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catboyaesthetic · 2 years ago

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Mythmaker - The Calamity.

The following is the result from playing a Solo TTRPG game called Mythmaker. Please read more about it here.

Doom. I am no portent, no sign, no warning. I am it. In my wake, destruction. My shadow stretches the entire horizon. I have asked for no company, yet those who are drawn to power find me easily. Unnecessary. I alone am enough to tear this world apart. My road is littered with the bodies of such weaklings. I need the services of none.

My world was taken from me, and so I will take the world from everyone. No joy remains to me. No hope. No peace. I want no aid, no compassion, no understanding. I only want to burn it down. Scarred. I still bleed. I still heal. I still feel pain. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be on this path. And even with an eternity of battle behind me, there are still those who surprise me with their skill. My body has merely become a reflection of what I have become. What I embody. Ruin. Furious. I am the raging tide. I am the lightning strike. I am the consuming fire. I care not where my blade falls, so long as it does. I will tear this world apart over and over again to fuel the pyre of fury within me. There is no stopping the storm. Implacable. I cannot be reasoned with. I do not seek to be reasonable. I am the end. I seek no restitution, compensation, appeasement, adoration, glory. Only ruin can placate me. For a time.

Act One

The First

The first was Helmut of Derrigon. A man without name from a family without prestige. What scraps are left to inherit all go to the firstborn. A weak man – as they all are – who hoards meager wealth and position to himself. None is left for poor Helmut or his many brothers and sisters. For his father was a busy man, too busy to think of the future. I know what Helmut wants from me. I know what he thinks. He seeks glory, fame, and thinks he might achieve it through besting me, thinking it an easy road to riches.

He asks: Nothing is eternally seething. Once you found a kind of lasting release from your purpose, only for a Challenger to shatter it. What solace did you find? How was it broken?

I once had a friend of sorts. They were small and frail and I thought I could not care again for anything beyond my own need for vengeance, but they had no one and they were ill. So I fed them. I nursed them back to health, I kept them warm and thought myself a fool the entire time. There was a brief respite in those days. They might have been weeks, I don’t know. They were small and frail and they did not see me as the world does now. I was no arbiter of ruin, no broken husk. They saw me only as one their own. Then one day, somebody killed them. They had hunted them down for food and I ensured that that hunter suffered the whole time they were dying. I have not cared for anything since.

Despite this tale, I deem Helmut unworthy.

My very being urges to wipe away this blot of a man. He is spineless. He is graceless. He is weak in every way a person shouldn’t be. There is no vigor to his step, no originality to his words, even his bravado is borrowed from people stronger and wiser than him. He speaks but I do not care enough to hear him. I step towards him and I see the fear take hold of him. To end him would be like lazily waving a hand to scare away a fly. He is undeserving. Not out of compassion, nor out of judgement, but simple fact.

I step forwards once again and he makes way. I leave him behind me like a passing thought. He has seen me. Perhaps he will tell the world of my coming. It is irrelevant. I will arrive all the same.

A decade passes. I think on Renewal and Ruin.

A symbol of your purpose—a weapon, an item, a token, or some other object of note— has become tarnished by time.

My sword has cracked. Something that has carried me in and out of oblivion has finally begun to wear down as much as I have. As I swing to test it, the crack deepens before a piece of the blade flies off with the momentum alone. I think on its meaning. Does it signify my own deepening cracks? Once I was the First of Swords, now it seems I am the Only of Wrecks. The bladework on it remains impeccable, its edge as sharp as when it was first forged without me ever needing to maintain it. So what has lead to this damage? No, I distract myself. My purpose remains the same. Broken blade or none, it’s all the same. Still, the desire for answers nags at the corner of my mind.

The Second

The second was Korin of House Levindell, squire to a knight who does not deserve to be recorded. Korin came across me by happenstance at a tournament I attended in order to ultimately turn into a masscare. Korin recognized me by the tales he had heard of myself and Helmut. They had been turned into quite the story. Supposedly he had beaten me, which is why I had not returned. For all his faults, Korin was earnest and forthcoming. Korin sought to – and indeed did - embody the virtues of a knight. Even as he stood in fear before me, staring up at me in blind terror, he stood his ground and challenged me to a formal duel. Thinking, perhaps, that I was bound by some sort of code of honor. I am not sure why I stayed my hand. It would have been easy to hew off his head and move on to the many, many others attending. Still, he moved me. There was a tenderness that he evoked. A goodness. He showed me that knighthood and valor has nothing to do with title and everything to do with heart. He was a hero despite the abuse he clearly underwent. There were bruises across his body, there was fatigue evident in his eyes. Yet despite all this, he stood opposed to me. Small. Scared. Determined.

