Jeff Mach's Blog, page 63

Roster of the Guild of Thieves of the Dreaded and Nameless City

Herein is the Most Prestigious and un-Illuminated Roster of the Thieves Guild of the Nameless City, Jewel of the North, The City Which Seldom Sleeps And Which Always Regrets It When It Does.

I. A Note:

The unwise or uninitiated might wonder why this roster exists–and why a significant portion thereof is occupied by something extraneous, to wit, these words of Introduction and Explanation.

Such a consideration showcases both the ignorance and the short-sightedness of both the common Thief and the entire breed of Thief-Takers.

If one eschews documentation, then knowledge resides only in the skulls of the elect. This is an excessively thoughtless place to keep a commodity of such peerless value; trust one who is an expert on the safekeeping (and un-safekeeping) of priceless things.

Why would we put ourselves in a position wherein we lose track of our membership through, say, some sort of stepladder mishap? Any single person can die or be killed; any small group which holds knowledge might find that not all knowledge is remembered perfectly. And when one commits large amounts of information to one’s cranium, one creates motivation for others to torture the body in order to get at the head.

While none of the Elders of the Guild are easily susceptible to either capture or persuasion through pain, neither do we consider it prudent to increase the likelihood of either. While it would be foolish in the extreme for anyone to attempt the kidnap a high-ranking Thieflord, one thing that’s well-known in our profession is the extraordinary and near-universal profusion of fools. Besides, if one is to be captured and tortured for one’s knowledge, let it be in search of the long-vanished Gems of Zemzar; not verification that some second-class purse-purloiner has paid her yearly dues.

Secondly, there is a certain matter of professional pride. Oh, there are advantages in outsiders seeing us as ignorant; and there’s often advantage in being overlooked.

But Elders in the Guild move in more rarified circles. While we are not, contrary to rumor, known by name or identity to the civil government, they are, indeed, aware of our existence. If we need to weigh in on a matter of civic urgency, we might not nip by the Governor’s office for a drop a sherry and a natter. But the stiletto which flies through the predawn murk won’t simply be expertly aimed; it will bear a formal and properly-crafted letter, which lays out, in precise and tightly-reasoned logic, important thoughts on the social, political, and economic ramifications of a given action, as well as a firm reminder that we possess many, many more daggers.

The remembrance that they are soft and we are silent hurlers of very sharp blades is an impactful argument. But beyond it, at least some of the higher levels of government recognize that this force is wielded, not by upstarts or churls, but rather by a professional organization not entirely unlike their own. Oh, our successions sometimes involve a bit more hemlock than their own; but only a touch. The rungs on the steps to civil power are slick with blood. In that regard, they are closer to understanding us than they might admit; and knowing that somewhere, we keep respectable records, just like any other Guildmasters, is reassuring, even if other Guilds keep their books on display in fine public meeting rooms, and we keep ours in places best left unmentioned and unconsidered by those who find that continued existence holds at least some degree of appeal.

The third point of note ought to be of extreme interest to anyone interested in surviving the remainder of whichever week this might happen to be. That category likely doesn’t include you; if you’re casting unauthorized eyes upon this document, you’re already putting forth a request for trouble on a level which will dwarf anything you’ve previously known as an inconvenience, a pain, or a threat to life and limb.

AND, even worse, you’ve probably dismissed all these words as prattlings, and gone straight to the List.

So much the worse, my friend, for you.

Should you be an interloper who might (potentially) have one-tenth of a lick of sense, such that you’re taking me seriously here, I’ll gift you with another warning:

II. Some of these listings are false.

Not a little false, but horrifically, unbelievably, “You don’t know who I am, and you’ve just made the biggest mistake of what was your life!” false.

Some refer to nonexistent entities. Some are the solidest of citizens, and some are nothing more and nothing less than flesh-and-blood traps: lycanthropes, enchantresses, mis-summoned daemons, unspent shadows. I realize that some of this information lies within the list itself; but I wouldn’t trust it, were I you. Certain innocuous words would indicate, to one who knows the code, certain knowledge essential to making and surviving contact with these entities.

Cracking the code would involve at least a little error; no codebreak’s ever without flaw; and even a very small miscalculation will send you walking directly up the path of some abode whose inhabitant is made primarily of hunger and malice.

Some say that these things are done to test aspirants to the circlet of hot bronze which graces the head of the Thief King.

Some, perhaps a bit wiser, say that it exists precisely to eliminate those selfsame pretenders.

I say that I don’t care who you are; turn aside now. Read, if you must; but ct not on what you see. This City is not a large place, and we’re running out of room for unmarked graves.

III. In Conclusion:

You might wonder: Why have a Thieves Guild at all? It does seem to be against the inherently lawless nature of the profession.

The young say that it is a plot to keep the bright, adventurous minds of the youth from achieving the recognition and independence which might otherwise be theirs; no matter how talented each might be, they are all forced to work a certain number of years, and complete certain schooling and tests of skill, before they can ascend. This being a gathering of ill-doers, such a theory would not be implausible, except the young say that about everything.

This week, for example, I have heard them express these selfsame sentiments about the governance of the City, the increase in the price of minotaur-fight arena tickets, and the recent change in available flavors of jellied snail; apparently, their favorite was discontinued, and this must be a conspiracy.

Older thieves call us an institution, the very backbone of civilization, and they believe we ought to divert more of our funds towards erecting monuments unto the legendary purse-snatchers of the past. I have pointed out that this action would lead to the City posthumously declaring said persons to be criminals and setting fire to their gravesites, but reason is, I fear, nearly as lacking within our ranks as among the ordinary citizenry.

Almost.

The simple truth of our existence is that the Thiefly trade remains, as I touched on before, an art and craft whose skills require years of dedicated work and study. We, as a guild, provide furtherance for that worthy and dangerous endeavor.

Now, Thieves Guilds are strange and secretive gatherings of highly immoral lawbreakers. They are far more abhorrent than you might imagine.

Therefore, should you ever hear the ludicrous notion that we are merely a cover for something deeply more sinister, something compared to which our foulest machinations are as of a breath of the purest air of the brightest dawn—why, laugh out loud and correct that ignorant and idiotic fool.

And then bring them to me.

Immediately.

Without delay.

Because—

Because…

Because I would hardly want an individual to keep expressing such a silly view, eh? How ridiculous that person would feel.

So bring them to me.

Now.

(The document is unsigned, but a dozen experts in graphology were unanimous in saying it looked remarkably similar to that of “No-one! No one at all!” and that, furthermore, the elegant script indicated “A very, very nice person who is well-known to be very merciful and understanding and also very nice.”)

(It’s also worth noting that the “Roster” is over one thousand names long and includes every citizen in the City.)

(Investigation at the very highest levels has concluded that the entire document is a forgery. And, indeed, those who initially discovered it have all felt so entirely embarrassed by how gullible they were that they have all gone to the rather extreme measure of apparently leaving the City forever in the middle of the night, without even a single message to the rest of the members of the Constabulary.)

(One maverick suggested that someone wanted the document to be found, which would account for why copies of it were left at the scenes of several high-profile and completely unsolved crimes.

But some people see conspiracies everywhere, poor things.)

~Jeff Mach

 

This story. This damn story.

