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Plate Ten: FAITH

A ragged beggar accosts a traveling merchant. Neither figure appears in any of the other nine plates. The beggar, a man of late middle age, holds a sack out for the merchant to peer inside; perhaps he is a peddler. Or perhaps his is a pilgrim. The beggar-man wears tattered, earth-colored clothing, or perhaps he is simply coated with the dust of the road he walks. His feet are sandaled and his beard and hair are close-trimmed and neat. His posture is excellent; he might be a former general or bishop, who has forsaken a past life for the sake of him pilgrimage. As he stands in the left foreground, facing rightwards, we see the teeth of his slight smile.

In the right foreground, the merchant peers down into the sack with pursed lips. Her clothes, too, are coated with trail dust, and made shapeless by wear and sweat. Soft light escaping from the sack illuminates her face from below, which would look sinister if sunlight from above were not also shining down upon her. Her profile may be less impressive than her counterpart’s, for she slouches slightly.

While her left hand reaches up towards the lip of the sack the pilgrim holds in front of her, her right loosely grasps a cable, which extends back behind her to the lead of a mule train. Only one and a half mules are visible in the plate, but the cable stretches out past the second mule towards an unseen third, and perhaps fourth or fifth or more. The two visible mules ignore the tableau before them in favor of sniffling and nibbling at grass growing on the side of the road behind the merchant. The lead mule is weighed down with wineskins, but the second mule’s burden cannot be seen.

Above them, rays of sunlight fill the sky, emanating not from the sun, but from a woman’s face. This golden face, perhaps simply a fanciful depiction of the sun, mirrors the reflected seen in the eighth plate, RUIN. She and her halo of sunrays fill the upper third of the plate. The face stares directly out towards the viewer; her eyes lined up to yours. Her shining halos and golden tones contrast sharply with her slack and neutral expression; her lips slightly parted and her eyes half-lidded, as if she were about to drift off to smug sleep.

Behind the pilgrim, in the distance approaching the forested horizon, Jack is a tiny splash of blue and red against the verdant green-gold fields. He holds one hand high above his head, either waving towards the foreground, or playing with his dog Armor-of-God, just discernible in the hazy spring day.

Posted in Fiction, Not Gaming, plates.

By admin
January 7, 2010

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Plate Nine: FEAR

The man hides within his home. The view is mated to plate five, LOSS. Now the destruction foreshadowed in that plate has reached its natural conclusion: Jack’s cottage is in ruins. Jack himself, his body twisted with regret and dread, is barely visible beneath the shambles of blankets that wrap around him. His head rests on the tabletop in front of him, beneath his folded arms, and one can almost hear the wracking sobs wrenching his weak frame. Behind and around him, the materials which made up his home are in every sort of disarray: pots smashed and shelves broken, their contents rifled through and thoroughly looted. The plants, dead but still prominent in the previous incarnation of this scene, have either been carried off or disintegrated entirely. Bare stone walls have tumbled down in places, and the roof is little more than a partial frame, through which a starry night sky can be seen.

At Jack’s elbow, seated next to him at the table, Death waits patiently. Death’s skeletal legs are half-folded under his chair. One bone arm rests on the tabletop, with the other cast casually over the back of his chair; Death lounges, clearly comfortable with the situation and expecting no trouble. Death’s weapon, the crooked scythe, has been forgotten in the middle background, tossed against a rear wall.

The magic horn hovers over the man, emitting music. Thin white lines scratched into the plate convey this music, as foreign and external to the image as the mellophone itself. If the man buried the artifact, and later regretted his choice and dug it up, there is no sign of this, for the horn shines with the same cold light, clean and sterile as ever. There is no trace of filth or dirt upon it, and as before, the rich reds and golds reflected in its gleaming surface do not match even slightly the environment about the horn.

Angels look on, disconcerted, from the sky above. Small winged figures, barely discernible against the starscape, they would be easily noticed were it not for the line of spidery cursive encircling and drawing attention to them: for each blade of grass there is an angel begging it to grow. One peers down, towards Jack, while the other has turned to face the other, and thus appears in profile.

Outside all is wasteland.

Posted in Fiction, Not Gaming, plates. Tagged with , , .

