Chaos Undivided
Jan. 22nd, 2014 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI dreamed a lot about Coulson, chaos, and magic. To start with I dreamed that, before channel 4 starts showing it again (hurry up!), someone showed me an episode from later in the season. It had something to do with Blade also being a Marvel property. And in the dream I found it very disappointing and was feeling really let down and spoilered. So I woke up, turned over, and went for a better dream.
I dreamed I was in bed with Natalie Dormer, so I'm pretty sure that counts. ... just trying to sleep though. There was a unisex dorm room with about twice as many people as beds. Everyone was annoyed because I was all elbows, so I ended up with a bed to myself, the one in the draught between door and window. She was also helping me with tips on presentation to try and attract Coulson's attention. We were pretty sure it was working, because the pause of utter blankness before he managed his usual calm manner was getting longer. But then he'd go back to his office.
The adventure started when some chaos cultists arrived and stole my rainbow bag to carry their collection of eyebrows. That they were cutting off people. Because my brain is weird. But also because magic can be targeted by hair and blood, so if they stole those from everyone they could both walk away and hold everyone hostage.
I hid by slipping out the window, then followed them, using weird paths through gaps that shouldn't have been wide enough, and climbing as if I weighed nothing. Because I had a big secret. I was a chaos worshipper too.
Not like those guys though. They were each adherents of a different chaos demon, like in Warhammer. I pitied them for thinking so small they'd got trapped by such things. They were basically warpstone junkies, making weak solutions of it and injecting it, courting mutation deliberately. They were the kind of chaos cultists abhorred by society, and if they were captured, cremation was standard procedure. Preferably of their corpses, but either way would work.
I did not want to burn, so I concealed my allegiance, since the finer points of chaotic theology seemed likely to elude most casual observers.
I followed them most of the way out of the complex, then lost sight of them just before we ended up out the front. The front of the building was one of my standard settings, a big huge stage with tall steps and classical columns holding up a half roof. Using the front door and presenting yourself to the world to make big speeches was much the same thing. Mostly people used the side passage, which was leafy and had a nice little gate. But it was the small hours of the morning, so the only things on the 'stage' were some telescopes for stargazing. There was a big square in front of the building so you could see a bit of sky. The view was blocked by... I think it was a cooling tower like for generators, and a big dish like a radio telescope... but you could still see up and around it, and because neither were lit the light pollution was minimal. So, telescopes, darkness, view, I went up on the 'stage' to get a look.
... I think I played too much Sims 2; all your smart characters just randomly spend hours with a telescope to increase their logic score.
There was a security guard who challenged me. I asked if he'd seen the other guys escape, he said nobody had been through here before me. Problem. He called out the guards and a search was set up, but I got a nasty feeling of urgency and hurried back inside ahead of them.
I found the cultists making popcorn in the lobby. Because apparently we had a popcorn concession stand? (This kind of thing is why my dreams take a lot of untangling before being useful as plot bunnies, though as I go along writing these blogs I tend to detangle them and get to the story stuff instead of strictly dream stuff.) There was hot oil and corn and a wooden ladle for handling it all, and there were three cultists just kind of hanging out making snacks, two men and a woman. They threw the whole burning hot lot at me when they saw me, but I bounced it straight back at them. The men got covered in hot goopy popcorn, the woman caught the ladle and threw it back to me. So I tucked it in my belt and ran after them.
They eluded me again, because dreams are made mostly of chase sequence, so there was lots more running and staircases than is at all reasonable within standard geometry. But I've been in hotels like that.
When I caught up to them they had Coulson, and they were tying him up methodically, with what looked like standard sewing thread. Which doesn't sound very tough, but they had him wrapped up over and over, a giant criss cross pattern; they were down to wrapping his hands together, each individual finger bound to its opposite number. Attempts to just pull push out of the thread would hit an optimised balance of surprising strength and skinny thread slicing in from the pressure. Very hard to escape yet looking like almost nothing. Like the chaos addiction they were planning to introduce him to. I recognised the ritual.
"Good taste, bad plan," I told them, and then there was a fight. I tried to get to Coulson to unbind him, which was a mistake - they got to their supplies first, and got a syringe full of warpstone solution into him. I froze. My usual push/pull magic was too clumsy for this, because either gesture could just inject him. I had to try and get my mind around the whole syringe at once, plunger and all, and push the lot of it out; too slow, they pushed a few cc into Phil first. But I got the rest clear, and delicate part done I threw the thing hard enough the woman holding it went with it right across the room.
I rushed to Phil's side, and the cultists, cackling, let me. They knew they'd got him. And they had a syringe full of shiny shiny warp to play with now. I left them to chase each other away, bickering over dosage, and hurried to check Coulson.
His eyes looked like fractal rainbow oil slicks were covering them. From the inside.
Their ritual had worked.
Now I could only try and guide him through it.
For the cultists the point of the ritual was power, and the warping of self that single path mages considered an undesirable side effect. Delivering new worshipper/victims to their demons was a desirable side effect, so they'd have been bickering about who got to lead him to who. I didn't have such a goal in mind; to me the only goal now was coming out the other side of this a person.
First I had to strip their trap away from him. That started simple, since unbinding (from the strictures of reality) was the next phase of their ritual too. The parts that were bound over clothes were simple, and most of it came away easy, but the hands were going to be fiddly. I needed Phil to pay attention and stay calm; I needed him to stay himself. I got him to look at me, listen, give a sitrep and focus. Meanwhile mundane reality was falling away and pretty rainbow land starting to climb up where the walls should be.
I could see the power dancing in him, and I knew I could dance with it. But I told him, he had choices. I could help him through this, but if I did, if he let me in that far, he'd never quite be rid of me. Phil had a soft smile and said that was kind of like he'd been planning. But I told him that marriage wasn't half as binding as this could be. We'd see and know each other, be vulnerable to each other, in ways simple oaths couldn't reach. He just said I'd never been in a relationship, had I? I liked the look on his face, the way he reached for me, but I thought he was being dopey and romantic and not quite grokking our souls were in danger. He got centered, Coulson again, and told me he trusted me, and in this, he needed someone. Needed me.
