The Festival of the Shining Sun

Tekumel, because of the wealth of detail defining its laws, customs, mores and social structures, is immeasurably richer and more real a setting than any other I’ve played in. New players, used to more of a medieval Europe theme park environment, sometimes balk at its exotic names and ways of thinking: ‘How will I get my head around it all?’ Well, children don’t come pre-loaded with any culture either, and somehow they manage. In Tekumel gaming it’s why we usually start with a “fresh off the boat” set-up or a session zero in a location far from the main centres of civilization. With the Tekumel Sourcebook, The Eye of Allseeing Wonder, and Tirikelu you have everything you need to get started. Add Deeds of the Ever-Glorious and The Book of Ebon Bindings for extra spice.

Over the years my gaming friends and I have led whole parallel lives in the world of Tekumel. You’ll find its influence throughout ‘80s and ‘90s British gamebooks because the campaign roster included Jamie Thomson, Paul Mason, Mark Smith and Oliver Johnson. The Legion of the Sword of Doom in The Way of the Tiger? Look no further than Gruganu, Black Sword of Doom, the cohort of the god Ksarul, coupled with such Tsolyani regiment names as the Legion of Potent Destiny, the Legion of the Portals of Death, the Legion of the Night of Shadows, the Legion of the Storm of Fire, and the Legion of the Lord of Red Devastation.

When you have such a deep background, you can dive into a game with no preparation. The referee has to do almost nothing, in fact, as the player-characters drive the whole show. Players asked to sit out in another room continue to converse in-character. Adventures arise out of the goals the PCs set for themselves. Here’s a case in point. The characters were heading along the Sakbe from Bey Sű to to Sokatis. I had sketched a few notions that I could use as cues to the players for them to spin up into an evening’s events. For example:

Which led to the session of which this is the write-up:

As you arrived, preparations were being made for the Festival of the Shining Sun, dedicated to Hnalla’s second aspect. Chusun [Oliver Johnson] insisted on staying two days for the festival.

You took lodgings at the House of the Champion’s Rest, owned by Turuku of Mimore, an expat Salarvyani who obtained Tsolyani citizenship and is something of a local hero, having won a number of spectacular bouts in the arena until he retired five years ago.

Chusun visited the temple of Hnalla and made a lavish donation – his Excellent Ruby Eye with some 25 charges! This at least secured an audience with the Governor. You also spoke to the local police chief, Ssai hiMabran, a retired captain of the Legion of Hnalla. Chusun also gained admittance to an inner sanctum of the temple, where he saw the sun’s image focused on a pool of water and, disturbing it not by his breath, perceived sunspots that darkened the blazing disk.

Meanwhile, Tsamurel [Jamie Thomson] convinced Turuku to come out of retirement for one bout in the town’s quite impressive Hirilakte. The terms of the contest were to second injury. Tsamurel, to cover his bets, pawned the party’s Eye of Healing for 2000 Kaitars.

The festival began with an early morning contest. Young men of the town gather before sunrise to dive, swim the surging river, climb one of the tall swaying junkel trees on the far bank, swim back, and present an unbroken junkel nut to the Princess of the Sunrise, who by tradition is the prettiest local maiden. On this occasion the lucky girl was Eleara hiJefash, the Governor’s daughter.

Jangaiva [Mark Smith] and Tsamurel took part and was neck and neck with couple of local lads. Then Chusun noticed that one young fellow, Hogesh hiVurar of the Wooded Slope Clan, seemed to be cheating. Hogesh returned with some leaves stuffed inside a sheet (most contestants carried a sheet, net or sack) and swam into reeds where he previously hid a junkel nut the night before. When the deception was revealed, things looked bad for Hogesh and the crowd booed him, but Tsamurel (who was the legitimate winner) took the lad under his wing – in fact, went so far as to appoint him his second in the Hirilakte bout, which was scheduled for that evening.

There was a procession around the town, with Tsamurel riding as “Prince of the Sunrise” beside Lady Eleara, while Chusun chose instead to shave all his body hair and walk naked, beating himself with a whip and frightening the crowd with his enormous member, which seemed to become erect as he intensified his self-flagellation*.

Towards sunset, Chusun mastered his own Pedhetl, achieving momentary enlightenment into the inner mysteries of Hnalla’s second aspect**. He sat in the still-empty stands of the arena, and as people entered they took him for a holy man and gave him money and food in return for blessings.

Tsamurel and Turuku arrived, garbed as the champions of sunrise and sunset respectively. Tsamurel gave Hogesh the opportunity to address the crowd as his herald. Hogesh did so, putting just as much effort into singing his own praises as into bigging up Tsamurel, yet giving a stirring speech regardless that mollified the still-angry crowd. Only Chusun was not ready to forgive the young man for his attempt to cheat at the junkel nut contest – a naked, bald, seven-foot giant rose in the stands crying “Fraud!” and “False wretch, be silent!”