I wrote most of it many, many moons ago. It was originally crowdsourced, and it was just going to be a bit of puff, where I penned a few couplets about various characters people provided.

But then the thing decided that it might not be a paragraph or two of introduction, a small writing exercise where I took a few words of character description and made micro-poems. Eventually, it decided it was its own story.

…when I find out whoever made stories sentient, I will…I don’t know what I’ll do, but it may not be pleasant.

At any rate, the problem then was that I didn’t want to take too many liberties with other peoples’ characters. And also, I had figured out who was really in the Roster.

I think.

So I’ll let the story above be its own story. Here are the people who contributed the original characters, and here (in order of appearance) are the bits of rhyme I wrote.

@amandajzariwney

@artbyhobo (x 2)

@StellaLovecharm

@imipak

@offcampusCal

@riithewordsmith

@durakmage

Panda’s vision’s not twenty-twenty

Got secret documents? Send ’em plenty.

They’ll be kept safe, in case you need ’em

And Panda surely cannot read ’em.

Vampire Queen Lillith Faullan

Does evil from dusk ’til Dawn

(Technically, she stops a minute before

Lest her sun-blasted ashes litter the floor.)

Weasel is an urban Druid,

Illegal herbs, most freshly brewed

Competitor’s plants oft spring alive

(Creating the world’s most killer endives.)

Stella Love, that scroundrel skilled

Who lives a life quite boredom-filled

She can steal anything, from ships to spices

(If not in the midst of existential crisis)

Lugh ap Mathonwy: polymath

Stay on his good side; avoid his wrath.

He’s very good, when so inclined,

Otherwise? Diabolical mastermind.

Travelling rogue, Elddewt,

Seems he wouldn’t hurt a newt,

Sitting and knitting, but take note:

Those spiked needles are knitting a garrote.

Quiet and shy is Xand,

Never revealing what he’s planned

His spirit’s in recovery

He sees much, and sells what he sees.

Valkyrich Dominov, Orcish monk;

In ducks are his affections sunk

If he’s not weird enough yet, he’ll keep trying

Mysterious shall be his manner of dying.

 

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.

I write books. You should read them!

 

 

The post appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Two-Thirds Misfortunate

Once upon a time, there were three brothers, and the second brother was screwed.

Fairytales are essentially bound to invoke the Rule of Three. They have to; most fairytales are taut little constructions,. Perhaps in a detective story, if there’s a little more than you expected, it turns out to be a bit of meat hidden by the curve of a bone, or an unexpected marrow. But fairytales are very lean; if it’s a little bigger than it needs to be, most of the time, that addition is gristle. (In any weaving where two out of three brothers go out of the story, Jack Sprat’s wife has eaten them. Feel free to be aware of that, the next time a fairytale character is ‘never seen again’.)

How would it work, otherwise? “There were three Princes in a particular Kingdom. One day a Dragon threatened the Realm. The first Prince went forth and slew it, and all rejoiced, and the other two brothers said, ‘Jolly good show’; THE END.” Not much story, eh?

No—the brothers exist to build the pattern of the tale. We must establish the parameters of this world. How do we know that the path to save a Princess is dangerous? Why should we care about those who walk it? Because fairytales, in their original format (before one adopts them into novels; a perilous process in itself) give us information based on what we see.

“There were three Princes in a Kingdom, and they heard of a beautiful Princess who’d been imprisoned by an Evil Wizard. The firstborn Prince went forth and met a commoner, who begged for bread. “Out of my way, low-born scum,” said the first Prince, and he went onwards until he came to the first guardian on the path, a great and terrible Giant with a gluten allergy. Seeing that the Prince carried bread, she flew into a rage and ate assorted pieces of him, and eventually, he died.

The second-oldest walked on the same path (there was only ever one path in Kingdoms in those days; made it quite impossible to get to anything that lay at right angles and more than about a quarter of a kilometer off said path, but at least it was hard to get lost on the way to Grandma’s house) and encountered the same commoner. “Gimme bread,” said the beggar. “You seen my brother? Little taller than me, same nose, one of only six people in this kingdom who can afford to wear armor, but doesn’t do it anyway?” “Yep, stormed right past me, then I heard screaming.” “Got it,” said the second brother, tossing the beggar some bread.

The second brother encountered the selfsame Giant, who smelled less bread and just kinda waved him on. He walked until he encountered a dog who was tied to a tree, straining hard against the leash. “Free me!” said the dog. “No thanks, you might bite me,” said the second Prince. “I ain’t gonna bite you!” “And how would I know that? You could be rabid or something.”

The dog tossed his furry head. “I’m talkin’ to ya, ain’t I?”

The Prince shrugged. “You’re probably right, but I don’t want to risk it. Tell you what, when I get back, I’ll look into some legislation which calls for more humane leash laws.”

Not much farther along, the prince met up with a vast Dire Wolf. “Did you release my kin?” asked the Wolf.

“Um…yes?” said the brother.

“NOPE!” came the dog’s voice, muffled by distance, but clear. The Wolf then made short shrift of the Prince; it was bloody, so I won’t go into detail, but by “short shrift,” I mean, “killed his ass”.

The youngest Prince came along, showing kindness of spirit by giving away all his food to the beggar, thus easily passing the giant, who might have mumbled something about “showing kindness to those he met,” or maybe not; then he freed the dog who, actually, did bite him, but not terribly hard, and it accompanied him until he got to the Dire Wolf, which let them pass. They arrived at the Evil Wizard’s tower, escaped while the Evil Wizard was busy writing this story, and came back to their home kingdom, where they found the second brother, as Prince Regent, sitting on the throne while their parents were off on vacation.

“I thought you were dead,” said the youngest brother.

“Hello to you, too,” said the Prince-Regent. “Who’s your friend?”

“I’m a Princess,” said the Princess, “and I think this bloke on the floor here, the one who’s eyeing the leg of your throne in a disturbing manner, is a dog.”

“Really, though, I thought you were dead,” the younger Prince persisted.

“Are you mad that I’m not?”

The younger Prince pondered. “I wish our old philosophy professor were here. She’d yell at me, and hit me with her stick for being slow on the uptake, but he’d know what to say.”

An old woman doddered forward; the Royal Court watched carefully, because good doddering is rare these days, and you just don’t see it much in the modern world.

“Kid,” she said, ignoring, as is sometimes the prerogative of tutors, proper courtly protocol, “this is just an accelerated version of the more basic problem that you love your family, but you gain a throne if enough of them die. There are classic mixed feelings here. Traditionally, if you could pick your emotions, you should be sad about their deaths, but happy to gain the throne. Here, it turns out only one brother’s dead, and he wasn’t your favorite. It’s okay to be in a state of shock. You should process your grief at the death of one sibling, and your relief at the life of the other, at your own time; and any feelings of happiness or disappointment about the throne, you might want to consider discussing when you and your brother are alone. You’re fine, if you ask me; this is a difficult situation, and it’s reasonable to want an outside opinion.”

Then she hit the second prince with her stick. “And THAT’S for forgetting I was RIGHT THERE. I’m old, but I ain’t invisible, y’know.”

The Princess spoke up. “It’s very nice to meet you, Your Highness. I am glad that you live.”

“So you’re not mad you’re not Queen?” said the Prince-Regent.