And to stay with him where he was going, we needed to be soulbound.
So okay.
So, concentrating on serious work stuff, not at that point simples. <3 Coulson.
First thing I had to do was get his hands free, and I needed to do it fast. His own knife had been left there for the purpose, it sliced through fine, but there was blood. Blood was the ritual point. Blood for the blood god.
The horrors and glories of it I had seen once, at my own initiation, and I had no interest in seeing again. To me it had been new, and with only movies and martial arts for reference, I had seen the dance in it and been tempted. But Coulson? He had been there, done that. A lot of warriors got that far and saw a way to go back to it stronger, faster, hit harder, get a piece of their own back, but Coulson had long since faced down that temptation. He wasn't a vengeance kind of guy. He saw the violence, as I had once, and he understood the cost, as I only had when I'd filtered out the unfamiliar and seen the women and children suffering for it. He saw what it cost the soldiers, who lost everything they could have been to become the war. He didn't want that ever, and reached out to try and help them back away from it. Then he saw the blood on his hands, and remembered other times it got there. He felt the pain, and for a moment welcomed it as due. That was the other face of the blood, giving in by giving up, being the willing victim as if that's payment due. But guilt, again, was something he'd stared down at three in the morning, and set in its place. Wasn't anyone deserved what the blood god did, not from either side of it, himself included.
Blood god? Just a demon. An error of wrath, hate, and self hate.
He got past it, focused back on me again.
So next I had to get him out of his clothes.
... for purely altruistic reasons!
... okay, for not very pure yet practical reasons. Pure would have been better for both of us right then, but necessary would have to do. They'd put pins through his suits, ones they'd stored with the warpstone, so they leached poisons in at acupuncture points. Tiny irritations, but they'd twist him, left to it. So the suit had to go, and every inch of him be checked over.
... not a hardship.
And that was the offering for the sex god.
... so then I left this window sitting open for like two hours... not for the obvious reasons, nope, noooo... er, I just checked tumblr etc like every morning, but at this point its funny.
ANYway, given that mindset, nudity, really great view, the chaos god of sex turned up. And that was harder to ignore. At my initiation I was much younger and just thought it looked weird scary icky, but I was kind of dreading the new view. If my soul was going to be in imperilled by anything, surely it would be lust. Only, it actually wasn't all that interesting. Internet porn saved me. Or, rather, fanfic. The offerings of the lust demon were just a lot of pink bouncing. A lot. And also some tentacles. And... well, there were some things going on in the back that were an eyebrow raiser even after extensive reading. But, basically, it was like random porn gifs. Empty and actually kind of boring. I mean, I spend a lot of time reading porny fanfic, but I actually do read those for the plot. Specific characters, having feelings at each other. While the lust demon was quick to point out that with a bit of power behind us all those specific characters could be our very own sex dolls, that would be very much missing the point. Lust empties people out. It's all playing with yourself, really, once you ignore that there's an actual person and just concentrate on the sex. So, boring, and not tempting. And, like a gif someone linked to yesterday, looking around, all the bouncing got pretty hilarious, so then there was laughing.
Coulson, being a relationships kind of guy, was not especially in danger of being trapped by the incubi and succubi. But seeing me laughing? With him naked? He was, er, discouraged. He kind of looked down at himself and rubbed a hand over his head and was clearly counting the years and the mileage. His other hand went to the scar on his chest. And he started looking pinker, just a fuzzy outline, but one that made him smooth out and look more buff and all. But I rested my hand over his scar too. Told him, the mileage makes him himself. Smiled, and actually looked at him, like I'd been squirmily trying not to so far. Looking good, no demonic enhancement required. And there's always that little voice of what about next year, but everything changes, chaos knows, and honey, I still read porn about Magneto, who is getting on a bit by now. ... embarrassing, but, the point is, people are interesting. Lust is not.
So, goodbye to the lust demon.
And as its minions faded out, they left the endless fractal beauty of chaos behind them. And in that, every possibility awaits. And the most tempting demon god, for me, the god of magic.
Just think about it. What could you do?
What couldn't you do?
True magic has no limits.
So there's the offering, the pure unfiltered power of it, and how do you not reach for that? Every dream you ever had, customised and to your exact preferences. You just have to take it.
Every failure you ever had, that magic could have turned into a win.
Oh, yeah, this is tempting.
Coulson saw it, and saw the world he could make with it. And that world looked good. He could use magic to make a just world, a fair world, a safe world. Sure, it would take a whole lot of magic, but that wasn't a resource that could run dry. And it would be just doing what he'd always done, but solo, risking no one. He'd be the only one paying for it. Every mission that he'd ever run, think how much he could have done on them, with magic. He'd be the best of the best, undefeated and unquestioned.
shiny shiny shiny
... buuuuuut ...
Is it, underneath, so different from blood? From lust? Surely in everything he'd be doing, there'd be someone done to?
So maybe not a just world, since he's fought dictators and he knows the value of freedom. But how about an abundant one? Think of everything he could create. Pretty, pretty riches... for Coulson, those faded out fairly quickly, though my own temptations tended towards art nouveau and a refined aesthetic. I didn't, quite, get lost in the shiny, but only because it got between me and him. He's much the most interesting. I could set it aside and focus on him. People, much more interesting than things. Coulson though, he could see the cornucopias he could make, the end to material want, the gifts for everyone, everything they could ever want, and more (and more, and more, gluttony and greed are here, the endless and insatiable, and would it ever really be enough?).
And in every gift, that seed of magic, more magic, magic for everyone. Magic to let them do everything they ever wanted...
... magic that would lead everyone right back here, facing magic's god. And wouldn't that just be shiny?
... and that, right there, is the tough one. Because getting your hands on the raw stuff of creation, wouldn't that be the best trip? Where's the bad, really?
... aside from how, once you start changing the rules, the rules break down for everyone.
The god of magic keeps on showing off his gifts, and they are many, and varied, and ever changing. Anyone they touch is ever changing too, and constancy is anathema. The raw stuff of magic is what lies behind the warpstone, inside of it, and with it literally anything can happen - for a while. Mutation is the most visible result, but it's not just living humans that get twisted, it is the basic principles that hold reality together. Use magic, share magic, spread magic, and soon enough only magic rules apply - and magic doesn't have any rules. Magic is power, without control.