The duel began. Twice Tsamurel splintered Turuku’s mace, but each time stood back and called for a replacement before continuing the fight. Then Turuku scored a slight injury on Tsamurel. The bout was due to continue until either had taken two blows. As they fought on, Tsamurel’s mace broke and now Turuku called for another, joking to the crowd that they would soon have used up all the maces and might need to ask for a loan. Now Tsamurel wounded Turuku. It was all down to who would be injured next – and then, acting at precisely the same instant, both chose to attack and both blows drew blood.

A draw? The crowd could not allow it. Hastily conferring, Tsamurel and Turuku agreed to fight on until the next blow should decide the fray. After a furious exchange of attacks, parries and (on Tsamurel’s part) acrobatic dodges, Turuku’s mace struck home and Tsamurel’s legs buckled under him. He was back on his feet in seconds, both men bowing to the crowd. But Tsamurel was now 2000 Kaitars the poorer, and despite his 500 Kaitar share of the gate takings, has no way of redeeming the Eye of Healing from the temple.

In the evening, you heard rumours of a couple of burglaries that had occurred while everyone in town was watching the arena bout. This followed on from a spate of similar crimes that used to happen regularly years before, and were attributed to wandering woodfolk or puppeteers, but which had petered out in more recent times.

The next day, Chusun quizzed the Governor about the Black Ssu. The Governor's homeland turns out to have been the isles of Tsolei, and he told how the Black Ssu would raid the island to steal children who they bring up among them as "Non-Men" - humans who have been raised to serve the Ssu. He also mentioned what he knows of Hrugga, which is that Hrugga failed to give a gift to the demon brother Nurgashte because he couldn't afford anything of appropriate value after giving the scabbard of his fabled weapon, Kakara, to Bassa, king of the Black Ssu.

Meanwhile, Tsamurel met with Captain Ssai, offering to keep an ear open for news of the burglaries. On returning, he got into an argument with Turuku (the argument was all on Tsamurel’s side) when Turuku offered a gift of 500 Kaitars so that Tsamurel could redeem the Eye of Healing. Tsamurel, resenting the implication that he needed charity, tried to force Turuku into a rematch, but Turuku insisted he was now retired for good.

(In fact, the offer of 500 Kaitars would not have been enough. Tsamurel pawned the Eye for 2000 Kaitars and must pay back 2100 to redeem it, but only has 500 Kaitars – even if he’d taken the gift, that still leaves him 1100 Kaitars short. So you have probably lost both that and the Excellent Ruby Eye.)

* Hey, all I can say is that’s how Oliver chose to portray his character.

** There was a bit more background info that I gave in case any of the players wanted to delve into the religious aspects of the festival:

‘Hnalla’s Second Aspect is Chirashin Tulengkoi (literally "the Shining Sun") who gives his devotees surcease from care and freedom from grief or fear. He accepts only offerings of diamonds and other clear crystals. His priests and priestesses go nude except for necklaces, anklets, and bracelets made of ropes of crystals "hung about their persons, making each movement glitter and flash".

‘The most famous shrine of Hnalla's Second Aspect is in Jakalla. There, on his festival days, 9th Firasul and 4th Trantor, thousands of those whose lives have become sorrowful (the bereaved, crippled, those who have been shamed or paupered, etc) march in procession to his shrine. Miracles occur, souls are healed, and grieving hearts are filled again with joy on these days. [In the campaign it's currently around 22nd Drenggar, ie some 18 days to the 9th Firasul festival day.]

‘The "commonly known" or "outer" mystery of the Shining Sun's devotees, revealed to all lay followers such as yourself, is that the colours of the rainbow that a diamond makes from the pure white light of his disk are analogous to the things that make up all the rest of the universe. Each separate thing appears as having a single nature, but when all things are perceived at once, in their totality they are the light of the Shining Sun.

‘A deeper mystery is described by the priests as like gazing into a source of intense light. At first the light is dazzling, but gradually the eyes adjust and it is possible to make out some detail within the light source. In the same way, they say that those who receive initiation into the mystery cult of the Shining Sun can be taught to endure the light and will eventually have revealed to them the greatest mystery of all, which is to glimpse what is revealed within the source. Your own High Prelate of Hnalla in Bey Su, Chankosu hiMareda, is a special adherent of the Second Aspect and is rumoured to be an initiate to whom the mystery has been revealed.’