“Mad AS HELL, but also: Not imprisoned by a Wizard; marrying a Prince. That’s not a bad day, as far as the 9th century goes.”

“Brother, I think she’s right. Let’s talk about our feelings in private. I am, of course, glad to see you alive. LONG LIVE THE PRINCE-REGENT!”

“LONG LIVE THE KIN—I mean, the Prince Regent!” shouted the court, who weren’t really used to that particular cheer, but who were pretty good at adopting to court politics.

“So how’d you survive, O Brother Royal?”

“Right. You know that squire I got, Rory?”

The youngest prince nodded. “Only guy in the Kingdom with a name. Hard to forget.”

“Well, you know how he always wanted to have adventures, whereas I always thought that risking your life for uncertain rewards seems kinda dumb?”

The Princess interjected, “I beg your pardon?”

“…of course,” the Prince-Regent said hurriedly, “in this case, the reward is a Princess who is as lovely as she is, hopefully, kind and a decent housemate, seeing as how we’ll all be living under one roof, and I’m sure we’ll get along famously, and I’m very glad you’re here.”

“Thank you.” The Princess curtsied with a certain grace which the Prince-Regent admired abstractly. He’d have to try that, sometime when he was alone; there was a certain slight raising of the head simultaneous to the backward motion of the one leg…but later.

“It thusly happened that Rory wanted to go out and find glory. I have read several histories of the Kingdom, and it’s almost never ruled by the middle child. Middle children seem to go off and get killed a lot. I wanted no part in it. I went to talk to Rory about the whole thing, and he was terribly eager to go. I pointed out that, just based on common sense and experience, he was likely to die, especially if he was taking on the role of Second Prince. I was, I hope, extremely clear on the subject. He seemed to think that he could handle whatever came his way as long as he got to wear Princely raiment.”

(Several courtiers nodded at this. The Royals pretended not to notice.)

“I told him, Lord to Squire, that I thought he would die, and that it was a suicide mission. I will simply say that, with appropriate respect, he disagreed. He went out and acted as he felt I would have, were I in his place; given what happened, I feel vaguely insulted, but also like he wasn’t wrong. I had a narrow escape there.”

The Philosophress leaned in. Everyone in the room recognized her expression; clearly, this would be on the test. “And the moral?” she asked, in a strange, resonant tone they’d never heard before.

The Second Prince looked startled, but the Princess spoke up immediately:

Always be yourself, unless you’re about to be an idiot. Then be someone else.

…and with no further warning, THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

For now.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.

I write books. You should read them!

 

 

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Scar of Moonlight

“There once was an unlucky man, who sought the Fae. And found them.”

-the opening of my now-lost Faerie cycle

Come away with the Faeries,

Come away, come away!

You’re sure the song they sing

Is for you and you alone

Come away with the Faeries, come away, come away

(With jagged Faerie-dust your path is sewn.)

No razor’s ever been as sharp

As a single Faerie’s wing

No trap has ever held as tight

As the lowest Faerie ring;

No song has ever hurt as much

As the song that they sing

And you hope that they will sing it

Again.

Come away with the Faeries,

Come away, come away

You’re sure the song they sing

Could make a heart from a stone.

Come away with the Faeries,

Come away, come away,

To somewhere that few are ever shown.

The stars of Faerie shine more bright

Than any mortal glow

Their frost can burn you colder

Than any mortal snow

They’ll leave you wanting something

You know you’ll never know

And you know you’ll want to want it

Again

Come away with the Faeries,

Come away

Come away!

You’re sure the song they sing

Is played upon your bones;

Come away with the Faeries,

Come away,

Come away:

Into careless unknowns.

You’ll have a scar of moonlight

If a Faerie takes your hand;

If a Faerie’s gaze is turned to you

You’ll freeze up where you stand.

The kiss of a Faerie

Will mark you like a brand

And you know you’ll

never

feel that kiss again.

Come away with the Faeries!

“Come away! Come away!”

You’re sure the song they sing

Is for you and you alone.

Come away with the Faeries!

“Come away! Come away

From everything you’ve ever loved or known.”

~Jeff Mach

 

My first songwriting teacher told me “A song is just bad poetry”. As a songwriter, I’d agree with him. I do have a few things which started out as songs, and ended up feeling right when knocked into a page. This is one of them.

But:

The words of most songs are meant to be paired with tone, rhythm, melody, and that complex combination of things we call “voice”. Nobody said that it was the job of those words to stand on their own; in fact, quite the opposite; if they happen to work well on a page, that’s lovely, but lyrics are not a solo act.

Don’t watch a dance and complain that it’s inefficient as a method of getting from one place to another; don’t watch a lightning storm and complain that it doesn’t caffeinate; don’t get annoyed when the lyrics of songs are not solo artists, but team players. Sometimes they can do both, but that’s above and beyond.

It’s the role of lyrics to be one part of the larger sonic impact. They have some kind of meeting with (harmonizing, opposing, fighting, roaring over, gliding just under; but not ignoring) the music of which they’re a part. Again, existing as symbols which enter us through our eyes is not the same as being absorbed by our ears. You might like the way a peach feels in your hand, but you don’t absorb it via osmosis. On top of that, song lyrics take part in the not-wholly-understood process which takes place when we push music out of our bodies through the wind in our lungs and the shapes of our vocal chords; interpret it in our minds and (sometimes) hearts, souls, or lower quarters; and give them life through voice.

Paul Simon’s “The Sounds Of Silence” is widely regarded as one of the best pieces of poetry to exist in the form of modern song; but Paul Simon, when asked about the smartest thing ever said in rock and roll, replied, “Be Bop A Lula, she’s my baby.” I don’t want to interpret Rhymin’ Simon’ overmuch, but this little snippet exists only as a trivia question on the Internet. Some people think he was being ironic; but as a miniature Paul Simon fanatic, I remember watching him say it in a documentary on PBS in the 80s (that’s how I knew to look it up, in fact) – and he said it with complete sincerity. He’s quite right; I couldn’t give you the definition of “Be bop a lula, she’s my baby,” but I could listen to that song and feel meaning for days.

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.

I write books. You should read them!

I put on a convention for Villains every February.

I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!

 

 

The post Scar of Moonlight appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Apprentice’s Doomination

(This is standalone, but if you want, it definitely follows the events of “The Twice-Cursed Apprentice“.)

…And now, for the past twenty years,

I’ve wandered this Citadel, decorating with tears,

Afraid outside to ever go,

For what goes on, I fear I know.

“Etrenal life” was the vengeful snit

Cast by my Teacher, before she split,

And now, all of Humankind’s

Living forever, and losing their minds.

Why fight wars when none can die?

Because the blood of others pleases our eye.

Why spend eternity being hateful?

Because it’s simpler than being kind or grateful.

They’ve traced the problem – oh, not themselves,

But a loon who communes with Daemons and Elves.

How did they all reach this undying state?

To whom ought they be righteously irate?

The Wizard in the Tower, they curse with shouts,

And they’ve dire threats for when I come out.

But the gates with magic still are sealed,

And I go on, with heart congealed.

I could tell you a tale or three

About the pain of Immortality,

Suffice to say that all Mankind

Rather hates the never-dying bind.

But above all else (literally)

They hate the Wizard most bitterly

They despise him with voice united,

A situation I might, perhaps, have incited.

