((Out of Character (OOC):
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler))
Venue: Mage: The Awakening
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler))
Here is another great short by favorite aspiring writer Hannah Nyland, staring some of my favorite characters: Chimera, Psychonaut of the Guardians of the Veil, and Eos,a Sin-Eater, a Reaper who makes her first kill. And at the end the short introduces a new Fetish item for Chimera, a test of our new Fetish creation system.
Inspirations
By Hannah Nyland
By Hannah Nyland
Aisha
King was the wide-eyed one, the wary one who was about as talkative as her mutt,
who didn’t have a name. A frail, dirty wisp of a thing with matted hair and a
will to survive; the description applied to the girl just as well as the dog. Both
creatures of the streets, the dirty backstage out of sight of the human
conscience. The real only difference between the two, as far as he’s concerned,
was their weapon of choice. The dogs snapping jaws versus the broken shard of
glass in Aisha’s hand, her movements raw and untrained.
Bonnie,
the old woman with a bite meaner than Aisha’s dog. More properly known as “Fucking
Bonnie” by the residents of her street, who were sick of her rambling stories,
sick of her temper and her little makeshift tent in the alleyway, sick of every
last damn thing about her. There were whispers of a tragedy in her past, a
mental illness, a dead son or a husband maybe, but none of them ever seemed to
dwell on it for long. Too much effort for someone that they all would have
preferred to just forget. He has mixed feelings about that. It made things
easy, almost too easy.
The last one called
herself Lisa. Just Lisa. A young runaway with the wrong type of delusions and
the right type of body. She told every client that would listen about the strange
things she saw in her dreams, the beautiful and horrible things – a queen with
fire in her eyes and the skeleton of her city. The sound it makes when the axe
falls on them both. Sometimes, she told him that she caught glimpses the
future. He wonders if she saw it coming.
Their ribcages make
satisfying sounds as he hollows them out. Carter likes to know their stories
before he gets to this part. It takes longer, all the watching and waiting and talking,
but it breathes a certain life into his work. Besides, he prides himself on
being a good listener; even Bonnie said he was, right before she lost the
ability to say anything at all.
The last batch didn’t
live up to his hopes, unfortunately. Too much on his mind that day, too much
pus churning and oozing out of his brain matter. Too many half buried ideas.
But today is a good day for Carter. Things are as they should be. Outside, the
world is still an ugly place, full of all manner of disorder and depravities. It
disgusts him. But here, down in his makeshift workshop, he is the master of all
he surveys. He may as well be a god.
The news hasn’t been
talking about him though. Frankly, it’s disheartening. What does he get for all
the hard work, all the toil and strain of perfectionist that comes part and
parcel with being an artist? They haven’t even seen it fit to give him an alias.
He deserves far more than a few murmurs on the streets, handfuls of people
scurrying into hiding like rats, while the world turns on, oblivious to his
creations.
He will make them see. One
day, he will make them see.
Carter adjusts the light
on the table, giving himself a better look at his work in progress, and shifts
his grip on the knife on his hand.
“I would say ‘nice work’
but I don’t appreciate false flattery,” a female voice says, right next to his
ear. Carter is turning faster than he can think, thoughts flayed and scattered as
he drives the knife into her gut.
Well, he tries. Pain
tears through his wrist as the tip of the blade violently jars off of something
harder than stone, leaving only a small tear in the woman’s black blouse. No
crying out from her. Not even a trace of blood.
She looks at him with
contempt written plainly on her face, and says, “I liked this shirt, asshole.”
And all he can think,
beyond the shock and buzzing anxiety, is: I
could make a beautiful piece out of her.
Bright blue eyes bore a
hole through him, full of loathing as he raises the knife again, admiring the
symmetry and roundness of her face.
A different voice, rough
and contralto, drawls, “Nuh-uh. Sit, puppy.”
He does. Not gently,
either; he can feel the bones in his hips pop as he hits the concrete hard, and
the knife falls to the ground with a clatter. Why? He doesn’t recall the
thought of obeying entering his mind, but here he is, and he can’t summon up
the will to rise to his feet. Can’t even make his hands twitch.
With
Blue Eyes standing over him, he can’t see the new arrival; only her silhouette
is visible, cast in the backlight of his standing lamp. A tall, blocky figure,
twirling a triangular knife in one hand; her movements are languid, almost
lazy. A moment passes and, the silence that was so comfortable a moment ago
leaving Carter feeling stripped bare now that he has company.
“Well?”