The demon lord's followers dance ever closer, become ever more fluid of form, until the demon of magic is one big ever shifting lake, with faces showing through it.
But think how much you could do along the way...
... and who you would be doing it for. The answer can be selfish or selfless: either self or other would lose everything, eventually.
So I got free my first time, eventually, and so I figure Coulson will get through. So when he turns to me, I smile, thinking he's seen it.
... he has seen me. And how easy it would be for me to fall, here, to this, with just a little nudge...
... he sees an asset. Right now I'm a lever, just a means of change. A conduit for the power; and after all, I already use magic, right?
I try and tell him there's a difference (never quite entirely sure there is), and he smiles and reassures me and tells me he'll be there for me, if I start to slip, to fall, to lose myself... and all the while behind his eyes he's thinking, how can I use her?
Because that's his life, professionally. That's what he does. Take dangerous people who do dangerous things, and aim them.
I shake my head, refusing this, again. He draws breath and starts lining up the words, a new kind of recruitment speech, one that unwittingly accepts this demon as his lord, recruiting me for him. So I talk fast, even though I'm not sure at the start what to say. Because the thing is, if he doesn't listen here, if he instead decides that what he plans is what matters, then I've lost him. Like with lust the fall is in ignoring 'no'. So I start with No.
I talk to him about other people, about guiding lights, and constancy. I speak of self and honour and meaning, about lines drawn and going no further. (But oh what a dance it would be, on the way down.) And I tell him what I see in him, as a boss, as a handler; that he works with to bring the best out in people, that he can see the hero in them, always, and he'll offer them that choice to become something more. And if we run at first, he'll still be there with the offer, or just enforce the law - but that is all. He'll get hold of someone's kid, to get them to safety with relatives. He'll learn their secrets, to make sure they don't come back to bite them. He's drawn his line, and he stays the right side of it.
And he hangs his head. Is that how I see him? Because he's not so sure.
But I remind him he's given this speech before. What matters, here and now, is he can choose. He can choose to be, not a great general, but a good man.
So, he lets me go. Lets power go.
And the demon of magic fades, taking the dance of lights with him.
And then, blackness.
Or not even black. Black is more committed than this emptiness. A messy grey, not monotone but not anything particular else either. Here's what there is after, once you've rejected blood and sex and change. Rejected everything.
I never really understood the appeal. The demon that lurks here, why does anyone ever go his way? But back here again I recognise it, and realise, I have been here. I have been nearer falling here than I ever was to wrath or lust. This is sloth, in its extreme form. This is apathy. This is despair.
The usual icon of this demon is disease. The plague lord. Who wants that? Who wants the sickness, or the cancer? ... who picks up the cancer sticks at 40 a day, and figures, hey, you only die once. Who looks at flesh and sees failure, so why not? Who, once infected, passes it to others? What addict ever shares a needle? Who, once they've given up, calls out to others, come on in, the water's fine?
And somewhere underneath all that the disease is despair, which doesn't even have to be passed on, just fallen into. Like deficiency disease, with unknown vitamins, sometimes it just seems like there isn't enough to keep going on. In the end we're all just bones and rot, so why not just not?
Standing here next to Phil Coulson, it all seems stupid and embarrassing. I can't really imagine him giving up. So I remember all the times I did, or nearly, and feel stupid, and small, and messed up. And so it goes on, downwards spiral, and it's a trap. But I am well familiar with it by now. Sod that. There's much more interesting to do yet. And maybe I'm not perfect, but I am, and will continue to be. That'll have to be enough.
... It's a fight. Less of one together. Coulson has a trick of seeing what's worthwhile in people, and bringing it out in them. So I go to him, hoping for some of that.
Coulson has just got an eyeful of the demon lord of despair. He's pretty much just sitting there, watching all those minions, many of them having the kind of party where it's more withdrawal than hangover, the rest just sitting in their own muck. And this demon is the one that says, you can't change everything. Entropy takes it. Entropy takes everything. Everything is lost. And if you can't change that, why do anything?
So, I hug Phil. He says, there's just so many of them. I say, I know. And the real bugger is, they have to want to change, or they'll just end up right back here. And even if they want to... well, the rot has set in. They'd have to live with that.
Which is not exactly encouraging.
So I tell him about this guy. I know he's met him. Party guy, he was, always with a drink in his hand. And worse. And everyone knew it. And pretty much everyone left him. He was left sitting there, alone, with a bottle, and all his mess around him. And that was when he looked around and decided to stand up. He left the bottle with the rest of the muck. And it took doctors, and friends, and a lot of hard work, but soon enough he didn't just stand, he flew. (Red and gold and larger than life, and sure he was still dying, but who isn't? So that makes this a very important few days, weeks, months...)
And Phil was part of that. A small part, sure, but he was there. He's part of why it worked.
And I know I'm getting the telling all wrong, it goes all flat, and maybe I should start closer to home. Admitting there have been bad days. Days it seemed like I wasn't worth the effort to stand up. But even then, I knew, he'd find something for me to do. Small things, maybe, but Phil Coulson was a man who could make a team from anyone, and I wanted to be part of that.
So.
He looks around. And he picks a corner. And he stands up to get started.
And that giant great demon, and his minions, fades away.
Phil looks around, then scratches his back. Where the needle went in. He makes a face.
Yeah, I say, pre-empting, it is a risk. You really might be. But...
... he interrupts, and says, "We'll deal with that if we have to." He smiles, reassuringly. He's a lot more present now, his eyes no longer glazed. I'm pretty sure he sees me.
Around us it's cleaner now, and darker gray. The fog clears back, reveals grey walls; stone forms up around us. Stone with eight slits in it, that widen to become eight doors.
Phil looks around, but with nothing reaching out to grab his soul, seems at a loss.
I explain. "This is the heart of magery. Magic, of a sort. The college mage comes here directly, without the mystery tour. If he's good, or lucky, he never faces it."
The doors start to glow, eight different colored lights.
