Highmoon's Ponderings

Heading back to Ierne for another glimpse.

It was a terrible sight to behold, and I could not turn away. Fomorian heads and limbs flew in every direction, making me doubt those creatures had the same number of extremities as I did. Blood pooled at the feet of the giant a few feet away from me; hacked carcasses littered the field around us as far as I could throw a stone, yet the Fomorians did not relent. In groups of twos and threes they approached, frothing mad, evil incarnate, wicked blades flashing – only to be annihilated by the thing that only I knew to be my foster brother Bran.

I knew the stories of Cúchulainn, I knew about the ríastradh—the warp spasm—but I had never witnessed it myself. When, after fending the devils off for an hour, a Fomorian spear pierced my leg, Bran’s rage surged unchecked. His mouth foamed as he tore the shirt from his back, and as he rushed forward to meet the mass of Sea Devils attacking us, he started to grow, taller than a house, wider than three bulls. His skin bubbled from within like tar bursting from the earth, and his muscles stretched into shapes unnatural to humans. His right arm grew to the size of a thick oak tree trunk, and with every swing of the sword which now seemed like a toy in his mutated hand he slashed three Fomori in half. His hair stood on end like a halo of spikes, and from each tip burst a mist of blood and pure rage that choked any who came too close to him. His legs twisted around in their sockets, his knees now at the back, and he was able to leap high into the air and rain death as he came down. And just like the hero Cúchulainn, one eye sunk deep into his head, while the other almost popped out of its socket, and it was the last thing a Fomorian saw before being shred to pieces.

One hundred Fomorian died that afternoon at the hands of Bran, the warped one, hero of An Daingean, and I was never able to look at my foster brother the same way again.

—From the journal of Amergin Ó Míl

Ok, so I cheated a little here. This was originally published back in 2006 as the introduction to Bardic Lore: Ristradh, my D&D 3.5-compatible product introducing the warp spasms of Celtic myth. I did revise the above version, cleaned it up a bit, but it is essentially the same scene. The reason I brought it into the present, and into this Ierne series of vignettes, is that I need the warp spasm to be present in what I’m planning to do with Ierne in its early stages, and I saw no reason to write another scene when that one was very much to my liking.

To address something that came up in the comments to Ierne: The Gate, these little vignettes are not really meant to be interconnected. Imagine you’re flying over Ierne and every so often you zoom down to ground level and get a small glimpse of what’s going on with a few people, then you fly back up and go somewhere else on the island. I’m not saying they couldn’t be interconnected–some have already suggested ways in which they are–but I’m leaving that to you.

By the way, I promise I won’t tease forever on what Ierne is to be. Astute readers will have picked up the few clues I’ve left in previous posts or seen the one outright mention of it I made earlier in January. So I’ll come clean, but not just yet.

As I have already mentioned, at the crux of the tragic story of the vampire is the fact that they are on a downward spiral towards damnation, destined to destroy all that they held dear. If you read through the comments on the previous two posts in this series you will find that over and over we keep going back to the simple, and very important, idea of why should one care about the vampire’s journey on the road of dwindling Humanity. Or put another way, why should I (the player of the vampire character) care about the loss of Humanity? Why stall it? Why not give in to the beast?

There are traits in the two Vampire games that sort of deal with this. In VtM we have the traits of Nature and Demeanor, which basically sum up what your behavioral essence is on the inside and how you project yourself to the world. These are good to help shape how you want to play your character, but they really don’t say much about who your character is, which ultimately is what we’re driving at when looking for the reasons to cling to Humanity. VtR uses Virtue and Vice to replace Nature/Demeanor. I like the contrast of these two traits because, while they can help you shape how you play the character, they now say something about who this character is, if maybe a bit indirectly. The Virtue/Vice split also hearkens back to classical philosophical thought, something I can totally dig. Both of these sets of traits, however, have the same drawback for me: they are too vague. This is great for the games in which they are used, as a limited number of combinations can be used to represent virtually endless characterizations across a number of games sharing the same basic system, but for what I’m seeking to do, I want something that’s a hell of a lot more focused.

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In thinking of what would I do to re-arrange Vampire’s mechanics to reflect the type of game I believe is intended (as opposed to presented), it always has been obvious that Humanity is the one central stat around which everything else must orbit. After all, the game is about the loss of this essential trait and the descent into the unbridled bestiality of the vampire (which, of course, presupposes that you want to stave this loss off as much as possible; otherwise you’d be an NPC).

So we have our main trait, Humanity. I’ll keep this on a 1-10 scale because it provides for a good amount of gradation in the middle, with 10 being fully Human, and 1 being inhuman (inhumane?). This stat determines how Human you are, serves as the fuel for your vampire powers, and determines how many dice you roll to avoid losing/regaining Humanity. When Humanity reaches 1, you have lost all connection to what it means to be a human, and your character is removed from the game.

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Another tale of Ierne:

He held her arm as she took her first step up the hill towards the gate. “You can’t go there,” he whispered.

She looked at him with a curious look. “Why’r ye whisperin? And why I cannae go? Tis jus’ a ruin, tha’s all.”