By admin
January 7, 2010

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Plate Eight: RUIN

While ambiguity persists in the relationship between CHOICE and ERROR, plate eight (RUIN) falls unequivocally on the heels of ERROR. The scene’s framing remains a snowy field by the side of a desolate country road. The sun has not yet begun to rise; a gray predawn light suffuses the edges of the scene, but the woman’s automobile’s headlights remain the primary source of illumination of the plate’s principal figures.

The woman, seen in one-quarter view, shooes Jack away from her with one hand upraised. The greater light level permits us to see more clearly what we could already discern: she wears a heavy white coat, her age approximates Jack’s age, and her bearing is aristocratic and imperious. By a cunning trick of perspective, a reflective surface on the ground between her and Jack — one of the magical mellophone’s portentous blossoms — reveals with great clarity her face, which otherwise would remain hidden from us, and which resembles a classical statue of Athena the Mistress of Citadels more than any mortal.

Under her stony gaze, Jack flinches. He has turned away from her, unable to properly acknowledge so healthy and untainted a person. Tears flow freely down Jack’s cheeks; he sobs as he digs a hole. Whether it is on his own imitative, at the behest of the woman, or as a result of the strange influence of the magic horn-of-plenty, remains unclear. The hole he digs seems intended to house the mellophone, for it is conspicuously size-appropriate, and Jack eyes the artifact, which floats nearby, as he digs.

The growing light allows us to discern details previously hidden by shadow, darkness, and snow. The snow has stopped and the heavy dark clouds overhead parted, revealing an ash-gray sky. Black birds (there is insufficient detail to permit more specific identification) circle over Jack, high overhead, seven clockwise and five counter-clockwise. Bones peek out from beneath the snowy blanket that covers the ground and hides most sins, though their size seems inconsistent with their surroundings. They may be the remains of Armor-of-God, or of the stranger.

Sublimely unchanging, the mellophone floats just behind Jack’s right shoulder. In the cold half-light it gleams, and once again its light casts over its surroundings without illuminating. In its cold surface, one may pick out trace fragments of an entirely different landscape reflected, a lush red-and-purple chamber entirely unlike the snowfield.

Posted in Fiction, Not Gaming, plates.

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October 1, 2009

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Plate Seven: ERROR

Headlights split the dark night in half. In the light, the foreground and middle ground of the plate, we see a woman in a luxurious white fur coat and hat, standing in the snow. She wears clothing plainly of the highest possible quality, warm and in many places conical; this contrasts with Jack’s much lighter and more tattered coat. Too, the light illuminate her clearly and completely, for she stands directly in the beams, while Jack is half-hidden by the woman’s own shadow. As is also true for Jack himself, her age is unclear; she is probably under thirty and possibly over forty. Much of her is hidden behind the warm fur coat and its matching hat and muff, and what of her is visible can be seen only in one-quarter view, for she is turned away and towards Jack.

To the woman’s left, her automobile peeks into frame. While the car itself is no more visible here than in the previous plate (CHOICE), its headlights have been activated and positioned to illuminate both the woman who is plainly their owner, and the object of her interest – Jack and his magical horn of plenty. The snow between the woman and the automobile is disturbed, suggesting that she has only just now leaped from the driver’s seat and strode out to confront Jack.

Whether this plate displays precisely the same location as CHOICE, or whether it is merely a startlingly similar snowy pasture night, cannot be conclusively determined. However, close examination of the horizon behind Jack reveals that the smudge of dark woods, seen everywhere distant in CHOICE, ends just before reaching the right edge of the plate. Barely in frame, but unmistakable once noticed, the ash-gray fields of Jack’s farm stretch back behind him, and gray-on-gray the outline of Jack’s cottage leans against the edge of the only slightly brightened sky. The ragged outline suggests part of the building has collapsed, but this may be a trick of the predawn light.

Jack stands in the snowfield, separated from the woman and from the plane of the plate’s surface by a waist-high fence. He bends his back before the woman, but whether he bows or slouches cannot be ascertained. He smiles, or does he leer? Certainly his teeth catch the light and shine; in the semidark his teeth what we, and presumably she, can see and recognize most easily. In his right hand he still holds his shovel, now rimmed with frost, and with his left he points to the mellophone next to him.