I deem Korin worthy.

I give him his duel. I let him lead me to the tournament grounds but I do not let him announce me. I announce myself, for none can do true justice and I will not have my memory written solely by others. I am the Ruin of Empire, the Butcher of Kings, Ender of Worlds of Bringer of Despair. I am the End and the Death and I say that I have been challenged by Korin of House Levindell to be stopped. I know the codes of honor everywhere, for they are all the same and abide by none of them, save now. We dance to the cadence of bladework, my footsteps sure and deadly. A thousand times I could have ended Korrin. A thousand times I stay my hand for reasons that even I do not fully grasp. I watch his eyes as we duel, eager to strike the moment I sense overconfidence. But his focus never falters. He watches me as I watch him and I feel we understand one another, and so I make this man a hero by letting him kill me. The indisputable victory I give him cements him in the history of his people – now long forgotten. It is memorized in song, in poetry, in tapestry. It tells of how my blood flowed into the sand, his people hailed him hero, savior, king and he was granted all he deserved. My suffering was overlooked. The dimming of the light, the burning in my flesh and the gasping for air as his blade found my throat. I hear his reign was just, but short. Murdered, of course. The ambition of weak men has always been deadly. The world has always been unjust.

They name you in the stories, even if you never had a true name. What do they call you? Describe how you feel about this name.

Knight of Calamity. Rider of Ruin. Kingbreaker. I carry many titles but no name. It is all the same to me. I have been alive too long to remember I was ever called anything else.

A year passes

Act Two

The Third

A holy man crosses my path. A savior he proclaims, leading his flock to a greater being, a holy being deserving of worship. Me. He says his name is Juran, and he prophesies the End. He speaks with vigor, his words move the hundreds that follow in his wake, some to tears. He speaks of miracles, of end times and of coming death. He says he recognizes me as the Arbiter of the End. “One needs but a glance,” he says, “to know that you are the Knight of Calamity, whom Helmut of Dorrigan slew on the Fields of Gold. Whom Korin slew at The Destined Tournament, yet here you are. Alive, insofar as you can be. You are a sign of greater powers, if not one of your own, and we have come to worship.”

I am filled with disgust. His feigned humility is a thin veil to his ambition. I don’t know how I know, but I know that he seeks to own me like he does the hearts and minds of his followers. In him I see the many religions that plagued this world, the harm they do and the people they hurt and I boil with fury. What he believes is true. It’s all true. Whatever higher power put me here or imbued me with this eternal punishment has long since abandoned me. But I am not a god. If I were, I would reshape the world into one where I am free from these chains. Where I am happy.

I deem Juran unworthy.

The fear settles in his eyes as I refuse to respond. I know what he’s feeling – what he sees. I always know. I watch him and drink in the parade of emotion. First there is doubt. The uncertainty follows shortly after. Then I see anger, for I do not give him the respect he feels he deserves. I see his mind working to spin my silence into something greater for his followers, and I wait as I have been. I see his anger turn to bile, and it overflows from his mind to his mouth into a tirade about false idols. “Forgive me, brothers and sisters,” he begins, “for I have lead you astray! It seems even the most faithful among us can make mistakes and some gods, it seems, do not want worshipping.” He pointedly stares at me as if to elicit some reaction. I give him none. He continues, “And this impostor – who has so clearly sought to garner the fame of our true God – cannot even deign to acknowledge us. They are merely flesh and bone! Behold, as I demonstrate!”