She was beautiful, he found himself thinking. Her auburn hair spilled like an unruly cascade down her back and framed her plump face as she turned to look at him in a way that just made his heart ache. She was so beautiful. And she knew it. Used it to get her way many times. Used to make him do things he did not want to, used to do things he wanted to but felt too shy to do, used let her do things that she shouldn’t, things like going up the hill to the ruined gate. But she couldn’t. “I whisper because we are not alone in these woods. And you simply cannot go up the hill. And no, it is more than just a ruin.”

She gave him that practiced look of hers: full smile revealing only a sliver of her teeth, rosy cheeks pushed up making her eyes small and sparkly. Like every other time he melted inside. She was so beautiful. But he must stand firm.

“That there is a gate from another time, brought here by the Otherworld. The fili says the Tuatha travel through all places and times of Ierne, and sometimes things get dragged behind them. Like this gate. My grandfather’s grandfather saw it appear one day when in the woods training, I’m told. The fili also says we should not go up to it, lest we be pulled into the Otherworld. So no, you cannot go up.”

“Ye don’ wan’ me going to the Otherworld?” she teased.

“No,” he said smiling, blushing. “I want you here, with me.”

She looked at the ruined gate, its dark stones in stark contrast with the snow all around them. She looked at her young warrior-in-training, his strong hand still holding her arm. Gate. Him. Gate. “Let’s go back,” she said as she slid moved his hand from her forearm to her own hand.

They walked through the snowy forest, the cool air stilling everything around them except the sound of their feet on the dry ground. He put his arm around her shoulder, holding her to him, feeling her warmth, basking in the scent of her hair. She was a handful, but she was so beautiful. And maybe one day. One day…

She tripped him.

It was a simple movement of her foot, something he should have been able to recover from and turn into an offense, something his trainer would be ashamed to see him fall prey to. And fall he did, on his face. He managed to get up fairly quickly, but by then she was gone. He could hear her giggling ahead, running through the crackling underbrush, heading towards the gate. He called to her, asked her to stop, pleaded. She kept running, laughing. It was a game to her. It was horror to him.

He reached the foot of the small hill panting, but could not hear anything anymore. No laughing, no giggling, no sound of a young woman running, walking. Nothing. He looked down and saw her tracks headed up the hill, to the gate. Taking a deep breath, filling his lungs with cold courage, he ascended the hill as well. One step at a time. Matching her tracks. Left. Right. Almost there. Left. Right. Now at the gate. Left.

Nothing.

He stood with his right foot in the air, looking around for the next track. Nothing. The next one would be inside the threshold of the gate. He thought about it. He made a most minuscule move, almost a step. Almost.

He stepped back. All the way down the hill. She was gone. Into the Otherworld. Where he could not go. She’d be fine there, he thought, fighting back tears. She was so beautiful.

I found this photo (originally published at the Irish Independent website) linked from a post at the Irish Fireside Blog & Podcast about the recent freeze in Ireland. It caught my attention immediately, and I wanted to know what its story was. I guess now I know.

I also know what Ierne will be. But I’ll leave that for a post all its own.

A new vignette from Ierne:

From Thúr Rí they sailed, ten black small ships each carrying three soldiers. Three giant soldiers. Three giant Fomori soldiers.

The ships moved independently, pulled by some dark magic over the rough seas on their approach to mainland Ierne. On each mutated hand, each demon held a wicked blade as sharp as hatred, a blade that could tear a horse in half, a bull in quarters, a man in shreds. With these cruel instruments they tore into the sleeping seaside village, wasting no time to unleash death. Into thatched roofs they stabbed, through lime-covered walls they broke, spilling warm blood from warm bodies onto cold earth. Stomping over the village, towering over the sluggish defenders, they slashed at the small and slow targets as if they were little more than chickens in a pen come dinnertime. For dinnertime had arrived.

When it was all over, twenty-nine Fomori dined on the crudely-cooked corpses of sixty-four men, women and children. Sated, they capped the feast with the one fallen giant, fuel for more chaotic mutations, its strength absorbed into the rest.

On their own one or two feet, or in the bellies of the others, all thirty Fomori would reach the walls of Dún nan Gall and recover the stolen eye.

So did Balor command. So it would be done.

What I want to do with this is becoming clearer in my head. I still need to figure out some Aspects of the whole, see how they fit within the greater Fate of Ierne, but maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll be able to tell you something more concrete.

Read the Intro, First Session Report, Second Session Report, Kale’s Second Session Report, Third Session Report, Kale’s Third Session Report and Kale’s Fourth Session Report.

Though we had planned to do this the last week of 2009, fate decreed it would be the first week of 2010 that would bring our Lady Blackbird game to a close. And boy, did it bring it to a close! We gathered around the Skype table and soared off into the Blue to find out the destiny of the crew and passengers of The Owl.

Rich, our GM, is going to write up his general recap, which I’ll link to here once it is up. What follows is all from Kale’s point of view.

I would suggest you go back and read the previous report to catch all the strings being tied-up here.

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