"You can choose one. Choose just one, and stick with it. You'll be a mage." I try and sound encouraging, but honestly, they all seem so limited. Go on, you can choose a letter! Why, whoever needs an alphabet?
But it is, properly, safer. Much safer. So as he looks around, I try again. "Really, it'll be better for you."
Phil was reaching out, tentatively, but he's no fool. Also, he knows me. He narrows his eyes and looks at me.
"Better than what?"
I look down, but there's quite a lot of Phil down there so instead I look away. None of these dull lights appeal, so my eyes keep moving. He ducks into my line of vision.
"Better. Than. What?"
Reluctantly, I look up.
Above us, in the center of the dome, a tiny skylight opens on that great rainbow sparkle, the dance of all the lights. These eight are only fractions of those thousands. Pure chaos.
"That. That's you, isn't it? I can feel it. You even wear it, all the rainbows."
"The 'rainbows' are a joke. All those stripes are never proper rainbows. Plus, also, pride flags." He just looks on patiently. "But, yeah." I sigh. "That's for me. And there are no walls out there, Coulson. No guide books. What we just saw, the big four? They're threaded through it. And the warp is waiting. Everyone warps, eventually."
"Like the thing we saw?"
"Like... I don't know. I don't, not for sure. I'll tell you I'm not one of them, the cultists, tiny small and misled people. But would I know? Really?"
So he asks me what I try to believe in, and I say, Enlightenment.
All that, out there, that's everything. The nothing that can be everything. The dance of illusions. It's chaos, and change, and creation. It's the power woven right through everything. And maybe, maybe, we can dance with it. Maybe see through all the traps. Become liberated. Perhaps, someday, save others.
"But a mage can do good work. Solid work. You can pick one task and excel."
But how to sell him on something I don't quite believe? Sure, it's safer, if you stick with it, but it's not like mages never fall.
I look around, and see which one he'd reached for, at the beginning. "Look, the Bright. It called you? You liked that best?" (In the dream it was called Bright because it shone, but it wasn't that in Warhammer.)
"I liked it when it looked like white to me, like all the colors mixed together. But I look around at all of these, and even if you mix them, you wouldn't get the half of it."
"I know. But you wouldn't burn."
"I'd burn like you do." Or perhaps he says that I don't burn. That would be more sensible, and less romantic. Either way, "Show me?"
So I hold out my hands, and he takes them. I step close to him, reach along the bond we've formed, feel him reaching back. Then together we look up, and as the rocks fall away, we fall
up
into endless lights.
It ends up kind of happily ever after with magic soulbonding, but also possibly endless mutation and more demons.
So when I woke up I went looking for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay stuff, because the 8 magics were familiar, and that filled in some detail on the demons, and I wrote up the dream with a bit of polishing up. Warhammer is either a far future or grimdark past setting, but the dream was all here now stuff, like Coulson tends to be. There was also a bit where Hawkeye was secretly purple because purple mage, which I didn't consciously remember the meaning of, but looking it up it seems to be amethyst death magic, which, well, suits an assassin. And in warhammer terms we got tempted by the 4 demon lords and then went to choose between winds of magic but ended up choosing high magic, silver rainbows. Only, in Warhammer according to this wiki I looked in, humans can't actually do that, due to being too stupid. :-p to that, can has truth if I wants it.
So now I think that's a plenty good story, once you get to the magic quest bits, and a good setting with injecting warpstone and mutations and magic and all that, but I suspect it's only different enough to count as wrong Warhammer rather than being its own thing. Even if I change the names. So I don't reckon it'll turn into an actual story. But it's got some good seeds in it.
I used to read all sorts of Warhammer articles when I was subscribing to White Dwarf, but that was in high school, so, twenty odd years ago. Weird. It isn't a system I've revisited much since so all this stuff is just knocking around in the back of my mind. I do have a couple of tables of randomly generated mutations and chaos gifts that I go back to, because from the same tables you can make Steve Rogers and Red Skull. Mix and match the 'verses a little and all that with the serum and vita rays just induces mutation, and they only lucked out getting a pretty one that one time; the actual point of the process is to do something completely chaotic to biology. So because Steve got big and pretty a bunch of other soldiers get screwed over with random mutations while the 'scientists' wonder what went wrong. If you mixed it properly then the medieval ish phase with everyone condemning mutants as having consorted with demons would be followed with an enlightened scientific model where stuff just happens, but they forget how powerful chaos is and keep using warpstone while pretending they can control the effects. Until eventually space marines, distant descendants of the super soldier program. Distant and epic screwed up, because Warhammer worlds are the darkest messes.
I don't have the actual warhammer rule books, never did, so I've been poking around looking at how much they'd be to buy, but there's some really ridiculous prices. There's also a much more recent edition all print on demand. I don't know though, I tend to accumulate rulebooks and do nothing with them. Probably by tomorrow I'll be interested in something else entirely anyway.
... except this is a week I've been working on GURPS magic, and I woke up wondering how to fit the standard spellbook into only 8 colleges, and what kind of conditions the world would need to get mutations on crit fail or even crit success rolls. I'm sure they've got something in Thaumatology or In Nomine or Mage that would suit a little... so, possibly it would be quicker to go get a rulebook that has this stuff built in already, instead of trying to reverse engineer it...
But, having a surplus of empty time, would quickest be best, or most enjoyable?
... *wanders off to poke book sites again* ...
I dreamed I was in bed with Natalie Dormer, so I'm pretty sure that counts. ... just trying to sleep though. There was a unisex dorm room with about twice as many people as beds. Everyone was annoyed because I was all elbows, so I ended up with a bed to myself, the one in the draught between door and window. She was also helping me with tips on presentation to try and attract Coulson's attention. We were pretty sure it was working, because the pause of utter blankness before he managed his usual calm manner was getting longer. But then he'd go back to his office.
The adventure started when some chaos cultists arrived and stole my rainbow bag to carry their collection of eyebrows. That they were cutting off people. Because my brain is weird. But also because magic can be targeted by hair and blood, so if they stole those from everyone they could both walk away and hold everyone hostage.