Blue Eyes demands. She’s not looking at him now, instead focusing her gaze on
the works of art behind him. His inspirations. He swears that there’s something
growing behind her eyes as she stares at them; a blooming nuclear warhead,
barely contained.
“He’s
not the most well-adjusted guy, I can tell you that much. Narcissistic,
god-complex, definitely sociopathic,” The Silhouette says. “But completely lucid,
fully in control and aware of his actions. Thinks this is him doing the world
some kind of service.”
Blue
Eyes takes a deep, deep breath. Then she smiles at him, but the fires are still
burning behind her eyes. “Carter, have you ever wanted to see what real justice
looks like? I promise, it won’t hurt."
He
doesn’t respond, and it doesn’t make a difference; the room falls away from
him.
Carter
is walking down the streets of San Diego with the women by his side; Aisha,
Bonnie, Lisa, Skyler, Sarah, and the rest, too complete to be ghosts and too
cold to be alive. There’s a weight pressing down on his mind and chest that he
can’t quite manage to think about, only to think around. Whatever it is, it’s
getting harder and harder to breathe.
Rain
comes down in waves, leaving him dripping and shivering. His home. He has to
get home and finish . . .
But
he has no home. Not even a gap or empty ruin where it should be. Carter walks
through a labyrinth that used to be a familiar place - people, streets,
buildings - and in a million little ways, finds no proof of his existence.
How
long has it been? Hours? Days? Carter recognizes one of his neighbors, a wiry,
balding middle aged man. He always secretly thought that the man was a bit of a
loser, a nobody with no potential. Nothing like himself. Now it doesn’t matter;
he reaches out in relief, tries to shout out for his help. But the breath
catches in his lungs and he chokes on the dust in his mouth, wheezing and
retching. The man walks right past him, not so much as sparing him a glance.
The
women smell the blood in the water; they’re on him, clawing him to the ground,
whispering poison in his ears. They tell him
that his art is hollow, petty, flawed. They tell him the funeral has only just
ended, but that everyone has already forgotten his name.
He
realizes then, that he himself can’t quite recall it.
Blue
Eyes lied. By the time the weight becomes too much and he finally stops
breathing, he’s hurting a hell of a lot. The pain just isn’t physical.
****
“Pathetic,”
the Good Death spits. She raises her hand, letting the magic flow out of her
imbued gloves; a Life and Matter spell that will erase any trace evidence of
their presence from the scene. It’s probably a good thing that Jack never
questioned her too closely on why she wanted that particular imbuement, Eos
thinks.
“Didn’t
know you could feel so strongly about something,” Eos, still looking down at
the body. Her first human kill.
Facing
the freshly made corpse and the trio of his mutilated victims, she should be
screaming, in shock, or breaking down. And in the past she would have, but the
funny thing about dying is that it gives you a whole new perspective. It’s
almost foreign to her now, how much of a fuss people kick up over their
mortalities.
“Usually
I don’t, but I had a look inside his brain. He thought a lot of himself for
this. And hey, I get that; killing is the best rush on the planet. Can’t blame
the guy for wanting a few trophies for his trouble, either. Except he went
after the weakest links he could find, and yet still had the gall to think like
that made him a god. He didn’t have a clue what real Scourging is, real power. Fucking
coward.”
Weakest links. Something sparks in her mind for a half second; a
scalpel burying itself in her cheek, the liquid pain as she thrashed uselessly
in her restraints, shouting obscenities; not strong enough to make a
difference. But then, she never was. Always the pet, the damsel, the first one
everyone counted out or forgot. Even Chimera, sometimes.
It’s
different now, she forces herself to remember.
“Go
away,” Eos says, too evenly. “I like the other you better.”
An odd look crosses the Good Death’s face, and
Chimera emerges again, frowning. “I’m sorry, Eos, that was awful. I got too
into the part for a second there.”
“So, did you mean it? Your only problem with
what this guy did was that he wasn’t hardcore enough?”
“No! You know that I wouldn’t really - it’s
complicated. I mean, I did, but I definitely don’t now. Does that make sense?”
“Uh,
no.”
The
mage drags a hand over her face, tracing at the hairline. Her expression is
controlled, but Eos catches the telltale sign of worry.
“Think
of it this way: my Masques are like an actress playing a character. It’s still
me in there, but my behavior and perceptions of the world are colored heavily by
the archetype I’m portraying. My inhibitions get raised or lowered accordingly,
but I can still force the Masque to act out of character. They don’t make me do
anything I don’t want to, and they’re not real people. I know they can seem
sapient sometimes, but even the Good Death’s desire for freedom from me is just
a product of her archetype. There’s no real self-awareness behind it.”
