negotiations being sabotaged by Baron River, who's lucrative control of the trade to Reef Clan (who trades externally with the seaports of the rest of the Realms) has made her more and more power-hungry. I also talked about a sickness in Reef Clan's territory. I pulled that straight from my random encounter chart. How they might close their Forest Gate - something else I made up when I did the map. It was a lone archway between Hill and Reef Clan's territory. A symbol of good relations means the gate is "Open" and when its "Closed" there would be Reef Clan soldiers there to prevent anyone entering. The closing of the Gate was to prevent spread of the contagion. I also decided the first rumor was bullshit, but the second one was true. He asks questions and his eagerness gets him permission to visit the soon-to-be-quarantined area to see if he can help.
First plot hook just wrote itself. Rings the bell
Nice.
Barhador comes back and starts to talk to his mother, who is present as an Adviser to Baron Hill, when I felt the energy start to drain out of the room. The Council Meeting was going to start back up, and I had been pretty dull at this point. I didn't feel like I had made a good impression on these new players, and I recognized this moment. Oh yes, I did. The energy was draining like light from a sunset room. I had to do something. And fast.

The Raymond Chandler Method

Raymond Chandler invented the noir detective story. The hard-boiled, hard-nosed, hard drinking tough guy who always falls for the wrong kind of dame. You know the stereotype. This mad genius invented it. His books are poetry. I recommend them. The reason I bring him up is that I was reading something he said about the craft of writing itself. He said that he got writer's block from time to time (sound familiar, DMs?) and when he did, he always did the same thing to break the block. He "had a man come through the door with a gun."
A man comes through the door with a gun.
Like a lightning bolt through my mind. The pure, simple genius of it.
In my next session as a young DM. I felt the energy start to go. I had been DMing long enough at that point to detect its approach and I feared it. It had killed so many of my sessions. Robbed it of impact and remembrance.
Then I remembered Chandler.
I didn't literally have a man come through the door with a gun. An arquebus would have been funny, though.
I created a moment of action that could not be ignored. Something that the characters wouldn't talk about, or debate, but something that would immediately act upon. This jacked up the intensity and the energy in the room spiked. I can't remember the exact thing I did, but it would have been something grand - like a huge battle erupting, or a spaceship crashing, or the sun going black. Something way over the top when something smaller would have sufficed, but I was young :) Go big, yeah? :)
So I have been using that method for a long time, learning to temper it, learning what was appropriate to get the party moving, without also doing something so huge and grandiose that it would overshadow everything else.
In this present case, I chose a battle.
The Party is in the Council Meeting when the battlehorns on the watchtowers facing the monster-riddled Emerald Hills sounds three times - an emergency signal that calls all able fighters to the battlefield regardless of what they are doing now.
They ran for the watchtowers. Barhador's mom included - she is a 3rd level Ranger and commanded a small platoon of skirmishers.

THE CALL TO FAITH

This was what I had been waiting for. The scene with the God in the field of victory and the look he will give Barhador. I didn't know where it would come. I didn't have any fights planned out. I thought maybe it would be in a dream? But the Raymond Chandler Moment had come and tossed me the perfect stage.
Gibberlings were attacking the forest in force, and during the daylight - very peculiar indeed.
I let the Party do a bit of combat, nothing strenuous, and the Elves won handily in the background. The battle didn't matter. The aftermath did.
I took at deep breath and looked at Barhador.
"The gibberling drops to the ground, its arm severed, blood fountaining and it kicks its feet in its death throes. You look around the field of battle and there are no more enemy left standing. Tellurian and your Mother are both safe and unwounded. As you take a moment to catch your breath you notice a figure far out in the killing ground."
PC looking intensifies
"A man, clad in red scale mail, with black gauntlets, is hunched over the dead, and is pulling out the sweetbreads and stuffing them into his mouth. He chews for a minute and then raises his head. His face is scarred and broken. His eyes are a blazing blue. He stares right at you, not moving for a few moments, and your eyes dart to the golden medallion around his neck. It is the Fist and Hammer of Nathrak, the Warmonger, the Battlelord, and you catch his eye again and he nods at you"
I played this all out at the table. Using pauses and body movements to bring the moment to life.
The player playing Barhador was overawed. His eyes were shining and he immediately dropped to his knees and praised the Bloody One with all his fealty and humility, promising him many lives once he was sanctioned by his Clan to wear the Scout's badge. When he looked up, of course, the Avatar was gone, but on his chest was a burn, a deep scarification of the symbol of the God of War - a fist clutching a hammer (I had decided to throw that in at the last second. I'm glad I did, it drove a lot of story ahead of it).
Tellurian was not forgotten in all of this. We had talked a lot about how this guy was a real mystic. A sorcerer, sure, by someone who regularly pierced the veil with psychedelics, and I felt like this guy slipped in and out of Spirit Vision all the time, and it wasn't anything mechanical, just when I felt like it was warranted. This was one of those times. I described the Avatar to Tellurian as a murder of crows gollicking on a few corpses (gollicking is a word I'm pretty sure I made up years and years ago - to me its when birds get together and are hopping around and being really vocal). Then the murder took wing and became this dark tornado, made up of Unlight, like some anti-light substance, which then disappeared.
He stroked his chin, Spock-like, and muttered, "Interesting"