The magical mellophone hovers in the air over a large heap of glimmering cut flowers. Tiny sparkling drops of dew, or oil, glisten on the blossoms, which have come in every color of an especially cold palette. The flowers, hundreds of them, pile up beneath the mellophone, which shines its light upon them, and upon Jack.

Posted in Fiction, Not Gaming, plates.

By admin
September 21, 2009

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Plate Six: CHOICE

The sixth plate is once again an outdoors scene. It may be the same locale as that depicted in the second plate, or it may be a different but similar country road, facing a pasture. Whether it is the same roadside space or not is difficult to say, for the second plate revealed few memorable landmarks. Any which might have signaled the continuity of geography in this plate are obscured by the snow and the darkness; this is a night scene and a winter scene. Snow falls, gently, over the whole scene, and already Jack is up over his ankles in accumulated whiteness.

Jack and his shovel can clearly be seen, in the middle distance, crossing the snowy pasture. In the foreground, and stretching all up the sides of the frame (receding into the background, and up to the darkened woods that block the horizon, and across) yellow eyes peer out towards Jack, wary of his unnatural presence. In the gloom we can barely discern the shapes of a multitude of beasts, large and small, predator and prey, staring silent and watchful.

It is the light of the mellophone which permits Jack to be seen, for the gleaming iridescent instrument floats behind him as he walks, and casts its light in a pool about him. In the snow and darkness, the magical horn seems less out of place; its light is caught and reflected by the snow beneath it: a dull silver smear on the landscape.

The sky above is a roil of black and gray, from whence the snow falls, save only for a single open point, through which a pinprick of moonlight — or is it the light of a single bright star? — shines, echoing the mellophone’s cold light below. A ribbon, wrapped around the hole in the sky, bears this motto: Sin is not a choice but a capacity. The ribbon and its lettering blend into the dark clouds at first glance; they are the same black-on-gray color as the clouds. Once seen, the motto cannot be unseen.

In the lower left of the plate, in the extreme foreground, one end of a luxury automobile just barely juts into the frame. Its lights are off, and only a sliver of bright reflection on the chrome distinguishes it from the shadowy beasts behind and beside it. If Jack has noticed the car, he gives no indication.

Posted in Fiction, Not Gaming, plates.

By admin
September 16, 2009

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Plate Five: LOSS

Jack sits in the foreground, at his table. His face is a mask of grief; he clutches his head with both hands as he rests his elbows on the tabletop. Tears flow down his cheeks, and past his cheeks, down his neck, disappearing into the folds of his garment. We see that this is Jack in his natural element, his home. His simple home is visible along all the edges of the plate; a one-room cottage with various items on shelves, and many flower-boxes and plants, which frames essentially a full-plate portrait of Jack. He sits facing outward, but his head is downcast. We see his tears, but not his eyes.

All his potted plants are dead, as are his fields. Jack’s cottage was once home, apparently, to a verdant collection of growing things, now withered and dry. A large pot, probably waist-high on Jack, sits on each side of his open door. Once leafy bushes or vines grew out of these pots and climbed up either side of the doorframe, we may infer from markings and stains on the now-bare wood of the frame. Now the stalks and leafs are two shapeless heaps poured over the pots like syrup on pancakes, spilling over and coating the floor around them. More pots and dead plants stud the shelves that line Jack’s home, smaller but equally dead. Dead flowers fill a flower-box under Jack’s open window, half-visible on the edge of the frame behind Jack. Through the window, and through the open door, Jack’s fields can be seen; they are full of dead gray wheat.

On his table the horn glows. Between us (that is, the surface of the plate) and Jack is again the magical mellophone. It gleams with an internal lamp, but its light does not illuminate the cottage, which is lit entirely by the overcast sky outside. Again, the mellophone gives the impression of having been pasted into the plate after the rest of the artwork was completed. It seems slightly too large for the space it takes up, as if it had been drawn from a slightly different perspective than the rest of the plate. Reflected in its shining surfaces we see reds, and greens, and rich purples, which look all out of place in the muddy gloom of Jack’s cottage.