She
hesitates, then adds: “You know the saying ‘bad guys do the dirty work’? Normal
people have the Guardians for that. I have her. Because there’s dirty work, and
then there are the things that go beyond that. Doesn’t matter; someone still
has to do them. Better for that side of me to have an easy off switch.”
Even
as she laps up the new information, Eos is intensely aware that she’s not
supposed to have it, that Chimera shouldn’t be telling her. Masques are a
closely guarded Order secret, and with Guardians, secrets tend to involve an
even mixture of paranoid vigilance and deadly force. Sure, she’s still
technically a Guardian agent, but her status is tenuous at best. Simmons wasn’t
happy about the potential of her spilling intel to The Harvest, and the whole
thing’s put a damper on their professional relationship. She’s on a need to
know only basis now, and this is not need to know.
Given
that, it clicks almost immediately; this, in Chimera’s typically awkward
fashion, was meant to be a show of trust. She relaxes a little. “Okay. That
makes sense, I guess. I can understand.”
Chimera
nods, a small knot of tension releasing in her shoulders. The two work together
in amiable silence, repositioning the body to best resemble a man collapsed
from a heart attack. Then Eos cusps her hands over his chest, the plasm flowing
between her fingers cold enough to make her shiver a little. As she works the
Ceremony, eyes squeezed close in concentration, she swears she hears a low
keening come slithering out from the dead man’s skin; a self-made dirge.
By
the time she’s done, even an expert coroner would be fooled into thinking this
man died from natural causes. Pr. Saddler would be proud of the skillful execution
of the ritual, if most definitely not the reason for it.
She
opens her eyes; Chimera has her back to her, having turned instead towards the
desecrated corpses of the three women, still laid out across the workroom’s bare
metal table. Now that she thinks Eos isn’t looking, there’s a strange look on
her face, something indecipherable. Sadness? Pity? Rage? Fascination? She’s
used to her friend being hard to read when she wants to be, but this is the
first time she can remember that she doesn’t have so much as a clue what’s going on in her head right now.
It
scares her.
More
to break that moment, she asks, as casually as she can, “Hey, are you planning
to keep that thing?”
“What?”
Chimera’s head whips back toward her so fast that it’s a wonder she doesn’t
break her neck.
“The
belt you picked up from this guy.” Eos gestures to the body on the floor next
to her. Chimera just stares at her blankly. “That you’re holding right now?”
The
mage looks down at the belt in her hands, as though seeing it for the first
time. It’s an ugly beast, its surface a haphazard patchwork of mismatched fur
and bare patches of leather, barely held together by a series of square metal
buckles that are spotted with rust and age. The more fashion conscious chunk of
Eos’ brain (a significant majority) is tempted to run screaming in the opposite
direction at the mere sight of it.
“.
. . right. I think I will hold onto it, at least for a while. Remember those
cannibal cults in New England we’ve been hearing rumors about? I have my
suspicions that this guy had at least some connection, and it might be useful
to have a physical link for Post-cogging and Scrying if we ever need to
investigate that in more detail.
A
small pause, then: “Besides, this could come in handy for another project of
mine. Didn’t have it fleshed out until we came across this, but it’s given me a
sort of . . .” she shrugs vaguely.
“Inspiration?”
Eos suggests.
“You
could call it that.”
The Wendigo Skin
(Rank 5 Fetish, 9 Dot Item)
Medicine Bag O: Stores 10/10
Essence
Rank 5
Spirit Fetish
Size: 3
Durability: 8
Structure: 8
Spirit:
Mingan
(“Gray Wolf”) – Rank 4 spirit of Degeneration and Hunger (more specifically, cannibalism).
In her spirit form, she bears a resemblance to one of the traditional depictions
of wendigo: a gaunt and only vaguely humanoid creature so emaciated that her
ribs jut out and her bones break through the skin in places. Her limbs appear
gnawed on, and while she has human feet and hands, the have long fingers and
toes as well as bestial claws. Below her ragged fur, her complexion is a
corpselike gray, her eyes are withered and sunk back in their sockets, and she
has jagged, elongated teeth.
This particular wendigo
spirit is older and mellower than most of her kind; while still relentless,
hungry, and savage by nature, she has developed a peculiar sort of temperance,
even wisdom as a result of long years and hard experience. If she can be
defined as one thing other than hunger, it’s her will to be a survivor. Most
similar spirits are short-lived, either ripping each other apart in feeding
frenzies and territory disputes, or attracting the wrong sort of attention as a
result of the activities they inspire in the mundane world and the negative
resonance they generate.