RNG ME

After the battle I started rolling random encounters on my chart.
Number 1 came up on my chart - "Tesh" graffiti on some buildings - 3 people have succumbed."
I realize I'll have to explain this to you. China Mieville is my favorite author. His praises cannot be sung too loudly, and I haven't the time anyway. In his book, "Iron Council" there is a war on between two cities. One is called New Crobuzon and its where this particular arc of narrative occurs. The enemy city is called Tesh. There is a bit of worldbuilding lore in an earlier book that the Ambassador from Tesh lives in New Crobuzon, by tradition, as a vagabond. Well this Ambassador appears in the book as a crazy homeless guy who likes to draw spirals on walls - chalk, paint, blood, feces, whatever. Stick with me for a minute. By drawing all these spirals he's creating an arcane focus for some seriously heavy magic. Apparitions start appearing in the city. Really fucking strange haunts, like a rocking chair hovering in mid-air and spinning slowly on all 3 axes. Or a slowly rotting piece of fruit. Whomever looks at these weird manifestations has crazy shit happen to them - far worse than dying or slipping into an irreversible coma, as some do.
That long explanation is needed to explain why this encounter was put down as a lark, and then became the focus of everything. In the book, the Ambassador explains that he is calling the Phasma Urbomach (also called the murderspirit and citykiller), a powerful entity which would destroy the entire city. One of the "heroes" is a monk who can trade bits of himself for knowledge, and he tells the party that the Phasma Urbomach, in fact, had already destroyed the city in the future, and the manifestations were echoes backwards through time, of the future destruction.
So I dropped this little bit of craziness into my story. I told them that someone had been found in a coma on the streets, and that weird graffiti was seen on some buildings.
The Party split again. Barhador, still reeling from his meeting with the War Avatar, and this new burn on his body, raced to find his Uncle, the leader of the Eglan sect and a cleric of Nathrak himself, to find out what this all meant.
Tellurian decided to go try and find one of these pieces of graffiti.

STRAP IN

Barhador has some great roleplaying with his Uncle. Talking about the philosophy of war, the nature of defeat, the power of pride and a host of other amazing things that I, frankly, wish I could have recorded. There was some banter between him and his mother, and some more angry words with his father (whom he saw at the Gibberling battle, but did not acknowledge). It was quite moving. The player was playing this character as a teenager struggling with his identity, and desperately wanting to find a way to have meaning in his life, while struggling with not wanting to let down his family, and being utterly horrified at the rejection from his father. It was damn fine roleplaying and storytelling and I was even more happy I had stumbled into this amazing group of people.
Tellurian, however, had quite a different afternoon.
He found one of the graffito on the side of a random building. I had nothing prepared, and I was totally caught off-guard by this bold approach. I ran with it.
"You ostensibly see a painted sigil on the building, but your Spirit Vision drops over your eyes almost immediately and this thing appears 4 times larger than it does in the physical realm, and its a swirling knot of black tentacles, dripping smoke and swirling through dimensions that you cannot point to. It feels like acid in your mind and your psychic defenses slam down almost immediately."
"But not quickly enough. Roll me an Intelligence Save."
This could have been bad. I set the DC at 23. Dude rolls a 23. I knock his ass into unconsciousness and give him some scary dreams.
He comes to as Barhador finds him. Tellurian spills the beans and they race off to warn the authorities, and on the way Tellurian runs into an old Cave Clan elf that he knows and he questions him about this sigil that he saw. After a lot of back-and-forth where each Cave Clan Elf tried to extract as much info as possible from the other, while trying to reveal as little as possible (crazy elves), Tellurian learns that this sigil looks a lot like a War Sigil from the end of the Chaos Wars. One called a "War Spear" and that if the graffiti was appearing, then the weapon had already been deployed in the future, and its effects were echoing back through time. He also learned that there was a chance that it wasn't a War Sigil at all, but something else entirely, as some of the older magicks have had their specifics lost in time.
He forgot to mention this last part to anyone. Everyone forgot except me. I kept it in my back pocket. For a rainy day.