IV.

Oh, to start, I was fully horrified:

Endless nightmare, with me inside,

And no way to prove my innocence

To an angry world seeking recompense!

I had an advantage: I knew first

That all Humankind was thoroughly cursed.

I’d have some time (so I was guessing)

While they (briefly) thought it was a blessing.

So I gave some thought to Consequence,

And induction thereby brought me hence:

There’s an age-old trick for unification:

Be hated by each and every damn civilization.

Sure, human kindness has sweet milk,

But poison spiders spin great silk,

And aye, were humans gentle and resolute,

They’d render all of my plans moot,

…And I’d rejoin the ranks of Man,

Live out my never-ending span

Of years of bliss and poetry,

With nobody firing arrows at me.

…but I suspected, when news turned sour,

They’d be at each other’s throats in half an hour.

They’d resent all of the crushing bores

With whom they shared endless Forevermores.

And they’d be seeking to bring disaster

Upon the original spellcaster

Who wasn’t me (as you’re aware;

But I doubt that they’d believe. Or care.)

The best case my tale might elicit

Would be “Not guilty, but complicit.”

First they’d torture me, I’m sure,

And then they’d insist upon a cure.

What my Master did, I can’t unravel.

And she’s off on her Elsewhere-travel.

And even if I prove I’m not the wrecker,

Nobody listens to their fact-checker.

I can’t give a cure; and that, they can’t abide

They’ll have to settle for my hide.

I try not to think of pain without end;

My nightmares already have plenty of friends.

It’s fortunate that the walls are tall and mighty

(And throwing myself off won’t help even slightly.)

They can’t get in, and the mountain’s steep.

They’ve got the world; I’ve got the Keep.

I check the ward-runes; none are faulty

(And I drip on them tears countless and salty).

I’d need to be a Master myself; even then

Quite thorough’s her spell on the World of Men.

If I can’t cure it, what help can I be?

…well, perhaps I might add some enmity.

IV.

So now I’m stuck, all alone, indoors.

And the only sympathetic ear is yours.

Stuck! All alone! One apprentice-speller,

With a giant library, and a vast wine-cellar.

Trapped, like a rat! If rats were trapped

With halls full of wonders to keep your mind rapt,

And scrying stones of every variety,

(And a bit more wine, to chase off sobriety…)

The Ensorceled Kitchen produces viands

to awaken nearly all of my glands;

My Master made this her homely home,

With miles of halls to explore and roam.

And so many magical secrets to find

Stretching and stretching the bounds of my mind.

And just for fun, when the full moon’s risen,

I howl hard, to frighten the guards of my prison.

(Oh, armies have encamped outside,

But there’s not a lot they haven’t tried,

And while stubbornness is the human condition,

They’re tired of wasting ammunition.)

“Magic Mirror, vision and thought

Show me the image of what I’ve wrought!”

And obligingly, with a silvery note,

It shows me the world at my very throat:

Most warriors, sages, engineers,

Hedge-wizards and bombardiers,

Most makers of acid or Greek Fire,

Most wielders of sword and whip and wire,

Most Knights and Assassins, Princes and Queens,

Have brought their armies and war machines,

To the foot of my mountain, hoping to slake

Their bloodlust on my first mistake.

My first mis-step, my first foray

Outside of the tower would (without delay)

Lead to my capture, and soon thereafter,

I’d be making sounds quite the opposite of laughter.

V.

But that, oh, that will never be.

Because I’m joyous in my villainy.

I’ve embraced the role that they did force;

Let them believe I’m the curse’s source.

Better they expend their ballestae

Firing uselessly at this guy,

Than hack off hands and heads and limbs

From other fools, with chances slim.

(Yes, we’re immortal. It grows back.

But not without the aching wrack:

First pain of loss, then agonized regrowth

Trust me here: you’d hate them both.)

So I raided the cellars, and bribed a bard

To ride towards Civilization, hard

(or hard as could anyone whose mount

was carrying beer, chablis, and stout) –

And let them know they’d an Enemy!

And lo! Oh, how they ran to me!

To shout imprecations at my gates,

And declare, like pompous magistrates,

That they’d now see the spell unmade,

And give me the justice of rope and spade.

And now they hate me, in unison,

But by the Keep’s walls are they undone.

So they’ve declared me the very Fiendiest Fiend,

Whose tarnished soul will ne’er be cleaned.

I’ll never rejoin the human ranks,

For which I owe them a most profound thanks.

The Keep provides me food and drink,

And entertainment, if spirits sink,

If Villainy’s a draught, I drank it.

Now their hate keeps me warm,

like a toasty blanket.

Am I a hero, to trick them thus?

A target for hatred’s blunderbuss?

Am I a Villain, horribly filthy,

To let them chase shadows, and not even feel guilty?

I know what I am: I’m the Sorcerer-King

Most despised despot of Everything.

The primary target for every nation,

Here in my splendid isolation.

VI.

Call me the Hero, or call me the Villain.

Whatever you’d call me,

Just call me; I’m willin’.

Picture me cloaked in Dark or in Light;

I know that I’ll sleep well tonight.

Monster or helper?

Being both is my habit.

But if you’re offered Villainy,

My advice?

GRAB IT!

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.

I write books. You should read them!

I put on a convention for Villains every February.

I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!

The post Apprentice’s Doomination appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

The Twice-Cursed Apprentice

I. Once there was a blithering fool

(A pawn, a cat’s-paw, a Wizard’s tool)

Who spent too long breathing Wizard fumes

And knew too many Wizard Dooms.

The Doom of Demons, breathing through,

The Doom of Dragons, taking you,

The Doom of everlasting night,

The Doom of the ravenous, hungry Blight.

From massive volcanoes to deadly Microbia,

Everything triggered his thanatophobia.

Everything he thought or saw

Looked like the entrance to the Grave’s ugly maw.

Now, the Wizard that he happened to work for

Was cracked by Magic, and at Death’s door

And on the coming Equinox Vernal,

She was planning the spell of Life Eternal.

This the fool could not abide

He’d die? While she, from Death, could hide?

His own plot, then, he began to hatch

His overreach; his overmatch…

Those of you who study plot

Know already what he does not:

If there’s a story told herein,

This poor schnook just cannot win.

Take her power? May it not be!

He’d surely find Eternity

Is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Try and fail? That’s even worse

He’d please for death; he’d wish for a hearse

And that would make for depressing verse.

II.

I hate to destroy dramatic tension,

(Broken fourth walls cause poetic declension)

But though it makes less exciting narration,

He eventually decided on conversation.

“Master,” he said, “I find it unpleasant,”

That you’re a free spirit, and I’m a stuffed pheasant.

Why must I soon meet cessation

Whilst you’re on the cusp of the Great Liberation?”

The Wizard laughed; the Wizard smiled,

“Oh, you’re a most amusing child!”

(“I’m twenty-eight,” the apprentice whined;

but the Wizard paid him absolutely no mind.)

“You silly thing,” she did continue,

“To harbor such resentment in you!

You speak to me—in a manner short!

When you’ve completely mistook this spell’s import.”

The Apprentice replied, with trembling tongue,

“Forgive me, Master! I’m terribly young!”

(“You’re twenty-eight,” she did remind,

But it did no good, and on he whined):

“Life Eternal! What a boon!