I hid by slipping out the window, then followed them, using weird paths through gaps that shouldn't have been wide enough, and climbing as if I weighed nothing. Because I had a big secret. I was a chaos worshipper too.
Not like those guys though. They were each adherents of a different chaos demon, like in Warhammer. I pitied them for thinking so small they'd got trapped by such things. They were basically warpstone junkies, making weak solutions of it and injecting it, courting mutation deliberately. They were the kind of chaos cultists abhorred by society, and if they were captured, cremation was standard procedure. Preferably of their corpses, but either way would work.
I did not want to burn, so I concealed my allegiance, since the finer points of chaotic theology seemed likely to elude most casual observers.
I followed them most of the way out of the complex, then lost sight of them just before we ended up out the front. The front of the building was one of my standard settings, a big huge stage with tall steps and classical columns holding up a half roof. Using the front door and presenting yourself to the world to make big speeches was much the same thing. Mostly people used the side passage, which was leafy and had a nice little gate. But it was the small hours of the morning, so the only things on the 'stage' were some telescopes for stargazing. There was a big square in front of the building so you could see a bit of sky. The view was blocked by... I think it was a cooling tower like for generators, and a big dish like a radio telescope... but you could still see up and around it, and because neither were lit the light pollution was minimal. So, telescopes, darkness, view, I went up on the 'stage' to get a look.
... I think I played too much Sims 2; all your smart characters just randomly spend hours with a telescope to increase their logic score.
There was a security guard who challenged me. I asked if he'd seen the other guys escape, he said nobody had been through here before me. Problem. He called out the guards and a search was set up, but I got a nasty feeling of urgency and hurried back inside ahead of them.
I found the cultists making popcorn in the lobby. Because apparently we had a popcorn concession stand? (This kind of thing is why my dreams take a lot of untangling before being useful as plot bunnies, though as I go along writing these blogs I tend to detangle them and get to the story stuff instead of strictly dream stuff.) There was hot oil and corn and a wooden ladle for handling it all, and there were three cultists just kind of hanging out making snacks, two men and a woman. They threw the whole burning hot lot at me when they saw me, but I bounced it straight back at them. The men got covered in hot goopy popcorn, the woman caught the ladle and threw it back to me. So I tucked it in my belt and ran after them.
They eluded me again, because dreams are made mostly of chase sequence, so there was lots more running and staircases than is at all reasonable within standard geometry. But I've been in hotels like that.
When I caught up to them they had Coulson, and they were tying him up methodically, with what looked like standard sewing thread. Which doesn't sound very tough, but they had him wrapped up over and over, a giant criss cross pattern; they were down to wrapping his hands together, each individual finger bound to its opposite number. Attempts to just pull push out of the thread would hit an optimised balance of surprising strength and skinny thread slicing in from the pressure. Very hard to escape yet looking like almost nothing. Like the chaos addiction they were planning to introduce him to. I recognised the ritual.
"Good taste, bad plan," I told them, and then there was a fight. I tried to get to Coulson to unbind him, which was a mistake - they got to their supplies first, and got a syringe full of warpstone solution into him. I froze. My usual push/pull magic was too clumsy for this, because either gesture could just inject him. I had to try and get my mind around the whole syringe at once, plunger and all, and push the lot of it out; too slow, they pushed a few cc into Phil first. But I got the rest clear, and delicate part done I threw the thing hard enough the woman holding it went with it right across the room.
I rushed to Phil's side, and the cultists, cackling, let me. They knew they'd got him. And they had a syringe full of shiny shiny warp to play with now. I left them to chase each other away, bickering over dosage, and hurried to check Coulson.
His eyes looked like fractal rainbow oil slicks were covering them. From the inside.
Their ritual had worked.
Now I could only try and guide him through it.
For the cultists the point of the ritual was power, and the warping of self that single path mages considered an undesirable side effect. Delivering new worshipper/victims to their demons was a desirable side effect, so they'd have been bickering about who got to lead him to who. I didn't have such a goal in mind; to me the only goal now was coming out the other side of this a person.
First I had to strip their trap away from him. That started simple, since unbinding (from the strictures of reality) was the next phase of their ritual too. The parts that were bound over clothes were simple, and most of it came away easy, but the hands were going to be fiddly. I needed Phil to pay attention and stay calm; I needed him to stay himself. I got him to look at me, listen, give a sitrep and focus. Meanwhile mundane reality was falling away and pretty rainbow land starting to climb up where the walls should be.
I could see the power dancing in him, and I knew I could dance with it. But I told him, he had choices. I could help him through this, but if I did, if he let me in that far, he'd never quite be rid of me. Phil had a soft smile and said that was kind of like he'd been planning. But I told him that marriage wasn't half as binding as this could be. We'd see and know each other, be vulnerable to each other, in ways simple oaths couldn't reach. He just said I'd never been in a relationship, had I? I liked the look on his face, the way he reached for me, but I thought he was being dopey and romantic and not quite grokking our souls were in danger. He got centered, Coulson again, and told me he trusted me, and in this, he needed someone. Needed me.
And to stay with him where he was going, we needed to be soulbound.
So okay.
So, concentrating on serious work stuff, not at that point simples. <3 Coulson.
First thing I had to do was get his hands free, and I needed to do it fast. His own knife had been left there for the purpose, it sliced through fine, but there was blood. Blood was the ritual point. Blood for the blood god.
The horrors and glories of it I had seen once, at my own initiation, and I had no interest in seeing again. To me it had been new, and with only movies and martial arts for reference, I had seen the dance in it and been tempted. But Coulson? He had been there, done that. A lot of warriors got that far and saw a way to go back to it stronger, faster, hit harder, get a piece of their own back, but Coulson had long since faced down that temptation. He wasn't a vengeance kind of guy. He saw the violence, as I had once, and he understood the cost, as I only had when I'd filtered out the unfamiliar and seen the women and children suffering for it. He saw what it cost the soldiers, who lost everything they could have been to become the war. He didn't want that ever, and reached out to try and help them back away from it. Then he saw the blood on his hands, and remembered other times it got there. He felt the pain, and for a moment welcomed it as due. That was the other face of the blood, giving in by giving up, being the willing victim as if that's payment due. But guilt, again, was something he'd stared down at three in the morning, and set in its place. Wasn't anyone deserved what the blood god did, not from either side of it, himself included.