Many a good hanging

Just a brief reminder that if you want the two books collecting our game write-ups over the years, those are available to backers of the Jewelspider Patreon page, but only till Twelfth Night. (By that I mean the evening of January 5, of course, as the medieval day traditionally began at sundown.) 

Hopefully you're not one of those people who'd pledge $5, grab the free books, and then unsubscribe -- but it has been pointed out to me that there are nihilists out there as well as good folk, so I can't grumble if you do. I will just say that if you remain a backer you'll get first look at the Jewelspider RPG, as well as a bunch of scenarios, special access to the Vulcanverse adventures, rules and setting discussions, and all the things you get here on the FL blog for nothing only with an added je ne sais quoi.

And don't let the AI art above put you off. For one thing, it's really 99% "A" and only 1% "I". But more importantly, all the artwork for Jewelspider is being created by real human artistry, notably Inigo Hartas who, as a historian, folklorist and the son of Leo Hartas who was the principal illustrator of Dragon Warriors, could not be bettered as visualizer of this new visit to the lands of Legend. Patreon backers' funding goes to ensure that talent like his is not usurped by machines.

The Conclave on Kindle

If you followed last week's installments of the Conclave campaign and want the full novella, it's now available on Kindle. This brings the story to a conclusion, fixes some of the plot holes, fleshes out some scenes, and also includes background details of the narrator, Surma. To quote from the blurb:

Creation is losing the flavour of things, becoming colourless and uniform under the skin of reality. This is why the old songs lose their melody, why the fisherman’s catch is mostly minnows, why the young cast their elders out into the cold, why the storms are violent and unseasonal, and dragons hide in distant clouds.

The world is an archipelago of a hundred islands, beyond whose furthest shores lies illimitable ocean. Magic is real, though rarely tamed, and the College of Wizards maintains a careful balance so that use of magic does not damage the fabric of reality.

But now a new force is at work, twisting and blurring the true names of things that are the root of all that exists. If it goes on unchecked, magic and wonder will drain away. Even life and death will cease to have meaning.

Seven of the greatest sorcerers of the age are invited by the Master Summoner of the College of Wizards to travel to the island of Dain at the archipelago’s heart. The Summoner’s hope is that this conclave, untainted by the politics and intrigues of the College and unrestrained by nature, will be able to hold back the force that is picking reality apart.

Yet to be effective in their fight, the conclave must first work the hardest spell of all -- trust.

If anyone who read the first seven installments on the blog feels like giving the book a review on Amazon -- well, consider yourself rich in undying gratitude! Surprisingly (but also quite pleasingly) some readers have praised it as homage to Ursula K Le Guin -- and as I still haven't read the Earthsea books that's surely a first. An anticipatory homage!

By one of those strokes of serendipity I discovered this week that the filmmaker Michael Powell wanted to make a movie of the Earthsea trilogy. It was designed as a project for his film school students and it was only five minutes long, but what a treasure that would be if it still exists anywhere. Powell incidentally was just as baffled as I am that the trilogy was published in the UK by Puffin (Penguin Books' children's imprint). That's the reason I didn't notice it back in my teens when I was devouring a lot of fantasy and SF. When Powell asked Le Guin why it went to Puffin and not Penguin's adult line, she said, 'Because Kaye Webb is a smart cookie.' I suspect it was because it was assumed back then that a fantasy novel written by a woman must be for ten year olds, so it's surprising that Le Guin thought it was a good decision. I guess it didn't hurt her in the long run.

The Conclave: "Complaining About Miracles"

If you've been following the write-ups this week, I hope you enjoyed the glimpse of what it's like to play in one of our games. For those with no patience for game-inspired fiction, I do know what you mean. Most of this stuff only really makes sense if you were there. But after all, roleplaying games are not a spectator sport (not the good ones, anyway) and write-ups of blow-by-blow game action are always tedious, so I hope that by making this account character-driven I've turned it into something at least readable. And take heart -- normal blog service will be resumed tomorrow.

Oh, one other thing -- I should probably clarify that my character, Surma, is no more powerful than the other PCs, but I did manage to roll a lot of critical successes (5 or less on 3d6) for his spell-casting that helped him do exactly what he set out to do. In particular when it really mattered I several times rolled a 3, and it was interesting how the other players reacted to that. Some accepted it as part of game-reality, ie that Surma evidently was an exceptional wizard, but others insisted that he "didn't realize his own luck". (How different from the real world, where if somebody gets lucky several times in a row we think he or she is a genius.) I suppose that sums up the two different approaches to roleplaying, ie whether you see the world through the character's eyes or as a tabletop simulation where you always remain aware of the mechanics.