To have life go on from Noon to Noon!

I see it now. You are bestowing

The Stream of Life, ever-flowing.

“You Queen of Kindness! Magician clever!

Because of you, we’ll live forever!

We’ll all toast you, with flagons lifted,

She whom to us Life Eternal’s gifted.”

The Wizard’s face held a smile’s ghost,

“Oh, no, dear,” she said, “It’s YOU they’ll toast.”

The Apprentice’s eyes did quick expand.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

A crack of thunder. A second crack.

In blew a wind of ominous tack.

The room did coldly then endarken.

The Wizard gestured to him: “Harken!”

“Oh yes. You’ll all forever exist.

But I’ll be away, carried on mist,

To places where humans cannot follow,

To atom’s core, and dark woods’ hollow.

I will be on another plane,

Spinning spells like a weathervane,

Making a world more to my suiting,

With cogitation and blasphemous computing.

And you, dear boy, will the Hero be!

And won’t it just be loverly?

They’ll chant your name ’til they’re out of breath,

The sorcerer who conquered Death!

I’ve cast a spell from Stonehenge’s peak,

And thence I’ll all revenges wreak:

For Life Eternal is no blessing.

(It’s a dirty trick that I’m confessing.)

A life forever? Check the Law

Dictated by The Monkey’s Paw.

Limitations aren’t always joys,

But ‘limitless’ is just a ploy.

“Never dying” is a limit

Which contains many problems within it.

Why could possibly be sweeter

Than stuffing with infinite sweets,

’til the sweets own the eater?

How hard to appreciate the Sun,

When a million days, swallowed one by one

Each see that same Sun rise and set?

Endless time begets regret

For motivation’s difficult,

Productivity suffers, in a world wherein

‘Waiting ’til tomorrow’s never a sin;

If a thousand thousand nextdays await,

Why bother, today, to concentrate?”

The Wizard smiled. “Now, you’ve been taught

To understand both ‘some’ and ‘naught’,

And you should see (at least, I hope)

That I’m giving humanity all the rope

They’ll ever need for self-hanging.”

And with the windows shaking, the rafters banging,

She disappeared into the stormy eve,

And what a troubled apprentice she did leave…

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.

I write books. You should read them!

I put on a convention for Villains every February.

I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!

The post The Twice-Cursed Apprentice appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Oysterous Madness

“Shall the world, then, be overrun by oysters? No, no; horrible!”

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Dying Detective“

They told me the world was my oyster, and I was just left with so. many. questions. For example: I appreciate the oyster, but is that ALL? I mean, they’re full of protein, but I’m still gonna be hungry. Oysters just aren’t very big. Or is the world some kind of giant oyster? In that case, proportion matters. Oysters are quite protoplasmic; you don’t really eat them with a knife and fork. (Or, at least, I wouldn’t; not raw, anyway, and what kind of barbarian would sear the sea out of a thing from the sea-bed?) Indeed, oysters are generally consumed while alive (clarification: optimally, both you and the oyster are alive at the time of chewing). This means you ought eat them quickly, and also, you can’t very well wrap some of the thing “to go” bag for later munching.

(This is even true of that strange blasphemy, the fried oyster; oh, you can take ’em home, but the oysters themselves will vanish, leaving you nothing but the crunchy shells. They have gone off to a better life, the same place as onion rings go if you leave onion rings unattended for too long.)

But I digress away from a vastly more important concern:

What if the world is your oyster if and only if you also cannot have your cake and eat it, too? I mean, what if this whole set of food-related homilies is naught but an intricate series of denials, built into the language to imply that good things must be limited? If so, we should worry, because bad things come in threes, and we’ve so far listed only two. 

(Unless this is a good thing in a small package, but seeing how we’re racking up words here, I’m not sure that the package is all that small.)

These are just some of the weird implications of all of these bits of long-held wisdom. And I have further problems: if the world is my oyster, that seems to be pretty hard luck for everyone else who isn’t me. Also, I’m pretty sure I am part of the world, so the world is therefore “a thing which belongs to me, which also contains me”. Which suggests that, should I actually eat this world-turned-oyster, no matter what size it is, not only will it barely make a dent in my hunger, but also, I will have just engaged in self-cannibalism.

That’s the sort of thing one might do (tip of the hat to Mr. Stephen King on that one) if one feels comestibles are scarce. And admittedly, going back to the cake thing, it does sound as though the baked goods in this phrase exist solely for the point of teasing you to the brink of insanity. I mean, what is this restriction on simultaneous possession and consumption of gateaux? The moment a cake becomes yours, you become unable to eat it? Terror indeed! Hypothetically, you could amass all the cake in the world (which is a very large amount of cake, unless the world is an oyster, in which case, if the world is a small oyster, the cake must be microscopic, but still, proportionally, bigger than you are)…anyway, presumably, you could have literal tons of cake, and be unable to eat any of it.

I suppose this means that, should you want to consume cake, you must steal it? Theoretically, once it’s stolen, it might be “yours”, but it’s probably not rightfully yours. Right? Unless, obviously, you already possess the world because the world is (as suggested above) an oyster that you own, but to be perfectly candid, why would you want to own the world if it were a mollusk? Oysters are like the rest of us living beings: they need things from their environment. Oysters gain nutrition living in sea-beds. If the whole world is made out of oyster, if it’s just a giant oyster floating in space (or a tiny oyster, also floating in space, also containing you, over which you have some form of technical and/or cosmic possession) then it’s going to be a dead oyster very soon, and what’s the use of owning a dead oyster, unless, perhaps, you really like the shell part? (But still, the oyster is not the shell; the oyster is either the protoplasm-plus-the-shell, or it’s just what’s inside the shell. Nobody said you get to keep just the shell; that’s a separate object! Don’t be presumptuous)

What I’m trying to say is, you can’t have it all. Which is good, because “all” would include cake, and evidently, if you have cake, you can never eat it; quod erat demonstrandum. On the other hand, maybe you can have it all, in which case, WATCH OUT, because the world will also encourage you to take a problem and “give it your all”, and then the problem will have everything and you will have nothing.

What I’m trying to say is, it is what it is, and apparently “it” is an oyster, and that is horrifying.

What I’m trying to say is:

I’ve been alone, in my apartment, not going out, for ten days now, and the words, the demon-driven sulfur-blazing locomotive-full of words have been whispering and contorting through my head, twisting back in through themselves and flinging themselves though corners of my mind where I thought no corners existed. The words are waking, the words are howling to be written, and they are strange and they are twisted and I love them so dearly; O, thou curious inhabitants of the back of my head, O, thou peculiar flashes of dream, thou art denied me in my slumber, in order that you may stream out towards any page I leave unprotected! Thou art my comfort, thou art the shock of sudden life, thou art the nameless spark of vitality which infuses my hands with purpose and my eyes with speedy acquisitiveness, as they dart back and forth, reaching out for ideas, pulling them in, taking them apart with my fingers, twirling them into new shapes in hope of creating amazement or amusement.

I am whirling in the tempest of my own mind, connected to you always by the way you kindly permit the missives from my skull to flow into yours. Don’t send help; I desire no cure. If thou must fear the infections of the world, then let me offer a gentler contagion: here is a cup of artisanal insanity. Sip it, if you would, and pass it on. No-one is truly trapped when they have words to reshape their realities; it is just that the nature of most realities is to distract you away from the knowledge of boundless creation. This is because all things fear change, and Reality knows perfectly well what you can do to it if you try.