Blood god? Just a demon. An error of wrath, hate, and self hate.
He got past it, focused back on me again.
So next I had to get him out of his clothes.
... for purely altruistic reasons!
... okay, for not very pure yet practical reasons. Pure would have been better for both of us right then, but necessary would have to do. They'd put pins through his suits, ones they'd stored with the warpstone, so they leached poisons in at acupuncture points. Tiny irritations, but they'd twist him, left to it. So the suit had to go, and every inch of him be checked over.
... not a hardship.
And that was the offering for the sex god.
... so then I left this window sitting open for like two hours... not for the obvious reasons, nope, noooo... er, I just checked tumblr etc like every morning, but at this point its funny.
ANYway, given that mindset, nudity, really great view, the chaos god of sex turned up. And that was harder to ignore. At my initiation I was much younger and just thought it looked weird scary icky, but I was kind of dreading the new view. If my soul was going to be in imperilled by anything, surely it would be lust. Only, it actually wasn't all that interesting. Internet porn saved me. Or, rather, fanfic. The offerings of the lust demon were just a lot of pink bouncing. A lot. And also some tentacles. And... well, there were some things going on in the back that were an eyebrow raiser even after extensive reading. But, basically, it was like random porn gifs. Empty and actually kind of boring. I mean, I spend a lot of time reading porny fanfic, but I actually do read those for the plot. Specific characters, having feelings at each other. While the lust demon was quick to point out that with a bit of power behind us all those specific characters could be our very own sex dolls, that would be very much missing the point. Lust empties people out. It's all playing with yourself, really, once you ignore that there's an actual person and just concentrate on the sex. So, boring, and not tempting. And, like a gif someone linked to yesterday, looking around, all the bouncing got pretty hilarious, so then there was laughing.
Coulson, being a relationships kind of guy, was not especially in danger of being trapped by the incubi and succubi. But seeing me laughing? With him naked? He was, er, discouraged. He kind of looked down at himself and rubbed a hand over his head and was clearly counting the years and the mileage. His other hand went to the scar on his chest. And he started looking pinker, just a fuzzy outline, but one that made him smooth out and look more buff and all. But I rested my hand over his scar too. Told him, the mileage makes him himself. Smiled, and actually looked at him, like I'd been squirmily trying not to so far. Looking good, no demonic enhancement required. And there's always that little voice of what about next year, but everything changes, chaos knows, and honey, I still read porn about Magneto, who is getting on a bit by now. ... embarrassing, but, the point is, people are interesting. Lust is not.
So, goodbye to the lust demon.
And as its minions faded out, they left the endless fractal beauty of chaos behind them. And in that, every possibility awaits. And the most tempting demon god, for me, the god of magic.
Just think about it. What could you do?
What couldn't you do?
True magic has no limits.
So there's the offering, the pure unfiltered power of it, and how do you not reach for that? Every dream you ever had, customised and to your exact preferences. You just have to take it.
Every failure you ever had, that magic could have turned into a win.
Oh, yeah, this is tempting.
Coulson saw it, and saw the world he could make with it. And that world looked good. He could use magic to make a just world, a fair world, a safe world. Sure, it would take a whole lot of magic, but that wasn't a resource that could run dry. And it would be just doing what he'd always done, but solo, risking no one. He'd be the only one paying for it. Every mission that he'd ever run, think how much he could have done on them, with magic. He'd be the best of the best, undefeated and unquestioned.
shiny shiny shiny
... buuuuuut ...
Is it, underneath, so different from blood? From lust? Surely in everything he'd be doing, there'd be someone done to?
So maybe not a just world, since he's fought dictators and he knows the value of freedom. But how about an abundant one? Think of everything he could create. Pretty, pretty riches... for Coulson, those faded out fairly quickly, though my own temptations tended towards art nouveau and a refined aesthetic. I didn't, quite, get lost in the shiny, but only because it got between me and him. He's much the most interesting. I could set it aside and focus on him. People, much more interesting than things. Coulson though, he could see the cornucopias he could make, the end to material want, the gifts for everyone, everything they could ever want, and more (and more, and more, gluttony and greed are here, the endless and insatiable, and would it ever really be enough?).
And in every gift, that seed of magic, more magic, magic for everyone. Magic to let them do everything they ever wanted...
... magic that would lead everyone right back here, facing magic's god. And wouldn't that just be shiny?
... and that, right there, is the tough one. Because getting your hands on the raw stuff of creation, wouldn't that be the best trip? Where's the bad, really?
... aside from how, once you start changing the rules, the rules break down for everyone.
The god of magic keeps on showing off his gifts, and they are many, and varied, and ever changing. Anyone they touch is ever changing too, and constancy is anathema. The raw stuff of magic is what lies behind the warpstone, inside of it, and with it literally anything can happen - for a while. Mutation is the most visible result, but it's not just living humans that get twisted, it is the basic principles that hold reality together. Use magic, share magic, spread magic, and soon enough only magic rules apply - and magic doesn't have any rules. Magic is power, without control.
The demon lord's followers dance ever closer, become ever more fluid of form, until the demon of magic is one big ever shifting lake, with faces showing through it.
But think how much you could do along the way...
... and who you would be doing it for. The answer can be selfish or selfless: either self or other would lose everything, eventually.
So I got free my first time, eventually, and so I figure Coulson will get through. So when he turns to me, I smile, thinking he's seen it.
... he has seen me. And how easy it would be for me to fall, here, to this, with just a little nudge...
... he sees an asset. Right now I'm a lever, just a means of change. A conduit for the power; and after all, I already use magic, right?
I try and tell him there's a difference (never quite entirely sure there is), and he smiles and reassures me and tells me he'll be there for me, if I start to slip, to fall, to lose myself... and all the while behind his eyes he's thinking, how can I use her?
Because that's his life, professionally. That's what he does. Take dangerous people who do dangerous things, and aim them.