Spilling across the table, out from beneath the horn is a pile of gemstones. In each gem, a screaming face. The matchless gems range in size (assuming no trick of perspective fools us into thinking them swollen or shrunken) from a pencil’s eraser to a golf ball. They sparkle like rhinestones, reflecting the light of the mellophone onto the tabletop; though the light from the glowing horn does not illuminate the scene directly, the sparkling wealth on Jack’s table reflects and spreads an echo across the tabletop and Jack’s weeping in the foreground. Some gemstones show only a few facets, some show dozens or perhaps hundreds of facets. In every gemstone, whether in the largest facet or distributed in small fragments across many facets, a screaming face can be seen. Some of the faces are male, some female, some young, some old. Most are sexless and ageless, conveying nothing of themselves, save anguish.

Death stands outside the house, waiting. Death is patient; Death has waited long and can afford to wait longer. Death always wins, eventually, and thus Death feels no urge to rush Jack. Here Death is depicted in the traditional manner, as a monk-robed skeleton wielding a scythe. He stands just outside the door, on Jack’s step, half-hidden by the doorframe, but inarguably present.

A motto winds all along the edges of the plate, starting in the upper left corner and working counterclockwise in spidery script. Who do you think you are, that you can tell the difference between good and evil?

Posted in Fiction, Not Gaming, plates.

By admin
September 15, 2009

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Ten Thousand Words

When I heard the popular assertion that it takes ten thousand words of practice to master a skill, really master it, I felt pretty cheered. Ten thousand words! That’s not so many; it’s maybe forty pages typewritten. My doctoral thesis was a hundred and eighty-something pages, not counting the appendices, and I wrote basically every word of that. Granted, many of the pages had diagrams or figures on them taking up a quarter or half of the page. And, yes, whole sections were essentially boilerplate with minimal literary or artistic merit. But still! Ten thousand words is a low enough bar that I don’t doubt that I hit it with my thesis, even allowing for all that.

And if you count all the words I’ve written which are archived here — 266 posts, not counting this one — then surely I’ve lapped 10,000 words a few times. There’s a vast repository of thankfully-lost campaign notes and bizarre fanfiction out there. From high school up until I went into high gear for grad-school finishing, I produced a fairly steady stream of written material. Heck, I probably hit ten thousand words back in middle school!

But do I rest on my laurels? Well, for the last few months yes, I have rested on my laurels. But should I? Doesn’t the world deserve the continuing creative output of me, a man who has written well in excess of ten thousand words, and must surely, therefore, be counted among the great amateurs of short essays and fiction? I say yes!

Even learning that in fact I’m completely off-base, and it’s ten thousand hours of output, not ten thousand years, and that ten thousand hours is a reasonable benchmark for ten years of practice: this is not enough to stymie me. Depress me, yes. Stymie, no. I suppose what I’m trying to say is I’m going to try to write a bit more. You’ve been warned.

Posted in Me Me Me!, Nonfiction.

By admin
September 15, 2009

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PLANET: A Survivalist’s Guide (19 of N)

Day Twenty-three, midday. Two days underground, by my estimate, and already I crave the sun on my face, and to walk once more in the fungus gardens of Planet’s surface. At least here and now there are no more spiders, though our dark work will demand the death of a great many eight-legged beasts before we finish the task.

In the chambers beyond the dark temple we witnessed sights strange indeed; down the lefty passage a hall – like the temple, neither natural nor properly artifical – where fungal growths had been twisted by some dark and unnatural magic into miniature mockeries of the Monolith. Within the chamber, a strange creature, all ooze and tentacles whipping, we found stuck to the ceiling. Gravity in this chamber was afflicted by queasy confusion as well; the walls and ceiling were as second floors, which at least enabled my comrades to close with the strange entity and hack it to bits.

Down the rightward passage, more unnatural “creatures” of the Far Realm – I will not bore with the details, as I am given to think that every Far Realm encounter must needs be unique, and the information would not be helpful to you who come after. But beyond them, in a high place, we encountered the Illithid, who greeted us by name (a parlor-trick for a mentalist such as it to pluck that information from our minds) and told us this tale.