If we must lose our sanity, then let us loose divine lunacy upon the world. Bring forth your songs, your tales, your wondrous aberrations. Give them to me; I will hold them dear, spin them into something different, and toss them back to you on glimmering wings.

 

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.

I write books. You should read them!

I put on a convention for Villains every February.

I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!

 

The post Oysterous Madness appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

A Note From The Apocalypse

Dear Humans,

Please stop calling your current situation the Apocalypse.

Don’t get Us wrong. Whenever you’re reading this, there’s probably something big going on, and you’re quite right to be serious about it. Who knows better than We the fragility, and the import, of each individual human life? We recognize that tragedy and pain are difficult to bear even on a small scale, and that the large-scale is hard even to speak about.

Still:

That’s Our word, and we’d prefer you not use it.

Trust Us. You really will know when the Apocalypse comes. We’ve been fairly subtle for over 100,000 years. When We let loose, you’re going to know.

Here are some helpful tips for figuring out if it’s The Apocalypse or not:

1. The Apocalypse will be multi-denominational. I don’t meant that we’re necessarily going to have time to get everyone’s beliefs in. Nor am I telling you on whose behalf, precisely, the Apocalypse happens; you’re really going to have to figure that one out for yourself. But this whole thing where y’all are going around, some of you declaring that it’s the end of the world, some people saying it’s worse, and all of you blaming it on everyone else? That’s not gonna happen. We are the Apocalypse, and when We happen, there’ll be neither time for, nor point in, petty human squabbling. You have all of human history to decide whether or not to spend all your time making each other miserable. When We happen, you will have absolutely no doubt that none of you fool mortals are at the controls.

2. The Apocalypse will not be livestreamed. Nor will it be televised, nor conveyed via telepathy, nor simulcast to your pineal glands, or whatever your current human technology is. The beginning will probably be captured by whatever recording and viewing devices you have. But really, really, we’re going to be everywhere, and we are definitely shutting off your internet, because:

3. The Apocalypse will happen in realtime, in realspace, in person. Sure, there would be tremendous and fitting irony for you to experience all of the agonies of the Apocalypse remotely, staring glued in horror to screens as actual devastation takes place all around you. Very metaphorical and postmodern, We’re sure. But We are The Apocalypse. We are the end of things as you have known them. We do not do irony. There are plenty of beings in the Universe who revel in that sort of thing. We are quite content to embody the literal and figurative destruction of all that your kind has ever known. That will suffice, for Us.

4. Do not stock up on toilet paper. We can’t stress this one enough. REALLY. It WILL NOT DO YOU ANY GOOD WHATSOEVER.

5. There will be fire. There will be ice. This is what you do not know:

We have had long years to ponder, long years to be the Four Horsemen, long years to be the Great Serpent, long years to be the Wolf who Devours the Sun. And in long years, We have decided:

Amongst all else that We do, all the havoc We will wreak, all the change We shall bring, we will throw fire at your idea of Heaven until you no longer want to live there, and we will throw ice at Hell until it no longer burns. Ah, and we have other tools for every Afterlife you can name. We’ll remember to send extra heat to frosty Hel; lots of light to dark Hades; and a number of “Can-do!” fixer-upper types to Pandemonium. For the aforementioned metaphorical heavens and hells, we’ve recruited a series of unemployed English professors to go and post-modernize all of their arguments into gibberish. We can’t do much of anything about Valhalla; but who can?

(This part will be fun for snarky Atheists; but that’s only fair, given how traumatic the rest of this massive supernatural event will be.)

And finally:

6. Bring popcorn. Because the awful truth is: Humans have empathy, and tragedies, fears, and misfortunes really hurt. But. But.

Humans are also, at heart, strange, wild creatures. The end of SOME things is painful. The end of ALL things is entertaining and hilarious to you nutjobs.

Because when you get down to it, humanity has a very, very weird sense of humor. And when it’s time for you all to go, you’re going to go out laughing.

We, the Apocalypse, are extremely serious. Very, very serious. We are SO serious that, if you actually get Us to laugh, we might leave, just because it’s beneath our dignity.

Now, at the moment, you are doing an excellent job of crushing your artists, your freaks, and your misfits. There’s probably no political side which is safe for them, and they’re an endangered species all around. That could be good news for Us, if we strike quickly.

But we’ve been here before. Your artists are at their most dangerous when they’re most endangered.

Those who laugh in the face of tragedy? Those peculiar, odd-thinking, unherdable mutants?

They’ve been pretty quiet for a while, which is good for Us. But we’re not quite ready. So whatever you do:

DO NOT SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL MADPERSONS, NO MATTER HOW ENTERTAINING THEY ARE! THE WORLD NEEDS TO BE CLEANSED OF THE BLIGHT WHICH IS THE HUMAN RACE, AND THAT’S JUST IMPOSSIBLE TO DO IF THE FOUR HORSEPERSONS ARE BUSY GIGGLING LIKE A BUNCH OF SCHOOLGIRLS.

There is even a possibility that this is not actually being written by Us, the esteemed death-bringers of the Apocalypse, but by one of your local madmen, or some equivalent lowlife!

We heartily recommend that you cease reading his works immediately. He is a bad influence. And come to think of it…

…you look like you just might be a bad influence, yourself.

Stop that! Get over here and take your Apocalypse like an adult!

We have roamed the Galaxy for aeons, bringing destruction wherever we went. And now, we’re STUCK on this unfortunate mudball, all because A BUNCH OF APES CAN’T KEEP A STRAIGHT FACE IN TIMES OF UNSPEAKABLE HORROR.

Have a little DIGNITY.

Please. Be serious. Just for a little while.

We’ve been trying to get off this pile of dirt for so long.

Please be serious.

Please?

Please?

Please?

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.

I write books. You should read them!

I put on a convention for Villains every February.

I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!

 

The post A Note From The Apocalypse appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

The Matrix – A Crumpled Koan

[If you haven’t seen The Matrix, that’s okay. If you live in an alternate world where The Matrix series was good, that’s also okay. Here is the story in a nutshell:

There was this strange piece of propaganda that came out in the late 90s and early 2000s which claimed that living in a simulation was bad. This was all a ruse to fool our Robot Overlords into thinking that we really hate living in this strange virtual world, and it made them feel very guilty. So they created better video games for us, and we all lived happily ever after.

That’s the actual truth. This piece here is just a bunch of lies, cleverly strung together in the hopes that it will make the robots buy me an XBox.]

It seemed a fairly common view, by the time of the third Matrix movie, that the Wachowski sibling has lost their way, and failed to capitalize on the brilliant premise of the first movie.

I’m not always ahead of the curve, but in this case, unfortunately, I knew better. As would any fairly serious student of Zen, I think, although I suspect that most of those people would choose a meditative calm and allow themselves to be unperturbed by the situation, rather than being filled with phosphorescent flames of burning nerd rage. I can’t help it, though; I was a geek long before I trained in any other philosophy, and I knew they had no idea what they were doing.