SESSION SEVEN

Were I to grant every prayer, it would still not be enough, for entitlement is in the mortal heartbeat and ingratitude in their life’s breath. You doubt my words? If you who read this are a mage, work a miracle. Twist reality till it snaps, reshape it, build a new truth out of your will. Do you hear that whine, tedious to your ears as the buzzing of mosquitos? Those are mortal voices, prompt with their complaints that your miracle could have been done better.

But I return to my narrative. On the deck of the Sea Lion, the Watcher lately avoided, I addressed my companions. ‘We need a spirit who can tell us the path Obsidian walked to godhood.’

‘Summoning such a one from the Dry Lands is a drastic measure,’ said Hurstyk.

‘We are embroiled in total war. Behold the hourglass. The Watcher is barely a minute behind us. No action is too drastic.’

‘I have summoned a wind,’ said Wax as our sails strained to fullness. The sands of the hourglass reversed their flow.

‘Breathing space,’ muttered Farris with a wry smile.

‘I could summon my dead master,’ offered Aareth. ‘He and I had a complex relationship. What is the best way for me to describe it? First I must tell you of events from twenty years past…’

I began to seriously consider joining Pale’s faction, until Wax said, ‘I will call up the spirit of my father, Ear of Ear, who taught me to be a shaman.’

Perhaps it was the effort of the summoning, but the wind he had lately raised died to a flutter. We waited. A streak drew itself from the western horizon across the water. As it reached us, a wet shape boiled up out of the depths and hauled itself aboard. A giant crustacean, garlanded in years of coral growth, stood dripping there. I could not understand its chittering speech, but it seemed to cast trepid glances out to sea as if it feared pursuit.

As Wax communed with his father’s shade, I elaborated on the plan. ‘We will send our emissary into the Dry Lands, and there he will walk the dreamquest that Obsidian used to amplify her power. With the counsel of Ear of Ear, along with the pattern Idhelruin can read, he will know the way. Gate will get him there bodily. I will provide the rainbow armour that refracts and resists Pale’s attempts to blur together all names, just as the rainbow splits white into distinct colours.’

‘You mean to send Eli?’ said Hurstyk.

‘He is an inquisitor, whatever that means.’

‘What does it mean?’ wondered Aareth.

‘It means he is one who believes himself to have a purpose. What one mage can do, another can do. Eli will undergo apotheosis and challenge Obsidian directly in the Dry Lands just as we stand against her here.’

‘Inquisitors are sworn to protect the world from malevolent sorcerers who seek to destroy or conquer it,’ said Abdiel. ‘Like you.’

‘Like me? Not Obsidian? She does threaten exactly that – but I, who seek to prevent her, excite you to ire? Abdiel, you are an imbecile.’

‘Woe!’ cried Wax. ‘My father comes apart. Surma, save him!’

The first prayer. The crab-form that Ear had taken in this world was decaying, its shell cracking apart. I read the spirit’s name with exact precision, caught the laws of life and death neatly between two fingers, undid and retied the knot of existence. ‘Ear of Ear, stand before me in your true form, in your prime, with your powers at their peak. You are once more a living man.’

There was a presence beside me. A woman in pale garments with a rent in space behind her. She stroked her hand over the fingers I had brushed against the Watcher’s. ‘Surma, come; you belong with me.’

I regarded her. ‘You squat in the Dry Lands, Obsidian, but I am the god of sudden death and I banish you.’

She could not resist. Another miracle? Perhaps we overestimate her power. It had been no struggle for me to withstand her, and yet –

‘Your arm,’ said Hurstyk.

‘Yes, it seems to have no feeling in it. The effect began when the Watcher touched me and now is spreading. Perhaps it is the White Death.’

Hurstyk shook his head. ‘Some other kind of curse.’ He began to work his healing magic, then reached for aid from Idhelruin. ‘Aareth, you help us too.’

‘Perhaps the blurring of well and unwell is what my Lady Pale wants,’ said Aareth, declining to add his force to the enchantment.

Hurstyk stood back, momentarily drained by his efforts. ‘It is all I can do to stop the curse spreading further up your arm.’

‘No matter. I’ll see to it myself when there is time.’

‘You should already be dead,’ said Idhelruin.

‘There has not been time even for that. Ear, what can you tell us of Obsidian’s long game?’

‘My father can tell us little,’ said Wax. ‘He died long after Obsidian entered the Dry Lands twenty years ago.’

‘Then why did you propose we – ? Never mind. Is there anything he can tell us?’

‘Pale’s design is to erase all differences in the world. There will be no true names left for a mage to discern.’

‘Thank you. We already knew as much.’

‘I saw her crush an apple and an orange together,’ Aareth remembered. ‘It is a ritual that represents loss of identity.’

‘And she uses that ore, which is not gold nor silver nor mercury. This is not new information. Mirrowaith, can you elaborate?’