THE FECAL MEETS THE FAN

While the Party is trying to find someone to warn, more people succumb to the graffiti and fall into comas. Barhador's Uncle, freaked out by his nephew's close encounter with the Gods (and subsequent branding) that he's come looking for him with some soldiers to make sure his nephew is ok, as he was highly agitated, and the soldiers were there to protect the boy from himself.
Guess you can guess how this was perceived. Barhador immediately thought his Uncle had betrayed him and this was reinforced when he saw his mother AND father approaching him together (this never happened, they had a marriage of convenience only).
The Party rabbited.
They were in some thick woods, trying to get off the hill where the village was, when there was a hue and cry and a soldier came running towards them. The soldier had orders to just get Barhador to stop and come back. No one understood why he ran away.
Tellurian overreached and ended up killing the soldier with magic. Shocking Grasp maybe. Can't remember. But the deed was done and they bolted again. Barhador knew of a cave that they could maybe hide in for a while. Tellurian's home was on the way, a cabin far from the village, near the cliff, and they stopped their first to pick up some supplies. There was a lot of banter back and forth about what the fuck was going on and they were agitated and shaken. They made it to the cave. For those playing along, it is Rose Fox cave, on Weeping Hill, to the West of Kenkennerinken.
Just as night falls they reach the cave. Tellurian senses through Spirit Vision that there is a Carrion Crawler deep beneath them, and a nest of some other creature, Grell perhaps. They decide to stay in the mouth only and keep a watchful eye both outwards and behind them, down in the cavern.

END OF SESSION 1

POST-GAME

We wrapped and everyone took a breath. Praises all around. They loved it. Were intrigued. Baffled. Worried. All the good adjectives you want in your players. I was also effusive in my praise. They roleplayed me under the table. I didn't feel like I could keep up at all. Tellurian especially, was playing this very circular-speaking mystic guy. Never gave a straight answer. Always answered in riddles and used a cool accent. I felt like a bumbling fool and I was embarrassed. Yes, I hadn't played for a few years and I was rusty, but I felt really low. I said so, and they said my roleplaying was great. But we know people won't criticize us to our faces, usually, so I took that with a grain of pocket sand and resolved to lift my game.
We dissected what happened and I let them happily blue-sky. I answered no direct questions about the story or gave anything away. I let them ramble and I listened. They gave me a few ideas and some connections I hadn't considered. I love that part of the post-game. When the party writes your damn plot for you. Its incredible how often it happens. Simple misunderstandings and assumptions drive so much of my games. So much of the real world, yeah?
Magic.
Here is the plot map that I wrote after the session. You'll see a few minor things that I didn't mention but they'll probably come up in the next post. If there is one.
Comments, bricks, and questions all welcome.