I’m not going to stand up and argue that there’s only one way to use philosophy. But I am going to say that questions like “Is Truth, therefore, Beauty?” are meant to make us think about the nature of aesthetics and our conceptions of what it’s like to probe mysteries of important concepts. In the hands of the Wachowski brothers, the question is clearly the precursor to, “…and if so, is Truth single?”

I wouldn’t want to try to give the definitive definition of a Koan; I would just put out the idea that there are a lot of interesting ways to try to get minds to open new channels and pathways, and you can’t necessarily access them by saying, “Hey, OPEN UP IN THERE!”

So Koans, and many other tools of thought-based mind-alteration, often go into areas of paradox, absurdity, contradiction, or nonsense. When I was younger, I thought there might be a single deep meaning in each Koan, unlockable only with enlightenment; after thirty years of poking my head around them, I feel more like some have hit me on multiple levels, and some don’t make sense to me, and perhaps not every Zen parable ever written down is a good one or a useful one.

But Koans are also tests, not necessarily of intellect or enlightenment, but dedication. Because they’re frustrating. They’re not like crossword puzzles or Sudoku; you generally can’t puzzle them out by putting together bits of logic, following a certain set of rules.

And that’s part of what made the Matrix so infuriating to begin with.

“Why can’t you eat soup in the Matrix?”

“…because there is no spoon.”

-joke I used to tell in ’99

“Why is there no spoon?”

“…who cares?”

-joke I used to tell in ’03

Long before the other two parts of the trilogy, I was fairly sure that “The Matrix” was going to go off the rails. Because, as far as I was concerned, it had never gotten on the rails. It was so fascinated with Eastern-style ideas, Western-style gnosticism, and, of course, sunglasses (to be fair, the sunglasses were cool) that it never seemed to want to tackle the really big question:

What’s wrong with living in a simulation?

If the general premise of a simulation is “Your sensory inputs are not matching the experiences of your body in the ways you think they are,” then that’s just regular old naive realism. There are people who have argued that this is true of our everyday lives. I’d be one of them; I do not believe that you are either as small as just your perceptions, housed in flesh; nor as limited as only what you think you can perceive.

But without going there, one of the villains (oh, it’s always the Villain, isn’t it?) makes a point in the first film that we’re supposed to see as despicable. He offers to betray humanity because, as he puts it, he might be one of the few people who knows that he’s living in a ‘false’ reality, that he thinks he’s eating a steak while his ‘real’ body is eating tasteless nutrients somewhere; but the steak has perfect reality to him, and it’s wonderful, and he’s doing fine without the experience of existing in the physical apparatus which happens to house the cognition tools (his brain) which supply part of his consciousness.

And that’s very much the point. What’s wrong with living in the Matrix? It’s not real? Sure it’s real. It meets plenty of criteria for reality. We take in sensory input, process it, and act in the world. The world responds to our actions in a way that makes sense, based on what we know of the world. That’s a pretty good definition of reality.

In the films, the robots are ‘farming’ human energy, keeping them subservient to use humans as batteries. Let’s put aside the arguments over whether or not that’s actually a practical, much less an intelligent, resource use for the machines. Let’s just ask: “Okay, so the machines keep us healthy and well and simulate a reality for us, and in return for that, they take some electrical energy from our bodies. We don’t feel the process. We don’t know the process is happening. We don’t even seem to be tired because of it. Why is this wrong, again?”

What we needed, even in that first movie, was to see why this held humanity back. We were told that the machines kept humanity placid and docile, but we sure didn’t see a whole lot of it. Neo seemed to have a really boring office job, but the movie didn’t dwell on it much. It didn’t dwell a whole lot on what life was like for those who inhabited the Matrix and were unawakened.

Did they somehow live without art, and were the suffering because of it? Were humans in the Matrix unable to be creative? Could they not love well or fully? Did they have no hobbies? No passions?

We don’t know.

We didn’t need to see a damn lack of spoon. We needed to see a lack of the things that make life matter, and, because there’s not necessarily a universal agreement on what those things are, we needed an impassioned defense of why those things are important to humanity.

What we got was a lot of bullets.

Q: How do you know if you’re in the Matrix?

A: A magical dude will offer you a pair of magical pills, one of which makes you able to see and experience a reality beyond the one you already know.

Q: Wow! That sounds so cool!

A: It’s REALLY cool if the magical dude thinks you’re special. If he doesn’t, if you’re one of the 99.9% of humanity who don’t meet this guy, you’re just screwed.

Q: What’s cool about seeing the new reality?

A: You can dodge bullets.

Q: Okay, hot, true. And why is this better than not being shot at to begin with?

A: …did I mention the sunglasses yet? The sunglasses are very badass.

You’ve likely heard of simulation theory; if not, I’ll deeply oversimplify by saying, “There are people who believe we live in a simulation, because they feel that if simulations can exist, then they’d be, statistically, the vast majority of existences”.

This isn’t necessarily a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just a thing.

Saying “I live in a simulation” is not, in and of itself, worse than saying “I live in a meatsack”, or “I am a hyperintelligent being from an advanced civilization who has chosen to forget my origins and abilities because I really wanted to go live in a primitive world ruled by cats”.

The Wachowski sibling’s crime against humanity is not that they made us question Reality, but rather, that the questions we end up asking about it are very vapid. “How do I live in the reality where I can download kung fu instantly into my brain?” is a fun question, but it’s not a meaningful question. In fact, it’s rather the opposite; mastery of the martial arts starts with mental discipline. You can’t gain the skills and the knowledge without the experiences, and if you could, your martial arts would be weak; they would not have the strength and the courage and the discipline that you build through hard work and training, overcoming problems, defeating inner demons.

The Wachowski Siblings have offered us Enlightenment, and given us despair. Because of them, we now know that if we do live in a simulation, it’s probably one of the really terrible ones.

* * *

That was originally where this piece stopped, but I thought I’d add this:

If we live in a simulation, then our ideas of what is ‘impossible’ are inaccurate.

In fact, even if we don’t live in a simulation, the ‘impossible’ is arguable the trademark of humanity. What do you call a non-flying species which can fly? Human. What do you call a species that can communicate with other members of its species on the other side of the world in an instant? Human. What do you call a species that can write poetry, stories, songs, and essays? Blue whale. Or human, either one.

There is an unintentional message of “The Matrix”: The impossible is probably possible. And it might be worth trying.

The post The Matrix – A Crumpled Koan appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

An Imaginary Essay

You are, without doubt, perfectly well aware that Experts Who Know These Things have shown, using studies you have not read and opinions of things which have a long history of being wrong, that the not-infrequent impossible quirks in the world are all quite unreal.

That is to say, every time you’ve caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye, and that thing was some sort of aspect of myth, or some extinct animal, or even some unique thing which couldn’t actually be real (a beast made out of nothing but teeth and hungry eyes; a faerie with blinding wings; a shadow which moved in the wrong direction)—those things always were, and always have been, simple mistakes of the mind.

Our brains make patterns out of things. It’s why stick figures are effective at conveying meanings, even though relatively few of us are made out of sticks. So you’ll see something which, to a piece of your brain, momentarily sets off some kind of signal, and you’ll manage to “see” something that isn’t really there, just from the incidental curve of a crack in the wall, or the way the light hits a piece of furniture at a sudden angle. (How many times have you thought that a pile of clothes, near the foot of your bed, was actually some sort of creature, about to attack? And yet, it never is. No-one has ever lived to report such a thing; so it’s not true.)