‘We of Hythe know nothing of any practical use,’ he said, or words that amounted to as much.

‘I depart for my home,’ said Ear suddenly. ‘My son, I thank you.’

Of course. Why would he thank the living god who restored him to life? Mortals, as I have said.

‘Take Sprugel with you, Father,’ said Wax.

‘I go now. But I leave you with this.’ And he put a small blessing on Wax’s coral spear, such as I might grant on a whim if distracted by other matters. We watched him depart on the turtle’s back.

‘I have read the pattern for Eli’s journey into the Dry Lands, such as I am able,’ said Idhelruin.

‘And see where the gate stands open,’ said Hurstyk. ‘I have tried to ensure it opens only one way.’

Encased in the rainbow armour, Eli took a step forward. He was like a man who, sunk days in draining fever, suddenly awakes and musters all his remaining strength. He went through the gate, closing it behind him – but in that moment we saw a woman, tall and pallid, stand ready in the other realm to embrace him.

We looked at each other. ‘Eli is resourceful,’ I said at last. ‘Obsidian may think she has the measure of him, but even if she has him captive she dare not relax her guard, and in the Dry Lands she will not have power to destroy him. Eli will be a constant threat to her, one that distracts her attention from us.’

‘Remember the hourglass!’ said Wax. ‘Behold, the thing is upon us again.’

‘He’s right,’ said Abdiel, who had stationed himself at the stern. ‘There is its hand upon the rudder. But it shall not pass me.’

Farris glanced over the rail, raised his bow, and loosed an arrow that dislodged the creature’s grip. Gripping his coral spear, Wax ran to the side and jumped in, giving me just seconds to weave the Watcher’s true name into the spear’s tip so that it could not fail to find its target.

Idhelruin read the patterns of the sea around us, ensuring that currents would favour us and not the Watcher.

‘Give me the means to breathe underwater,’ called Abdiel.

‘You have gills,’ I told him. ‘Webbed fingers. Fins on your heels and arms. You may move through water as easily as air.’

He plunged in. Already Wax had found his foe and hurled the spear like a harpoon against a whale. It broke on his breast, and the Watcher was sorely injured, but not enough to stop him from using Wax’s true name. Wax went rigid, forgetting to breathe, and sank like a stone into lightless depths still more absolutely representative of finality than the Dry Lands.

‘See there!’ said Aareth. ‘The turtle is coming back!’

And it seemed mere moments since Ear had left us. Of course, he must have set out on his long voyage to the south and then considered how ill-omened it would be to undertake the journey without giving due thanks to the one who had brought him back to life. As it happened, events were to come thick and fast and so he would forget a second time to render those thanks, but his return was fortuitous. He plunged the turtle against the Watcher. A brave and futile gesture. Sprugel resurfaced bloody and near to death, while Ear sank after his son.

Abdiel swam close and tried his sword against the Watcher, but it deflected him with ease and if not for Idhelruin’s foresightful patterning it would have gutted him there and then.

Hurstyk worked magic to cure Sprugel of his wounds so he could dive to recover Wax and Ear. By now you may be sure I had grown tired of the Watcher’s continual appearances and I decided it was time to end them. Naming it exactly, I bound its fate to the hourglass in which I had made Time’s sands to flow. Then I reversed the effect. Now, instead of tracking the Watcher’s progress, the hourglass compelled it. And lastly I turned the hourglass on its side, and with a crunching of the gears of reality the Watcher was held between two instants of time. Upside-down it hung in the frothing furrow between two waves, some of Sprugel’s breath caught forever as bubbles hanging frozen there around it.

‘Why don’t you send it to attack her holy reverence the Lady Pale?’ said Aareth.

‘Is it frozen in space or just in time?’ mused Mirrowaith.

‘Can we transport it?’ wondered Idhelruin.

‘It depends if the world is round and moves, or flat and stationary,’ said Hurstyk. ‘If you consider the angular velocity of a point in space…’

‘You should have controlled it, not merely frozen it,’ grumbled Abdiel as he climbed back aboard.

In short: ‘I don’t like that miracle, why can’t I have a different miracle?’ Again I could appreciate the sentiments that led Obsidian to conclude the entire world should be razed and built anew.

Sprugel resurfaced with the limp bodies of Wax and Ear, which he dropped on the deck. Hurstyk and Abdiel bent over them. Seeing them busy at healing, I decided it was time to rid myself of the Watcher’s curse, not least because in freezing it in time I had also frozen the hourglass and my hand. If I could not break the curse, the ship would have to sail on without me.

Knowing the Watcher’s name made it easier. I drew out the curse and flung it away into the Dry Lands. What I had not anticipated, but was not unwelcome, was that the Watcher went with it. The hourglass was now empty of sand as the Watcher had no location in the world anymore.