Elbow deep, I was, on Fifthday, shoulder-to-hip with a stinking sea of dock scum, cutthroats, street rats, the obligatory gaggle of painted meat-for-sale, slinking temple servants, off-duty craftsmen, sailors with a few hours to kill, and the inevitable troublemakers found in every tavern that ever opened its doors in a city with that many poor, destitute, screwed-up fuckers as the black Port of Galron was in those days.
Like I said, it was Fifthday, and I was flush from three jobs all paid-up. I was here, in The Thorn, because I knew this place and I felt at home here. I finally caught Squint’s eye behind the slab of ironwood that passes for the trestle, and he hustled his fat ass over to me, dodging beneath the crush of patrons waving empty tankards
I nodded at him, not daring to smile, and asked for a Dox, real polite, and showed him my coin.
He squinted at me with those evil piggy eyes and for a second I thought he was gonna turn me away for sure, knowing my need, hoping like hell he couldn’t see the sweatline framing my brow.
I thought for sure he was gonna call over the Thugs and that would be the end, ya know?
‘Cause no way is Squint gonna let me slide this time, even though I hadn’t actually done anything, but just ‘cause I was there, that could be enough, if Squint said so.
In this place, his word was Law, and even The goddamn Owl knew it, and none of His Claws ever came in here. No Law, no militia, no squealers ever fucked with Squint, and the fat bastard knew it. He had enough ears, tongues, toes and cocks nailed up above the trestle to prove it, too.
I waited, and sweated, and tried to keep breathing through my mouth. The air was rank with blood and meat, seawater and spilled ale, and it was a hot night, shimmery-air kinda hot. The place was rollicking with drunken breaknecks and the great meaty bastards stank, like the asshole of the demon-whore Xxzzt stank, and I was swaying with the lot of them, one great big juggy sloshing bowl of drunkenfucks, like we was on some slaver weeks out t’sea. The babbling drunkchat was deafening, unbearable. The torches that spat on the walls threw greasy, choking smoke into the air and little light. It was dark and loud and full of stupid drunken men with lots of money. My kind of joint, ya know?
I’m still waiting and then I saw Squint’s brow relax, and I knew he wasn’t going to turn me away. He kind of half-nodded at me, not even meeting my eye and plucked the silver ducat from my trembling hands.
I waited until he was filling the ‘jack before I let out my breath real slow-like, and I could feel some of the icy fingers clutching my guts slip away. Squint turned with the tankard perfectly poured, a thick foamy head mushroomed slightly on top of the bitter brew and my mouth suddenly lost all of its moisture in anticipation, my tongue, all grit and fuzz, swiped over my lips and I could already taste the bastard, ya know? That feeling of gut-thirst? Like a goddamn hook in your belly.
I’m jammed up next to some noneck and I could see immediately that he was a Crudder, some filth from eastside, some legbreaker off-duty and I smiled. The Sheep Drop would bring down this ape, quicker than a whore’s drawers on Third-day.
As Squint hands across the ‘jack the fuckin’ noneck jostles my elbow and half the fuckin’ Dox leaps out and across the trestle, splattering me, Squint, the noneck and some stinking halfbreed crammed in next to me.
Squint shouldn't have cared, he’d already been paid, but all the same he bellowed like a sonofabitch and reared back a great hammy fist, ready to break jaw.
I immediately drop down off the stool onto the floor, a stupid stupid idea, I know, but I didn’t want no trouble that day, no trouble at all, I just wanted a goddamn drink, ya know? I hear the flat smack of Squint’s meaty fist breaking the noneck’s nose and the outraged bellow in response.
The halfbreed above me who also got splashed decides to open his drunken mouth.
Always a good idea.
I decide to get while the gettin’s good. I kick the stool out of the way and start to move away and stand up when the noneck fucker decides I was the problem after all and suckers me in the back of the head, felt like a goddamn sledge hit me, ya know? I stumble into the crowd, spilling ale, stepping on boots, and nearly go out. I know I’m gonna get shoved back towards the sonofabitch, and I know he’s waiting with another hammerblow that’s gonna knock me out, break my jaw and really fuck up my day, if I even survive, once I fall to the floor, but chances are I’d get stomped like a roach just for annoying these drunken psychopaths, ya know?
I got once chance. Sheep Drop was my play, and I gotta stick with it, even if the timing’s lousy. I get my hand into my tunic and manage to grab the pouch before I’m thrown back.
Fuckin’ lucky, I know.
I get pushed, hard, and as I’m turning I drop my head way down and throw my arms out, the pouch, upended, spills its bounty in a nice spray into the crowd, three dozen carefully weighted wooden discs, painted in gilt and embossed with the offical-looking profile of His Fucker, The Owl.
As I turn, I duck the haymaker, I even see the fucker’s eyes as he misses. It was nearly worth everything that came after on that day, and I crash into my stool and the trestle as the spray of ducats hits the ground. The crowd around me all does what they are supposed to do, they look at the ground and start grabbing and punching and slopping ale all over the floor trying to pick up the booty.
The noneck is among the grabbers and Squint has already turned away. The Halfbreed is arguing with someone else and didn’t even see the Sheep Drop. Crudders always carry their dosh on their belts, and this noneck filth is no exception. I see the pouch laying against his hip, nice and fat, and I think, “This chum’s just got paid”, and I lift the fat sack with the chock and snickety-snack I cut the tethers with my palm-cutter and push the dumb fucker as hard as I can and duck away into the crowd, past the halfbreed, and start squeezing through the bastards sideways and snake-like, slithering through the crowd, getting ready to call out “Imgonnabarf-watchoutmate-gonnathrowmygutsout”, when the crowd fuckin’ parts before me, like the floor was on fire and I can see the back door, out to the Trenchtown road, and the door was open and a mean looking bastard was standing there.