I shake my head, refusing this, again. He draws breath and starts lining up the words, a new kind of recruitment speech, one that unwittingly accepts this demon as his lord, recruiting me for him. So I talk fast, even though I'm not sure at the start what to say. Because the thing is, if he doesn't listen here, if he instead decides that what he plans is what matters, then I've lost him. Like with lust the fall is in ignoring 'no'. So I start with No.
I talk to him about other people, about guiding lights, and constancy. I speak of self and honour and meaning, about lines drawn and going no further. (But oh what a dance it would be, on the way down.) And I tell him what I see in him, as a boss, as a handler; that he works with to bring the best out in people, that he can see the hero in them, always, and he'll offer them that choice to become something more. And if we run at first, he'll still be there with the offer, or just enforce the law - but that is all. He'll get hold of someone's kid, to get them to safety with relatives. He'll learn their secrets, to make sure they don't come back to bite them. He's drawn his line, and he stays the right side of it.
And he hangs his head. Is that how I see him? Because he's not so sure.
But I remind him he's given this speech before. What matters, here and now, is he can choose. He can choose to be, not a great general, but a good man.
So, he lets me go. Lets power go.
And the demon of magic fades, taking the dance of lights with him.
And then, blackness.
Or not even black. Black is more committed than this emptiness. A messy grey, not monotone but not anything particular else either. Here's what there is after, once you've rejected blood and sex and change. Rejected everything.
I never really understood the appeal. The demon that lurks here, why does anyone ever go his way? But back here again I recognise it, and realise, I have been here. I have been nearer falling here than I ever was to wrath or lust. This is sloth, in its extreme form. This is apathy. This is despair.
The usual icon of this demon is disease. The plague lord. Who wants that? Who wants the sickness, or the cancer? ... who picks up the cancer sticks at 40 a day, and figures, hey, you only die once. Who looks at flesh and sees failure, so why not? Who, once infected, passes it to others? What addict ever shares a needle? Who, once they've given up, calls out to others, come on in, the water's fine?
And somewhere underneath all that the disease is despair, which doesn't even have to be passed on, just fallen into. Like deficiency disease, with unknown vitamins, sometimes it just seems like there isn't enough to keep going on. In the end we're all just bones and rot, so why not just not?
Standing here next to Phil Coulson, it all seems stupid and embarrassing. I can't really imagine him giving up. So I remember all the times I did, or nearly, and feel stupid, and small, and messed up. And so it goes on, downwards spiral, and it's a trap. But I am well familiar with it by now. Sod that. There's much more interesting to do yet. And maybe I'm not perfect, but I am, and will continue to be. That'll have to be enough.
... It's a fight. Less of one together. Coulson has a trick of seeing what's worthwhile in people, and bringing it out in them. So I go to him, hoping for some of that.
Coulson has just got an eyeful of the demon lord of despair. He's pretty much just sitting there, watching all those minions, many of them having the kind of party where it's more withdrawal than hangover, the rest just sitting in their own muck. And this demon is the one that says, you can't change everything. Entropy takes it. Entropy takes everything. Everything is lost. And if you can't change that, why do anything?
So, I hug Phil. He says, there's just so many of them. I say, I know. And the real bugger is, they have to want to change, or they'll just end up right back here. And even if they want to... well, the rot has set in. They'd have to live with that.
Which is not exactly encouraging.
So I tell him about this guy. I know he's met him. Party guy, he was, always with a drink in his hand. And worse. And everyone knew it. And pretty much everyone left him. He was left sitting there, alone, with a bottle, and all his mess around him. And that was when he looked around and decided to stand up. He left the bottle with the rest of the muck. And it took doctors, and friends, and a lot of hard work, but soon enough he didn't just stand, he flew. (Red and gold and larger than life, and sure he was still dying, but who isn't? So that makes this a very important few days, weeks, months...)
And Phil was part of that. A small part, sure, but he was there. He's part of why it worked.
And I know I'm getting the telling all wrong, it goes all flat, and maybe I should start closer to home. Admitting there have been bad days. Days it seemed like I wasn't worth the effort to stand up. But even then, I knew, he'd find something for me to do. Small things, maybe, but Phil Coulson was a man who could make a team from anyone, and I wanted to be part of that.
So.
He looks around. And he picks a corner. And he stands up to get started.
And that giant great demon, and his minions, fades away.
Phil looks around, then scratches his back. Where the needle went in. He makes a face.
Yeah, I say, pre-empting, it is a risk. You really might be. But...
... he interrupts, and says, "We'll deal with that if we have to." He smiles, reassuringly. He's a lot more present now, his eyes no longer glazed. I'm pretty sure he sees me.
Around us it's cleaner now, and darker gray. The fog clears back, reveals grey walls; stone forms up around us. Stone with eight slits in it, that widen to become eight doors.
Phil looks around, but with nothing reaching out to grab his soul, seems at a loss.
I explain. "This is the heart of magery. Magic, of a sort. The college mage comes here directly, without the mystery tour. If he's good, or lucky, he never faces it."
The doors start to glow, eight different colored lights.
"You can choose one. Choose just one, and stick with it. You'll be a mage." I try and sound encouraging, but honestly, they all seem so limited. Go on, you can choose a letter! Why, whoever needs an alphabet?
But it is, properly, safer. Much safer. So as he looks around, I try again. "Really, it'll be better for you."
Phil was reaching out, tentatively, but he's no fool. Also, he knows me. He narrows his eyes and looks at me.
"Better than what?"
I look down, but there's quite a lot of Phil down there so instead I look away. None of these dull lights appeal, so my eyes keep moving. He ducks into my line of vision.
"Better. Than. What?"
Reluctantly, I look up.
Above us, in the center of the dome, a tiny skylight opens on that great rainbow sparkle, the dance of all the lights. These eight are only fractions of those thousands. Pure chaos.
"That. That's you, isn't it? I can feel it. You even wear it, all the rainbows."
"The 'rainbows' are a joke. All those stripes are never proper rainbows. Plus, also, pride flags." He just looks on patiently. "But, yeah." I sigh. "That's for me. And there are no walls out there, Coulson. No guide books. What we just saw, the big four? They're threaded through it. And the warp is waiting. Everyone warps, eventually."