‘She summoned the Watcher here when she was still alive herself,’ I said. ‘Now, if none of us is foolish enough to summon him, perhaps he’ll stay there in the Dry Lands.’

‘But your arm,’ said Farris.

I glanced down. It was turning to a gritty black dust.

‘That’s just like the dust her magnificent highness Lady Pale wanted me to taste when she saw me in the underworld,’ said Aareth.

Pale’s influence again? She was becoming simply boorish. I dispensed with her attempt to exsiccate me with one syllable of power – even to use an entire word would have too far dignified her frankly tedious efforts.

Mortals, at least, are infinite in their variety. I like the world as it is, coloured by them. Pale is drear, her outlook stale, and so despite their carping ingratitude I resolved to stand against her on humanity’s behalf.

‘The people of Tartuva do not believe in wizards,’ Hurstyk told us as we sailed towards the port.

‘They think all magic is chicanery,’ agreed Idhelruin. ‘All except the power of their god, the divine Warrior-King.’

I looked at Mirrowaith. It had to be asked, though I knew the answer. ‘Did the wizards of Hythe ever make a study of these people?’

‘We leave them alone. It is the balance.’

‘If only you had applied that principle to all of nature, not a one of your books need ever have been written. Well then, we’ll go ashore armoured in ignorance.’

‘They will not take me for a wizard,’ said Idhelruin. ‘I seem but a shambling old man.’

‘What does a wizard look like in any case?’ said Farris. ‘If they see few strangers here then they’ll have no reason to suspect us.’

‘For myself, I bear no taint of magic,’ spat Abdiel. If only he and not Eli had gone to the Dry Lands; Abdiel and Pale would get on well, I think.

‘Then perhaps I should remove those gills I gave you,’ I suggested.

‘I… have already removed them with my own magic,’ he said, pulling a scarf close around his neck.

A platoon of militia stood ready to meet us at the quay. They seemed suspicious of outsiders ‘Why are you here?’ asked their captain, a man named Canto.

‘We are interested in your religion, which is widely admired,’ said Hurstyk.

‘You speak courteously, stranger. But you could have gone to one of the larger ports. The ziggurat here is but a small shrine to the divine Warrior-King.’

‘You are too modest. This is thought to be the origin of the faith, and so we hope to find the worship of the divine Warrior-King in its purest form.’

‘Again, well said. Will you dine with us?’

‘With pleasure.’

Canto and his men led us through streets that seemed exceptionally squalid even in comparison to the festering ports I’d seen so far. Down one alley stood some rudely nailed coffins, stacked for victims of the White Death that we sensed in the mud and ordure all around us. It gave me pause to reflect and even feel a stirring of that emotion mortals call nostalgia for, I thought, at least my own worshippers are clean, given that the wind there dries all filth in minutes and they have not enough possessions for their shacks ever to become cluttered. Between rock and ice floes and leaden sea, with ice-sharpened gales scouring the land under sun and stars alike, it is a land of beauty most unlike the teeming foetid pits of –

But no. That is the line of thought that led Obsidian to the Dry Lands.

Despite the squalor, Hurstyk spoke as though the town were immaculate, praising it for cleanliness and order until even Canto could take no more. ‘Do you press your finger in that wound to mock us?’ he demanded.

‘We can help.’

Canto was torn. ‘I must consult with the elders,’ he said.

‘Do so. We’ll wait.’

‘Touch nothing,’ said Aareth in my ear. ‘The water in the pitcher is infected with a multitude of ailments, and the blankets on the beds are rife with the White Death.’

We looked out of the window towards the ten-metre ziggurat from which the Warrior-King’s temple overlooked the town. The shrine of the Sightless Ones lay further inland. Possibly some details of the relationship between these two cults could be found in the books that Aareth and the others had read, but I could not bear to hear the Hythean explanation, more tortuous than any maze, that would ensue if I asked them. And what did it matter anyway? To save the world we needed the prismatic jewel that lay in the labyrinth. That single thing was our sole purpose here.

Canto returned. ‘The elders have agreed to accept your offer of help. Come with me.’

He took us to a hall in which some fifty plague victims lay on pallets. ‘I must not seem to use magic to heal them,’ said Hurstyk.

‘Of course not. They would regard it as chicanery and refuse to be well.’

He began to walk between the patients, touching them with herbs to cover the use of magic. As each sat up, fully restored, he urged them to lie still and rest. Because, of course, mortals would hate to tolerate a miracle cure and would surely file back the next day to demand why Hurstyk hadn’t made them younger and more handsome along with merely banishing the deadliest disease in creation.