He was covered in blood and his clothes were shredded and the stink that poured from him instantly banished the putrid atmosphere in the place and set a new standard of disgusting. I had to hold my guts in, and no pretending, and he took a step forwards and when he did the whole place changed, ya know? It wasn’t silence, or electricity, or awe. It was way beyond that. It was … the power of … righteousness fulfilled. It was in my mind like the most perfect truth. I had no other thoughts in my head. It’s like I wasn’t there anymore, no mirror of self to reflect darkly, there was nothing but the truth of righteousness. I was the word, ya know, we were all the word, all of us there, even fatass Squint, and we knew this man.
This was a Speaker and he had a Tale.
Some were driven away, fleeing through the door with hasty excuses on their minds, some urgency that could not wait, and although the ones who stayed did not scorn them aloud, they somehow thought them lesser for not having the strength, the faith to stay and Listen. The feeling of the shared experience felt less without them there, but the Truth, did not. It was like a livewire into your soul. It could not be denied. I wanted to Listen. I felt like I had no other purpose, ya know?
A Speaker. I had been here many dozens of times, perhaps even a hundred, but I had never seen a Speaker enter. Many times I had been nearby and felt the pull. I always came, of course, and had Heard many tales, but this would be my first hearing of the Welcoming, and this Speaker had a tale that was immediate, and we could feel the power of the nearness of the event. The whole place was rapt, ‘jacks forgotten, fights discarded, the Sheep Drop of no importance now.
He walked into the taproom, quiet like. We all moved as he approached the trestle. Squint was behind the bar, as quiet as the rest of us and when the Speaker approached him, he did something I never thought I’d see, not from ol’ Squint.
He bowed to the man.
One meaty arm laid across his blubbering gut and one upturned hammy fist laid to his forehead. He leaned at the waist, his eyes seeking his feet, and he spoke in the Uu’uschlek, the holy cant of the Temple of Wrath. I found out later what he said in plain old Common, and it chilled me to hear it. He said, in the most deferential tone I ever heard fatass Squint utter in his entire, wretched existence, he said simply, “We the unknowing seek wisdom. Will you share it?”
At these words the Speaker returned, in Common, “I will. But may I have a ‘jack of Dox, first?”
This break in the ritual jolted the room. Laughter erupted, it splashed and rolled, and washed the room in a warm feeling I forgot existed, and for a moment I lived another life, in another place and these huge fuckers were all my best mates, celebrating the wonder of the Truth made real and suddenly the Dox was in the Speaker’s gut and he began to Speak and the laughter stopped as it if had never existed and the shadows and the weight of the heavy, dark timbers fell upon me, and the speaker’s voice had the same shade and mass, a heavy, rolling thing, suitable for the size of the man, who looked now, in the grimy light, like he had crawled out of some hellish place dreamt up by the Black Hand – those murderous priests of Abohar the Devourer.
His clothes were all torn up, and I could see was wounded, the cuts and rips suddenly standing out all over his body and I surmised that he had been attacked by a pack of very well-trained swordsmen, duelers no doubt, to be able to inflict so many wounds and yet still let their victim live. But as he spoke of his Wrongdoing – the sacred path of the betrayed – my mind wandered away from his words and I considered his demeanor as a whole.
He was young, but not youthful, perhaps 35 or 40 years old, and not unhandsome, but cursed with a farmer’s face, slim and sinewy. He was very tall, nearly 7 feet by my guess and lanky as all get out. But he did not look stupid or awkward, no, but there was no way to know if he was truly strong, for the Telling had a power of its own, but then the man was out of the Wrongdoing, and I caught some of it, a lover jilted and robbery gone bad, the reason was unimportant, and suddenly the room was a-hush again, all ears on the Tale…
…and the speaker said, “So after I discovered where the rat and the little whore were hiding and I had to ask the Dame Mistress for a key to the Under, and she said yeah, but I had to give three people the hex, and I said I didn’t want to and she said if I wanted to enter the Under without her permission, then I should just go ahead and start running now.
So I said “ok, ok” and I asked for the papers, but she said after, and I left, and headed straight across West Muckamuck until I neared the Dome. I paid the waterskell for the ride and soon found the pipe that would take me into the Under, and Gods, yeah I was scared to go down there, whole city of sewers down there, filled with the worst, the worst there is, we all heard the stories since we were kids, the were-vermin and living spells run amok, cannibal gangs of diseases, snot-toughs, and howling packs of dungspawn. Hell yeah I was scared, but I didn’t even wait, I just dropped inside, had to squirm most of the way, but when I finally dropped into the Under the dark was full of them big rats, the squealers. They jumped up on me pretty good until I remembered the sword and my torch. Guess I learned to keep thinking. To remember why I was in this shitty pipe in the middle of the night.”
At this, the crowd, myself included, murmured, “Purpose revealed” in one single voice.