But even Mingan is not
immune from such problems. Recently driven from her territory and left crippled
by a series of skirmishes with a particularly zealous Hunter, she is in dire need
of a safe place to lay low. Chimera approached her with the intent of taking
down a spirit who was dangerous to the populace, but was taken aback by
Mingan’s complexity and intelligence, unusual for a spirit of her type. Mingan,
in turn, sensed the cannibalism aspect of the mage’s Legacy, and interpreted
her as a junior and particularly unusual fellow Wendigo. In time, they
developed an odd sort of friendship, greatly strained by the fact that by her
nature, Mingan was unable to stop perceiving her new friend as food, and had no
problem with that fact. While by Chimera’s preference, Mingan tried to hold
back in her company unless driven beyond reason beyond hunger, she could see no
better way to honor her friend than to make her a part of her.
Eventually, Chimera
presented a deal of mutual benefit to both of them: by binding Mingan into a
fetish, the spirit would have a much safer life free of bloodbaths with her own
kind as well as pursuing hunters, Chimera would gain a powerful magical item, and
the two would be able to continue to be around each other without one of them
inevitably killing or eating the other. Mingan accepted.
Description:
A large, thick leather and fur girdle that covers the full waist up to mid-stomach when worn, providing minor protection to the lower vital organs. The girdle is rather ugly, the outer leather a haphazard patchwork of fur from various animals and exposed leather, broken up by square metal buckles and chunks of metal. Disturbingly, the flipside of the girdle is lined with dried and withered human skin taken from half a dozen different people.
A large, thick leather and fur girdle that covers the full waist up to mid-stomach when worn, providing minor protection to the lower vital organs. The girdle is rather ugly, the outer leather a haphazard patchwork of fur from various animals and exposed leather, broken up by square metal buckles and chunks of metal. Disturbingly, the flipside of the girdle is lined with dried and withered human skin taken from half a dozen different people.
The fur girdle has been passed
around by a long string of serial killers over the decades; the theory is that
it originated from a cannibalistic cult somewhere in New England, but that’s
currently unsubstantiated. Chimera obtained it while helping Eos and Niko hunt
down a serial killer preying on the homeless in San Diego.
Quirks:
*Minor Quirk: Occasionally inspires feelings of intense hunger in the wearer at certain triggers: raw meat, roadkill, large amounts of blood, badly injured people and creatures, etc., possibly causing the wearer to drool or froth at the mouth. It is not enough to make them actually act on the impulse to eat, but can be unsettling to the user and others who notice.
*Minor Quirk:
Reacts with gluttony when touched or handled by someone other than its binder
(Chimera), rousing briefly from sleep with the instinctual desire to devour the
person; luckily, the fetish greatly restricts the spirit’s ability to actually
harm them and mostly just causes psychological discomfort – at first. Examples
include noticing the fur bristle as they touch it or sensing a primal “raising
of hackles”, as though a predator is fixing its gaze on them.
*Major Quirk: Linked to the minor quirk above, while the
pouch can still technically be used by other people, doing so is likely to frustrate
the spirit and cause her to lash out against them unless her hunger is sated by
immediate subsequent Chiminages. Mechanically, the spirit becomes outright
rebellious much more quickly than normal when handled or used by excessively by
people other than Chimera.
Chiminages:
Fresh blood and/or flesh from a recent kill (the spirit especially appreciates
human meat, but animal or monster meat is also acceptable), being buried in
snow or buffeted by cold winds, causing the severe degeneration of a living
thing.
Properties:
*Fast Activation: The fetish is woken reflexively, meaning that you can wake it and use its powers in the same turn. +10
*Influence:
Degeneration 3. Strengthen, Manipulate, Control. “Degeneration” here refers to
a descent into a worse state of being, mentally or physically, but especially
morally. Primarily affects living beings. This influence was chosen for Mingan because
of the obvious ties to cannibalism and shedding of moral taboos, and also
because the wendigo itself is a physically degenerating being; perpetually
starving down to skin and bones no matter how much it eats. +20 (niche
influence)
*3
Dot Gift: Predator (Savage Hunt) +30
*3
Dot Gift: Stealth (Running Shadow) +30
Total:
+90 points
Restrictions:
*Extra Cost: Activating the item’s powers costs an Essence. -5
*Chiminage: Fresh blood or blood equivalent once every few weeks - ideally from the target of one of the fetish’s offensive powers, but the perpetually hungry spirit isn’t too picky. -5
Final Cost: Rank 5
fetish. +80 points, or OOO OOO OOO (one for making the item a medicine bag). 3XP.