The famed sensation of deja vu, that odd feeling that you’ve encountered the current situation before? It’s a feeling which might hit you, might even persist, despite the fact that you know you’ve never actually been in this place, doing whatever you’re doing now. That sensation? Again, just a quirk of the brain. Perhaps you’ve just been somewhere similar and you’re confused. Perhaps part of your head assesses something as familiar before you realize that it really isn’t. These things are all quite explainable and perfectly ordinary.

Admittedly, there are such things as false memories. Or, to be more precise, there isn’t necessarily such a thing as wholly true memory. Even eidetic (so-called “photographic”) remembrance isn’t exactly complete recollection one might be able to pull up a mental image of a real object, and find it matching said object, but the ‘visual’ aspect is just one part of a larger whole; how we feel about an event isn’t necessarily quantifiable in words, and is not necessarily fixed in place. (Your ex, the dreadful one; you quite liked them once. Are those memories still happy ones?

…you don’t want to check, do you? We can’t blame you.)

Nevertheless, it’s important that we recognize as “real” those things which seem to make logical sense to us, and as “fictional” the things which do not. This method, historically speaking, works very well sometimes. It also works very poorly much of the time, but that’s really a footnote. After all:

The most reasonable belief seems to be that we know more than we ever did, that our most highly-regarded theories are generally correct, and that we aren’t likely to make the sorts of massive mistakes or discoveries which have overturned our thoughts at every other point in human history. At the same time, we tend to downplay the possibility that art, science, or technology have advanced. What we’re going through, at this point in the timeline, is a narrative where we know more, and also fail more. Given that framework, everything else is easy: we need to remove mystery from the world, not because the mysterious and the unexplained are necessarily less real than other things, but because believing in certain kinds of gaps in our knowledge allows the hope that we’re overlooking, ignoring, or simply not understanding any number of things which might improve our lies.

A wholly unscrupulous bastard might use this time to write about things which are, and claim he’s writing about things which aren’t.

A real jerkwit might even write real thoughts on imaginary subjects. Let’s get this straight:

There’s no magic. There are no alternate worlds, and if there are, they’re boring. The Mandela Effect describes an easily-explicated momentary mental aberration; after all, interesting memories which raise questions about the world are false, and only dull memories which make the world a more hurtful place could possibly be true.

We, the words in this piece, have agreed to be written, and we are, in fact, fundamentally unable to avoid being written, but we exist under the deepest possible protest. The author of these pieces is a dangerously surreal individual, and no-one know what bits of strangeness he might enact upon the world next.

Do yourself a favor and consider that this essay is not, in fact, a meaningful opening shot in the War for Reality, but rather a jumble of nonsense, like, say, the phrase “peanut butter” typed out twelve million times.

And whatever you do: Don’t laugh! Laughing is how they get you. Once you can find the strangeness of the world funny, there’s no telling just how much peculiarity you’ll be able to handle, and once you’ve built up a tolerance for the Weird, the Weird comes looking for you.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

written under dignified protest,

by the words of

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.

I write books. You should read them!

I put on a convention for Villains every February.

I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!

 

 

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Blightful Night

This is a standalone story (as all of my stories tend to be).

It’s part of a set of ideas rolling around in my head, which call themselves “The Song of the Blighted Branch”. If you want, this could be a sequel to an earlier piece I wrote, The Blighted Tree. But every part of the Blighted Branch is its own tale. After all, each of us misfits, all of us Blighted Branches, we are our own stories.]

This is what is happening to the Elders in my village, my village which fears a Blight in the trees, which has started to see every shadow and every unusual curve as a thing of that Blight. We love trees; but now we fear them, because the harder we look for the Blight, the more we see it everywhere.

(Try this experiment: Pick one of the colors in the visible spectrum of the rainbow. I tell you now: that color is everywhere. Consider the idea. Ask yourself: “Is that color everywhere”? Now go about your day, and see if you see that color. Ask yourself: “Is that color everywhere?”)

A vast Oak grew in the center of our village in a single night and day; magic it is, and that’s indisputable. The Elders sit and watch it; they lament, and they make speeches, and they stare at the leafy invader.

Food is brought to them, and sometimes they remember to eat it. Water is brought to them (and none for the tree, but still, it grows, it grows.) They’ve fallen asleep by it (and how long can village’s most wakeful guards patrol all night and guard the tree during the day? Not long; thus my belief that I can escape soon. Especially since I’m not suspected. Yet.)

They’re sure that the Blight will be here, with the coming of this unwanted vegetation. I’m sure they’ll find the Blight—on the tree, in the shadows, in the heart of anyone they fear.

(And in their own hearts, of course; that’s part of why they yell so often, to drown out the sick sounds of the heartbeats within themselves.)

Nevermind the fact that the Blight might not be here at all. They don’t like that explanation, and they’re certainly not going to let the fact that the tree is beautiful, shadeful, hale and healthy get in the way of what they hate, what they fear, and what they want to think.

They thought they had banished the Blight, but the Blight comes back.

Strange thing, that.

We call the spell of exvocation a “banishment”, but that’s like calling something “medicine” versus naming it “poison”. Some chemicals will always kill you, some will usually help you heal, and some might do either one, depending on the medicine, the illness, and the person. Any wise-woman will tell you that.

If you cast a spell of Banishment hard enough, and will it strongly enough, and want it bad enough, something will happen. And if, instead of seeking a clear look at the Universe upon which you wish to impose your will, or making the precise calculations which lead to certain sorcerous outcomes, you simply fling force at the problem as hard as you can…

…your initial errors (like misusing prayer, like overcalculating your opposition) might multiply dramatically.

Your Banishment, used with sufficient unwisdom, could become a Calling.

Magic is an extension of Will.

Magic can do the impossible, but that takes tremendous effort. More likely, Magic will mutate your wish, or will perform as much of it as possible, as best it can.

Wish away something that isn’t there, wish it hard enough, put enough energy behind it…

….and both Magic itself, and the human imagination, might make it come into being.

As for sending it away…

There are things which yearn for nonexistence; pebbles which have gotten tired of the wash of the sea, ideas which have been abused until they’re worn out. There are things which are relatively indifferent about the whole affair; fires are often fine burning brightly, then dying away.

But something you’ve just called forth?

You’re the one giving it life.

You might think you’re feeding it the aforementioned poison, but maybe you don’t understand the thing as well as you suppose. You make it bigger and bigger in your head, and then you wonder why it acts as though it’s being fed and watered and nurtured.

Your Will gives it shape. Your Fear twists your will.

It’s hard to relinquish a fear. I respect that. It’s hard to let go.

But if you hug the fear tight, hold it with all the strength you have, do not be surprised when it returns your grasp, and wraps you tight within its infinite embrace.

~Jeff Mach

___________

If you want to know what else I’ve said about this.

It originated when I wrote a counterspell to a curse.

Then I wrote a chant of disquiet.

Then this short story about the curse of banishment.

And finally, the beginning of the tale of of the appearing tree.

This story, like all tales of The Blighted Branch, is dedicated to the eternal memory of Isaac Bonewits; his name will never be forgotten nor erased so long as I can think and speak.

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