The Illthid’s Tale

Eons ago, in a place which has no width, length, or breadth, where time is nothing, the Illithid and its mistress-master YRL dwelled, until some mighty cataclysm (the details of which the Illithid declined to explicate) thrust YRL from YRL’s spaceless space and into the crust of Planet, crippling or slaying it in the process.

Alone of YRL’s unnumbered servitors the Illithid survived this transition, and alone of YRL’s likewise unnumbered enemies survived a single spider of unknowable pedigree. This Queen of Spiders (I do not think she is any relation to the dead goddess of that epithet) birthed and continues to birth a tremendous progeny, that veritable ocean of tiny spiders and larger ones too, which forever gnaw at senescent YRL. These spiders feed on YRL, and the waves of psychic pain that emanate from YRL’s center have resulted in that perversion of Planet’s natural ecosystem that we call the Country of Spiders.

The Illithid believes that if the Queen of Spiders is slain, YRL will regenerate sufficient of YRL’s power to leave Planet. This would end the psychic emanations, leading one might suppose to the end of the Country of Spiders and of the illness that afflicts the leaders and central minds of the various colonies – the sleeping-sickness that took Zharroun, Yang’s megalomania, and the monomania which Irina asserted afflicted Zakharov (which, presumably, he shrugged off as Morgan usurped his authority and the psychic assaults began to target that villain instead).

This is the root cause of the disease: the great fungal superorganism on whose surface we walk stirs, and grows quiescent, and reaches out with a diffuse and massive mind, an inhuman and potentially divine intelligence, or potential intelligence. It grows new senses for the purpose of communicating, and with YRL’s splinter in its side, what it communicates is pain and anguish. Can a planet be said to have achieved sentience? The splinter causes it pain, but what is the pain of Planet compared to the pain I feel?

For millennia, the Illithid has attempted to free YRL from the Queen of Spiders. It is too puny to directly assault her alone, and on Planet it can open only small and transient gates to the Far Realm, pulling through amorphous mindless drone-creatures like those it tested us with. It waited and watched as the shadar-kai came, but they never pressed beyond the bordermarches of the Country of Spiders, and it waited and hoped while the New Hoplites explored the spider-infested forests. It claims sufficient precognition to know that we and we alone are the best, last hope for the Illithid and its master-mistress; it flatters us with praise and phrases plucked from our memories.

We have conferred, and agreed that the death of the Queen of Spiders is a laudable goal. Loathe though we are to trust the forecasts of a clear scoundrel such as this Illithid, its tale answers many of our questions. Our greatest fear is that YRL, freed of the Queen of Spiders, will either depart for the Far Realm with us still “inside,” or that YRL will take the opportunity to regain YRL’s full powers and assault the Planetmind, burn Valley to ashes, destroy all that we hope for and love simply because YRL can.

Is this a risk we can afford to take? The Illithid offers a demonstration of the immediate relevance of the task, proof that YRL is damaging the Planet’s quasi-intelligence. We will partake of this proof, and consider.

Posted in Fiction, Gaming, SMAC.

By admin
March 10, 2009

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PLANET: A Survivalist’s Guide (18 of N)

Day Twenty-two, midday. My previous entry was cut off when I received an unnecessary sending from Luba which distracted me, and when I had resolved her request for reassurance felt it appropriate to nap. Now I have a scant few minutes before we press on. When we reached the bottom of the spider tunnel, we hoped to find a passage to the surface of the Living Ocean, or perhaps the dying god beneath its roiling “waters.” Instead, we discovered a seeming dead end; the large tunnel split off into myriad tiny cracks and holes big enough for my hand, or a spider. Grog and Throg hefted their hammers and prepared to mine their way through to the Living Ocean, but the cave floor beneath us opened up, and we plummeted down into darkness and a strange vault, where peculiar apparitions assaulted us. One seemed to be Santiaggro, but of course was not. Another had the appearance of one of Yang’s mutated sibeccai drones… these monsters from the id attacked our wills, and nearly killed us.

This vault is in the shape of a spider, with eight passages that loop around like legs. In the center is a pool of some strange purple-red liquid, which we have prudently avoided, and in a direction which we suspect corresponds to towards the dying god beneath the Living Ocean, a wide passage proceeds. The whole affair is lit by phosphorescent fungus.