He continued, “I hadda crouch the whole time, fighting squealers the whole way, a few bats bolted past my head, and the torch kept threatening to go out, the wind was terrible, I didn’t know there’d be wind, but with all the holes in the Under, it wasn’t too surprising when you thought about it. The breeze stank like rotten bodies, and it was cold, the wind, really cold.
Soon the pipe opened out into a five-way junction, one of the ways was straight up, but the surface substructure, the piss and water pipes, I mean, was destroyed during the Third City War, and the end was completely blocked, there was no way to get out in a hurry, if I needed it.”
“I knew this place. It was the place I was looking for, knowing it wasn’t like every other five-way junction in the whole rotting Under because of the painted sigil of the Betrayed. Like an organic stain, it was, the Wroth-Fingered Fist of Umbruk-the-Thorn, Lord and Master of the Wronged, and a puckered and flickering bubble of arcane magicks around the graffito sparked and buzzed with his fell power. “
“I have already told you of my Wrongdoing, but I will remind you of the name of my benefactor, Mister Dagus Marsh, who told me of the junction, and the sigil, and now here it was, good as promised.
According to Dagus, the treacherous bitch and that man were holed up in a tunnel to the west, some 2000 yards in a small antechamber. They were being helped by someone in East Muckamuck, Dagus said, someone connected to the self-styled king of the East Muck’ers, I won’t say his name, but we all know who I’m talking about, and if any of his men are in here, well…well I won’t say I’m sorry, because I’m not, but I sure am glad you boys are here to hear this. It’s gotta kicker of an ending.”
The Speaker coughed and rubbed his nose. His eyes were shining with the power of the Telling. We were getting to the thick of it now, it was close, and we all could feel it, like a fishhook in our minds, lured with a whispering promise, to feed the truth inside each of us here. The truth of Vengeance applied with a divine purpose and a clear mind. Its simple overwhelming power.
He continued, “All I had to do was to go down the west tunnel. Simple. Too bad I was born a Schlegel. That’s my pa’s name. I got his luck too, I guess. But in the end, I was aided by the Hand of Vengeance, and my prayers were fulfilled.”
The room mouthed, as one, “Wroth leads, through sacrifice, to redemption.”
“I went down the way I thought was west, but I passed through a four way and then as I came into another one I saw the other three tunnels were mostly blocked, packed up with debris and rocks. I thought maybe Dagus had forgotten to mention it, but then I remembered that he never forgot to mention anything and by the time I turned around started back a small tremor rocked the ground and a heavy grate crashed down over the way I had gone.”
“Then I heard the noise. Rats. Sounded like hundreds of them. Maybe thousands of them.
I know I pissed myself cause I could smell it, even in that black pit. The smell of warm piss and the alien organic sound of the swarm rising and rising in that hellish place. Coming for me.”
“They swarmed into chamber from everywhere, like the room had just reached critical mass and boiled over with rat. They were like a fecal wave of squealing, gnashing teeth with a haze of filthy parasites a-swarm above it. I could hear the buzzing of the flies and mosquitoes fill the room before they began to bat against my face and I knew that I would suffocate as well as be torn to pieces and I knew at that moment I shrieked and shrieked and wept and prayed.
Yes I prayed, to the almighty Wroth Lord, Umbruk-of-the-Thorn, The Redeemer, yes, I prayed, a fervent, desperate prayer, I promised him anything, I pledged myself, declared myself his pawn, his ever-humble servant for eternity if he would just grant me this, the strength to survive this and exact my rightful vengeance against that hateful bitch and the fucker who destroyed my whole life.”
“I remembered the look on Jay’la’s face and the way she sneered her mouth when she told me what she done and that man stepped out from behind the door. They both laughed, and when I remembered that feeling, the feeling that I had at that moment, something happened. Something…”
The Moment had come. The reason we had all gathered there. Junkies and their fix of justice.
The Speaker licked his dry lips again, a grey thing that didn’t look real when it slipped back into his mouth, and the skin around his mouth was dry and parched looking too, and since I was in the Listening, I was dry too, ya know? I remember wanting that Dox again, wishing I could have just one perfumed drop to relieve some of the sucking agony of my parched, dry, dusty ol’ gob.
Then He swallowed, and continued, his voice like the scrape of stone in a desiccated tomb to some ancient god, “When they were on me so thick I could not feel myself anymore, when I was just a wriggling mass under the sea of rats, I felt myself, my mind, grow still.
I remembered the look on Jay’la’s face. I remembered her laugh. I remembered the discovery of my life’s work destroyed, my life’s savings stolen. I remembered the words to my wife and her spitting in my face and that man stepping out from behind the door, and my beaten and bloodied son in his arms and Jay’la’s laugh again and her saying Tutob wasn’t my son and her laughing again. I remember the look in that man’s eyes, and the fear in my son’s, who wasn’t anymore, but still was, and the look in my son’s face, and the sick churning cold in my gut as I ran from the Watch the she-devil had paid off to make sure I cleared off or got dead quick.”
“I felt the cold thing in my stomach blossom and multiply, filling me, filling my mind with pure rage.
I knew that the Jagged Fist Himself had laid his hand upon me; the righteous anger of His Work filled me with such cold, patient soothing, that I suddenly lost all fear of the swarm devouring my body, and I knew what I had to do. I had to become what I could not fight.