"Like the thing we saw?"
"Like... I don't know. I don't, not for sure. I'll tell you I'm not one of them, the cultists, tiny small and misled people. But would I know? Really?"
So he asks me what I try to believe in, and I say, Enlightenment.
All that, out there, that's everything. The nothing that can be everything. The dance of illusions. It's chaos, and change, and creation. It's the power woven right through everything. And maybe, maybe, we can dance with it. Maybe see through all the traps. Become liberated. Perhaps, someday, save others.
"But a mage can do good work. Solid work. You can pick one task and excel."
But how to sell him on something I don't quite believe? Sure, it's safer, if you stick with it, but it's not like mages never fall.
I look around, and see which one he'd reached for, at the beginning. "Look, the Bright. It called you? You liked that best?" (In the dream it was called Bright because it shone, but it wasn't that in Warhammer.)
"I liked it when it looked like white to me, like all the colors mixed together. But I look around at all of these, and even if you mix them, you wouldn't get the half of it."
"I know. But you wouldn't burn."
"I'd burn like you do." Or perhaps he says that I don't burn. That would be more sensible, and less romantic. Either way, "Show me?"
So I hold out my hands, and he takes them. I step close to him, reach along the bond we've formed, feel him reaching back. Then together we look up, and as the rocks fall away, we fall
up
into endless lights.
It ends up kind of happily ever after with magic soulbonding, but also possibly endless mutation and more demons.
So when I woke up I went looking for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay stuff, because the 8 magics were familiar, and that filled in some detail on the demons, and I wrote up the dream with a bit of polishing up. Warhammer is either a far future or grimdark past setting, but the dream was all here now stuff, like Coulson tends to be. There was also a bit where Hawkeye was secretly purple because purple mage, which I didn't consciously remember the meaning of, but looking it up it seems to be amethyst death magic, which, well, suits an assassin. And in warhammer terms we got tempted by the 4 demon lords and then went to choose between winds of magic but ended up choosing high magic, silver rainbows. Only, in Warhammer according to this wiki I looked in, humans can't actually do that, due to being too stupid. :-p to that, can has truth if I wants it.
So now I think that's a plenty good story, once you get to the magic quest bits, and a good setting with injecting warpstone and mutations and magic and all that, but I suspect it's only different enough to count as wrong Warhammer rather than being its own thing. Even if I change the names. So I don't reckon it'll turn into an actual story. But it's got some good seeds in it.
I used to read all sorts of Warhammer articles when I was subscribing to White Dwarf, but that was in high school, so, twenty odd years ago. Weird. It isn't a system I've revisited much since so all this stuff is just knocking around in the back of my mind. I do have a couple of tables of randomly generated mutations and chaos gifts that I go back to, because from the same tables you can make Steve Rogers and Red Skull. Mix and match the 'verses a little and all that with the serum and vita rays just induces mutation, and they only lucked out getting a pretty one that one time; the actual point of the process is to do something completely chaotic to biology. So because Steve got big and pretty a bunch of other soldiers get screwed over with random mutations while the 'scientists' wonder what went wrong. If you mixed it properly then the medieval ish phase with everyone condemning mutants as having consorted with demons would be followed with an enlightened scientific model where stuff just happens, but they forget how powerful chaos is and keep using warpstone while pretending they can control the effects. Until eventually space marines, distant descendants of the super soldier program. Distant and epic screwed up, because Warhammer worlds are the darkest messes.
I don't have the actual warhammer rule books, never did, so I've been poking around looking at how much they'd be to buy, but there's some really ridiculous prices. There's also a much more recent edition all print on demand. I don't know though, I tend to accumulate rulebooks and do nothing with them. Probably by tomorrow I'll be interested in something else entirely anyway.
... except this is a week I've been working on GURPS magic, and I woke up wondering how to fit the standard spellbook into only 8 colleges, and what kind of conditions the world would need to get mutations on crit fail or even crit success rolls. I'm sure they've got something in Thaumatology or In Nomine or Mage that would suit a little... so, possibly it would be quicker to go get a rulebook that has this stuff built in already, instead of trying to reverse engineer it...
But, having a surplus of empty time, would quickest be best, or most enjoyable?
... *wanders off to poke book sites again* ...
no subject
Date: 2014-01-23 03:20 am (UTC)~
no subject
Date: 2014-02-01 05:15 pm (UTC)Like, for the sex demon, it's lust treating other people like things that is the problem, but it's also if you modify yourself to incite desire you're treating yourself as a thing, a means to an end, and it will never go well because in so doing you leave it all up to other people about if you're enough. Also reshaping yourself to a single purpose makes you less versatile. It plays in to a lot of that old prejudice stuff about women, they've been left with only sex as an area where they can have power, so they get a lot of blame for using it, but even when they're not using it, they're treated as if they've chosen to be used. So lust is a bad deal all round.
Violence demon, that's doing to others, killing, wrath, but directed inwards it's... like in the Hulk movie when the Abomination wants to keep changing himself into even more of a killing machine. It limits the possibilities. Makes you a weapon, not a person. Which again screws you over by other people wanting to use you, but also by others reacting to only that one facet, and treating you as threat all the time. Lose parts of being a person. That's like the trad masculine problem, the after the war problem.
The changer and the despair demon, directed inwards... despair demon doesn't look after themselves, treats body as irrelevant/bad thing, hurries towards the bad outcomes by just not trying to stay in place. The changer... is again the most tempting, because who doesn't have something that could be improved? And you could fight that very dissolution. But there's no balance in it, so to really go for it, to change yourself that way, you have to be saying that anything is better than this. You have to have given up on yourself to the point that any change is acceptable. And no. There's no control and there's no self love and there's always that hunger that says maybe the next change is better.
So there's always a middle way where mild versions are cool, but those involve free will and self determination and cooperation and seeing other people as whole people, and being a whole person yourself.
But it's not just doing to others thats a problem, its doing to self. Which is why there's 8 problems to 4 demons.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-27 02:45 am (UTC)from four years ago
good adventure quest thing
and some philosophy bits i could stand to remember