Now, I am not a credulous man. I accept that the gods are dead, and I know that surely no humanoid hand shaped this spider temple; even if the shadar-kai ventured here (I remain unconvinced) . Was it formed as a side-effect of the emanations that spew out from the dying god and poison Planet?

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By admin
March 9, 2009

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PLANET: A Survivalist’s Guide (17 of N)

Day Twenty-one, evening. I curse all spiders and all spider-women with a mighty curse! These tunnels press in on us from all sides, and when I close my eyes I dream of home, hot showers, and F——’s bed. We crouch in a narrow cleft off the main tunnel, which spirals down from the surface to a point surely not far above or below the surface of the Living Ocean, and supplies ingress to the unholy chambers beyond. The stink of Luba’s repellent oils wafts off of Grog, and keeps the spiders at bay, yes, but also any joy or peace; I feel a mighty and insensate dread.

Let me back up. We headed southwest through the forest to the center of the Country of Spiders, to that strange vast canyon full of roiling black spiders we call the Living Ocean. Briefly we considered climbing down the thousand feet or so of clifface there directly, and trusting to the spider-repellent to clear us a path on the dying god’s skin, but this we all agreed was a reckless notion. Instead we began to circumnavigate the Ocean, staying within sight of the cliff-edge, seeking some landmark or easy way down.

It has crossed our minds that perhaps the shadar-kai Planet Cult does not fear and hate the dying god (as we would like to believe) but rather worship it directly as an avatar of Planet in their wrong and twisted theology. Further, our intelligence from Dhraz the prisoner included a vague reference to a Cult “brood pit” north of the Living Ocean, where perhaps they tame the mind-worms. We have operated under the assumption this brood-pit is a structure to the north of the Country of Spiders, somewhere in the fungal waste south of the mountains and New Hope, but it is not impossible that we will discover some vast shadar-kai fortress perched on the edge of the Living Ocean itself.

In our transit we saw no such thing. After a few hours of hard hiking (someday soon I must learn the ritual of phantom steeds to ease our way), we sighted a cleft in the cliffside, perhaps another ile ahead of us, visible as the canyon wall turns from west to southwest. Far more important to this narrative however, a veritable sea of spiders swarmed out of an inconspicuous hole in the ground and nearly consumed us all! Grog managed to save himself only by applying one of the four doses of Luba’s repellent. We blocked the tunnel entrance with alchemical fire, and I scorched the remaining spiders on the surface, but again we were left panting and sore.

With Grog’s repellent applied, however, we felt we had no time to waste recuperating, and, bidding Luba and Binch wait our return, we stuck close together and plunged into the depths. We ventured down slowly and carefully, and to our relief the repellent did its job: the spiders that covered every surface parted around us like waves around a breaker. In the shadowy light of my dark light we ventured on and down. I believe that the tunnel is a fortuitous geological formation, a natural cavern worked by flowing water, which likely predates the Living Ocean and the blight on Planet’s surface. At times we had to crawl, at times we used our ropes to work our way down twenty or thirty foot sheer drops. It was during one such tense moment that we all heard Luba, shouting from above and behind us.

Reluctantly we backtracked, and found her and Binch huddled together among the spiders, in the lee of her relic amulet. Apparently she had received a sending from a New Hoplite mercenary of her acquaintance, a dangerous man named Harper. Harper claimed that he had news, that Irina had been kidnapped (!) and that he was on his way to the spider cave (!) to meet us and escort us on a rescue mission.

Naturally we saw through this obvious trap. When Harper cast another sending on Rhogash, he suggested that the mercenary and his comrades descend into the spider tunnel to meet us – at which point we would ambush them, Valley style. Instead we received another sending from a new source, perhaps Morgan himself and perhaps one of his followers, indicating that he knew our mission and would be eager to bribe us into turning over any godsblood we obtained to him.

The petty machinations of the decadent New Hoplites bored us, and we disregarded their attempts at subtrefuge, choosing instead to simply press on down the tunnel. Luba and Binch we warned of Harper’s probable treachery, and set back towards the surface.

Finally at the bottom of the tunnel, where now we sit, we found a

Posted in Fiction, Gaming, SMAC.

By admin
March 9, 2009

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