My hands curled into claws and I felt myself become something very old, something forgotten, and I fought and bit and ripped and stomped and hurled myself about that wet, stinking chamber killing rats in the dozens and drinking their blood as they drank mine. I showed them what rodent hunger would never understand about human hunger. The insect cloud showed its true colors, centering their swarm on me, covered in food, as I was, and for a time I forgot myself and was a beast. I had only one thought. One sound. One image. I would be revenged.”
Well. We was all awake, now, ya know? Feeling the burn of the Telling, feeling the same shame and hot anger that the Speaker had felt, and the sweat rolled down our faces, and our guts churned with the Remembrance, but we all silently urged him on, knowing the payoff was coming, and some even forgot themselves and shouted into the sweaty, close confines, “Strength to the Wronged!” or “Umbruk’s Will!”, but the Speaker, he rolled on, his eyes wide and bright, his face flushed and as sweaty as the rest of ours were, his towering frame swayed on adrenaline-jittery legs, and the Speaker continued, “I don’t know how long I was there, it didn’t feel very long, but I don’t know. Hours, maybe."
“I still felt the Hand of the Wrothful upon me. I knew my body was ravaged and bloody. I knew that my belly was full of meat and it made me feel strong. Centered. I knew something else. I knew where the evil bitch was. Where she was exactly. I hadn’t missed her hidey-hole by much, but it would be a bit of a walk. I just had to get out of the dead-rat hole. The grate was old and I don’t think it was a trap. It was just really bad timing and bad luck for me. I grabbed a hold of it and knew that I wouldn’t be able to lift it had the Hand not been with me. With the Wrothlord’s blessed aid I lifted the grate as easy as I lifted that ‘jack of Dox earlier, and I was out of that butcher’s hole. It stank of death and blood. It was a sacred place. The place of my rebirth.”
“Like I said, I knew where Jay’la and her fuckman were hiding. The Hand showed me the way. I backtracked to the original five-way with the sigil and made the correct turn. My body and mind were full of the Fury, and I promised the Master that I would give him many lives if he would not desert me now. I would exact such a toll upon his enemies that Cyric, the Death Lord Himself, would not be able to keep up.”
“I soon found the right door. It was locked and barred, but my Fury was such that I battered the door off its frame. No one would be coming. Not in the Under. Not with the Fury of Umbruk upon me.”
A hushed, “the Power of the Jagged Fist” rippled across the crowd.
“The bitch and her man had been rutting. It stank with their drippings. I was beyond feelings or words. I strangled the bastard first, even as he pummeled me and the bitch chewed my legs. I crushed his throat and watched the light die in his eyes before I dropped him. The treacherous bitch had done a runner, but again, by the blessed grace of His Wroth I knew exactly where she was, running through the bad places in the Under, and I pursued. With glee”
He stopped here, and looked to Squint and did something no other Speaker had ever done.
He asked for a leatherjack of Dox. He even walked over and got it from the trestle after Squint had suddenly come out of the Listening and ran, ran, over to the taps, spilling a bit of it as he joggled his fat ass back quick to hand it to the Speaker, Squint’s eyes glazed over and slightly demented looking, as if he had just woken from a dream.
Very quickly, one by one, we came out of the Listening. Some were confused and angry. I’ve heard tale of Listeners who stay trapped in the Tale, unable to think or talk about anything else if the Tale has been interrupted and not completed. It’s a dangerous thing, a story, dontcha think? Anything can happen. Not to be just interrupted like that. Can really screw yer head up, ya know?
The Speaker sculled the ‘jack,1,2,3 and turned to face the crowd, who buzzed, annoyed, and one chuzza sang out, “Oy! What the fuck is all this then?”, but the Speaker was talking again and he said,
“I caught her and made her understand how badly she had hurt me. After it was over, after I was done and my mouth was full of meat and bone, after I accepted her apology, I saw one.
One of the Revenged.”
The room dropped to a quiet still again. The Listening instantly washed over us, as if we had never been disturbed.
“It was in the tunnel outside this dead end I had cornered Jay’la in. I turned my head and it was there, and I can’t, I can’t tell you what, what it looked like, because …well … I just can’t describe it. It was wroth, do you understand? It was wroth.”
The Speaker’s eyes filled with tears when he said this. Tears. Covered in blood and meat and he was weeping and dripping snot everywhere, just babbling, ya know? “Wroth, wroth, you can’t understand, you can’t understand, the horror of its beauty, the horror, like scissors in my mind.”
He went on like that for a few minutes I think, I’m not sure, the Listening has its own power and time isn’t always a sure thing. Crying and trying to explain what one of His Revenged looked like and not being able to, ya know? At the time we were all caught up in the Listening and didn’t really understand the full impact of what he was saying.
Then the Speaker gathered himself, wiped his face and said, “It voice filled my mind like scissors cutting out parts of me and putting in new thoughts, new ideas, new understandings. It destroyed me and made me whole again.”
And he smiled. Real big. Blood and scraps of meat clung to his raggedy teeth. He mugged at us the way you would a stupid mutt right before you booted him in the bollocks for being a bastard.
Again, we started coming out of the Listening, faster this time, and in groups, and there was real anger this time, and a few of the men took a step or two towards him, ready to kick his teeth in, Speaker or not, when we heard the sound.
The alien, organic sound of a rat swarm coming up from some ragged hole in the city’s understructure.