I break his arm before he has the opportunity to bring down the knife he produced out of thin air. As I hear him scream I remember my disdain for priests. An old, deep hatred that feels as if it is coming from the very depths of my memory. He begs for me to stop but I insist on working his broken arm further. I tower over him in every respect and I delight in the fear in his eyes. Despite the fact I retain my voice, I say nothing. I do not want to waste words on this insect. His followers scramble and panic. Some look on in awe, almost rapturous. I find myself disgusted by them also. And as I continue to torment Juran by breaking as many bones as I can, as meticulously as I can, I endure the screaming, the pleading, the singing, and the worshipping. I hear songs in languages that sound vaguely familiar, and it presses onto a deep sorrow within me. I don’t think I want to remember. The priest starts singing it as well, and I draw the broken sword that I keep over my shoulder. He sings louder at the advent of the end, and I hate him all the more for it. I drive the jagged, broken point deep into his throat to silence his singing to a gurgle, only for the crowd to sing themselves into an eerie sense of calm. More voices join the choir and the well of my sorrow deepens, but I don’t want to feel it. I push it down and pull at my anger, anything to cover up what they seem to want me to feel. With a deft stroke, I behead one of their followers in hopes of sending them into a frenzy once more, but it only seems to strengthen their resolve to sing. Shards of images play in my mind, too fast to focus on, and gone too quick to remember. I don’t want to hear it anymore. So I begin the slaughter. My broken blade slices, maims and ends where its edge finds flesh. The song only ends when the last voice is silenced. Covered in gore and crimson, I look back at my work. I feel no pride, nor disgust, nor anything. I clean my blade with one of their cloaks and set back into the scabbard across my shoulder. I do not bother cleaning anything else.

A decade passes. I think on Decadence & Downfall.

There is a war outside my resting place. Banners I do not recognize facing other banners I do not recognize. Their lines are prim and proper in numbers beyond counting, soon to be consumed by the fires of combat. I stand at a distance, curious yet detached. I feel an old yearning at the notion of combat, some eagerness for the thrill of the fight. But what would be the point? Let them destroy themselves and claw for petty plots of land or purpose or people. This only serves me in my purpose. If anything, it saves me time.

#Solo RPG #solo ttrpg #Mythmaker #Fantasy #Writing

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fictionadventurer · 1 month ago

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I want to dissect all pre-Hobbit children's fantasy and figure out how it works. There's such a different flavor to it. There's almost always a self-conscious awareness that the magical stuff isn't real. Your options for setting seem to be:

Complete randomness that turns out to be a dream. This is your Alice in Wonderland type stories.

A self-consciously fairy tale world that follows fairy tale tropes. This exists on a sliding scale of earnest to parody. George Macdonald often exists here on the more (but not entirely) earnest end, while A.A. Milne has more of a parody take, and this is the default for a lot of people who just want to write fairy tales for their kids.

The Land of Story where all the literary or historical characters familiar to Edwardian schoolchildren live. Sometimes this is just "this is like the Arabian Nights" or "Robin Hood is real". Sometimes it's more of a mashup.

Oz is a unique mashup world in that it's working with some fairy tale tropes, often parodying them, but also building up its own creatures. Yet almost all of its wild innovations are built off of objects and concepts that are common in the daily life of Turn-of-the-Century America.

Childhood Pretend Games, except the magic is real. The fantasy is more concretely real than it is in other genres, but it's also explicitly tied to the types of things kids commonly imagine--E. Nesbit largely lives here, and later on, this is the same tradition Narnia is tied to.

Peter Pan somehow manages to be Childhood Pretend Games, and the Land of Story, and metaphors all at once, so it's like a dream world but also undeniably a real place, and it fascinates me because I can't wrap my head around it.

Anyway, against this backdrop, The Hobbit stands out more, because while it is kind of a fairy tale world, and does have a flippant parody voice at times, it's also undeniably a real place in a way that most previous fantasies aren't. Dwarves and dragons and trolls and magic rings are all from Fairy Tale Land, but they also have highly specific history tied to this land, and by the time you've got a Battle of the Five Armies building off of years of history between multiple different peoples, this has become a Real Place--a serious fantasy world that has real problems and real stakes. A world that that can stand on its own, without reference to previous stories or common childhood imagination. And I know I'm hardly a scholar in this field, and there's a ton of stuff I haven't read, but I'm fascinated by the difference. And it does make me want to seek out more of the earlier stuff, to see what fantasy started as and compare it to what came later.

#books #random thought of the day #the hobbit #fantasy #i started thinking about this because i reread peter pan #and reading the mythmakers just after that sent me down a rabbit hole of looking up earlier stuff #and i'm probably not giving the earlier fantasies enough credit for their specific worldbuilding #but also the difference in the tone and treatment is noticeable and it fascinates me

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