Seeing that Hurstyk had it under control, and his ministrations would usefully distract the attention of Canto and the other militiamen, I decided to head inland to reconnoitre the temple of the Sightless Ones. Farris accompanied me, but all the others decided the best use of their time would be to stay and watch Hurstyk perform his herbcraft. Immediately we left, from the hall behind us, we heard the muttering begin:

‘Where are those two going? Has Lady Pale subverted them?’

‘Can they be trusted?’

‘Why didn’t Surma stay and watch me heal these people, the toad?’

‘Surma cares nothing for mortal lives…’

The voices trailed mercifully away. ‘They do realize we’re literally trying to save the world, don’t they?’ wondered Farris.

‘If you gave a bunch of chickens the power of magic they would be more use,’ I said with a sigh. ‘You and I together will accomplish more without them, I suspect, though it is passing strange that none of them wants to come with us to the labyrinth that is the whole purpose of our being here.’

We walked a mile or two inland from the port, followed by the two bodyguards I’d freed from Jude’s control into my own. The air was sweeter on the downs, away from the stink of habitation. Tough grass ruffled in the wind.

‘Do you notice,’ said Farris, ‘that there’s no White Death here?’

‘And something else,’ I said. ‘The names of things are sharper. See how reality shines with inner light. It is the opposite of Pale’s bane, that flattens and blurs all into an indecipherable oneness.’

‘Curious that the Warrior-King’s cult should be so opposed to magic, on an island where it is potentially easier than anywhere else.’

I nodded. ‘How are the cults related, I wonder? Does that one exist to hold this one in check – a warrior immune to magic holding wizards at bay?’

‘Sounds like Abdiel’s fondest dream.’

I laughed. ‘Or is it that the Sightless Ones set up that cult to deter mages from travelling here? They want to stay aloof. Otherwise, if it were widely known how much stronger magic is here, Hythe would want to relocate the college.’

‘Mysteries,’ said Farris with a shrug. ‘We just need the jewel.’

‘Yes.’

We reached the crest of a low hill and saw the compound less than a mile ahead. A low oval wall, that even a child could climb over, surrounded an area about a third of a mile long. The buildings included a temple and what seemed to be living quarters, of an architecture pleasing in its brute simplicity. At first you could take it for great blocks of stone simply piled one on another, like ancient monoliths, but on second look there was more artifice there.

People moved around the compound but had not seen us.

‘The captain warned against entering the compound,’ Farris reminded me. ‘which the priests regard as sacrilege. So we must use stealth – or Send magic – or come up with a plan.’

‘A plan. Just as well we didn’t bring the other five, then. But what do you think those are? Those seven standing stones – no, is it six? Eight? I cannot count them by eye.’

I resorted to Pattern. There were exactly seven. I felt their outrage at being named and numbered, though they were powerless to resist.

‘I could almost imagine them having faces,’ said Farris. ‘And there are seven of them, seven of us. It’s ominous, you have to admit.’

‘We need someone with better Pattern skills.’ I sent a breeze to carry my words to Idhelruin: Come at once.

Shortly came his reply: I am busy watching Hurstyk pretend to give herbs to people he has cured, but will come when I can.

I replied: Our souls may have been taken.

‘Let’s hope not,’ said Farris.

I shrugged. ‘We need to make him appreciate the urgency. In honesty I cannot understand why the others didn’t want to come along.’

We waited a full minute, or very nearly. ‘Oh, this is intolerable.’ I cast a Summoning. Idhelruin appeared on the hillside behind us, kneeling.

‘I regret the discourtesy, but this matter is most pressing. You can stand up, by the way.’

We explained the situation. ‘Is it not likely we have been seen?’ said Idhelruin.

‘Very probably.’

‘We must be careful not to display any use of magic.’

‘You just appeared in front of us out of thin air. That ship has sailed.’

‘A fair point. Why… I cannot count those cromlechs. Sometimes I think there are seven, at other times – now it might be five. Or six…’

‘And have you noticed they seem to have faces?’ pointed out Farris.

‘Disturbing.’ Idhelruin concentrated. ‘Oh, they didn’t like that one bit. But now I see there are seven.’

I leaned to speak in Farris’s ear. ‘I thought the old man would read a pattern better than I did. I’ll have to summon Wax.’

He too arrived kneeling. I don’t think I specify that in the spell, do I? Perhaps it is the natural condition of those who are brought by magic before me.

‘Why do you make me kneel, Surma?’ raged Wax.

‘I make you do nothing. Stand.’

‘The others think you and Farris are both under Lady Pale’s influence. Also they resent that they didn’t get to come with you.’

‘They are children. Just as Eli is hopefully confounding Pale in the Dry Lands, distracting her from her plans, so do we have the mages of Hythe, who I could almost believe Pale has sent to try me.’