Inspiration and Writing:
In 1968, John Lennon and his wife Cynthia Lennon separated due to John's affair with Yoko Ono.
Soon afterwards, Paul McCartney drove out to visit Cynthia and Lennon's son, Julian. "We'd been very good friends for millions of years and I thought it was a bit much for them suddenly to be personae non gratae and out of my life," McCartney said.
Cynthia Lennon recalled:

"I was truly surprised when, one afternoon, Paul arrived on his own. I was touched by his obvious concern for our welfare ... On the journey down he composed 'Hey Jude' in the car. I will never forget Paul's gesture of care and concern in coming to see us."

The song's original title was "Hey Jules," and it was intended to comfort Julian Lennon from the stress of his parents' divorce. McCartney said:

"I started with the idea 'Hey Jules,' which was Julian, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better. Hey, try and deal with this terrible thing. I knew it was not going to be easy for him. I always feel sorry for kids in divorces ... I had the idea [for the song] by the time I got there. I changed it to 'Jude' because I thought that sounded a bit better."

Julian Lennon discovered the song had been written for him almost twenty years later. He remembered being closer to McCartney than to his father

"Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit—more than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad."

Although McCartney originally wrote the song for Julian Lennon, John Lennon thought it had actually been written for him:

But I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it ... Yoko's just come into the picture. He's saying. 'Hey, Jude—Hey, John.' I know I'm sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it, but you can hear it as a song to me ... Subconsciously, he was saying, Go ahead, leave me. On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead.

Other people believed McCartney wrote the song about them, including Judith Simons, a journalist with the Daily Express.
Still others, including John Lennon, have speculated that McCartney's failing long-term relationship with Jane Asher when he wrote "Hey Jude" was an unconscious "message to himself." In fact, when Lennon mentioned that he thought the song was about him, McCartney denied it and told Lennon he had written the song about himself.
Writer Mark Hertsgaard noted "many of the song's lyrics do seem directed more at a grown man on the verge of a powerful new love, especially the lines 'you have found her now go and get her' and 'you're waiting for someone to perform with.'"
Tim Riley wrote:

"If the song is about self-worth and self-consolation in the face of hardship, the vocal performance itself conveys much of the journey. He begins by singing to comfort someone else, finds himself weighing his own feelings in the process, and finally, in the repeated refrains that nurture his own approbation, he comes to believe in himself."

McCartney changed the title to "Hey Jude" because the name Jude was easier to sing.
Much as he did with "Yesterday", McCartney played the song for other musicians and friends. Ron Griffith of Badfinger (known at this time as the Iveys, and the first band to join the Beatles-owned record label Apple Records), recalled that on their first day in the studio:

"Paul walked over to the grand piano and said, 'Hey lads, have a listen', and he sat down and gave us a full concert rendition of 'Hey Jude'. We were gobsmacked."

When McCartney introduced Lennon to his new composition, he came to "the movement you need is on your shoulder" and told Lennon "I'll fix that bit." Lennon asked why, and McCartney answered "... it's a stupid expression; it sounds like a parrot." Lennon parried with "You won't, you know. That's the best line in the song." McCartney thus left the line in and later said "... when I play that song, that's the line when I think of John, and sometimes I get a little emotional during that moment."
The Apple Boutique Incident:
A failed early promotional attempt for the single was later recalled by the Beatles' personal assistant Alistair Taylor.
On 7 August 1968, McCartney took his new girlfriend, Francie Schwartz, and Taylor to the Apple Boutique, closed only a week before, in order to paint the upcoming single's title Hey Jude/Revolution on its large street-side shop window.
Within a day, the hand-made piece of promotion was mistaken for an anti-Semitic graffito (since Jude, besides being an English first name, happens to mean "Jew" in German), and the window was smashed by passers-by.
McCartney himself related the incident like this in 1996:

I went into the Apple shop just before Hey Jude was being released. The windows were whited-out, and I thought: "Great opportunity. Baker Street, millions of buses going around ..." So, before anyone knew what it meant, I scraped Hey Jude out of the whitewash.
A guy who had a delicatessen in Marylebone rang me up, and he was furious: "I'm going to send one of my sons round to beat you up." I said, "Hang on, hang on — what's this about?" and he said: "You've written Jude in the shop window." I had no idea it meant "Jew", but if you look at footage of Nazi Germany, "Juden Raus" was written in whitewashed windows with a Star of David. I swear it never occurred to me.
I said: "I'm really sorry," and on and on ..."some of my best friends are Jewish, really. It's just a song we've got coming out. If you listen to the song you'll see it's nothing to do with any of that – it's a complete coincidence." He was just about pacified in the end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Jude