Wax read the patterns of the statues, but with no clearer result than Idhelruin.

‘Perhaps I had better summon Hurstyk. Oh, here he comes now.’

The others caught up to us. ‘We thought you were controlled by – ’

‘Oh, stop it! I have actually lost count of the number of miracles I’ve performed in the last week specifically to oppose Pale. From now on I will not hear talk of balance, restraint, or unspecified dithering. We have a world to save, and to do so we need the prismatic jewel that Diamansus left in the labyrinth beneath that compound. Let us now act together, as we briefly did aboard the Sea Lion when the Watcher attacked, and perhaps between us we will prevail against this threat that Pale has unleashed.’

‘Work as a team?’ said Farris. ‘That indeed would be a miracle.’

A journal of the play years

Here's the thing about write-ups. The point of a roleplaying game isn't to create a story. "But, but..." you may say, especially if you've bought into all that genre-flavoured, trope-carbonated Hollywood screenwriting fizz. And I do like stories. I read a lot of them. I even write a few. But the second life conjured up by a good RPG session goes way beyond any of that break-to-act-two nonsense.

I'll give you a really good example. Watch The Knick. The first eighteen episodes are tour-de-force writing, as superficially formless as daily life and yet driven by conflict, emotion and need. In the last two episodes the writers were forced by Cinemax's cancellation of the show to tie everything up with a bow -- not even a suture -- and that meant scraping the barrel of trope-driven, by-the-numbers storytelling. Suddenly characters were having arguments that the actors obviously couldn't bring themselves to believe. Previously complex characters stood revealed as dastardly villains. An interesting and rather touching romance turned out to hinge on an improbable master plan. Two of the hospital staff abruptly decided to turn into psychotic murderers and then got together. Where before we'd had great original drama, now we had the most disappointingly cliched melodrama.

That's the kind of cookie-cutter plotting that comes from treating the narrative as an artifice to grab the attention of bored audiences rather than, as they had done previously, allowing it to find its own shape from the many nuanced processes going on inside. The determination of incident driving the illustration of character.

So I'm wary of going into a game with the intention of doing write-ups because it can make the roleplaying self-conscious. Players start worrying about whether their character will come across well, get enough of a starring role, be perceived as having an interesting (ugh) arc. That said, when the write-up is done in character and comes with all the unreliability and partiality that implies, it can be fun. And as I get older it gets harder to remember what happened in the session two weeks ago, so write-ups are useful mnemonics.

Preparing for one of our Christmas specials, it occurred to me that, although my group don't often bother with write-ups, nevertheless we'd accumulated enough of them in twenty years to fill a book. So I put them all together and printed up a dozen copies to hand out to the players, with this introduction:

Getting around the table for an evening’s gaming is a highlight of the week, and lots of fun even when (as often) we’re simply larking about.

But when the magic starts to work, and we steep ourselves in the world, and the characters speak through us – then our imaginations join together and take flight. And that’s when we might say to non-gamers: we have seen things you people wouldn’t believe…

Stories matter to human beings. They entertain, but they do more than that. They are how we see the world. And in our games we’ve had the privilege of getting inside the story. The joy of creating it together with good friends. The wonder of experiencing things beyond the everyday.

This book collects some of the fugitive scraps of those marvellous moments together. Long may it continue.

ADDENDUM: The point here, of course, is "the joy of creating [a story] together with good friends". That's why roleplaying is such a unique experience -- like life, what matters is not the story that emerges, but the fact that you make it happen and you experience it with people you care about. But for those who are interested in my group's write-ups, you can find a lot of them just by excavating the deeper strata of this blog. For instance:

• Tekumel
• 1890s
• Paragon
• Redemption (Legend) parts 1, 2 and 3
• Jewelspider (Legend)

I could go on, but it's safe to say that's probably more than enough.

Roleplaying write-ups

I sometimes wonder whether game write-ups wouldn’t be a perfectly good way of communicating the essential ideas in a scenario. Published scenarios, after all, are a format that was really created just to sell books. They’re about as useful for running a game as reading the itinerary of somebody’s trip to Provence would be for having a similar vacation.

And in any case, just as in war few plans survive contact with the enemy, and in software development the design is bound to evolve once coding starts, no pre-written scenario can (or should) be run without adapting to what the players do. If they break it, then great – they’re the heroes; that’s what they’re there for.

With a write-up, you’re getting to see how one group of players tackled a situation. If it inspires the referee to come up with something for his or her group, that’s much better than a list of programmed encounters, because every scenario needs to be customized to fit what’s gone before in the campaign. You couldn’t just take a script written for Hill Street Blues, change the names, and insert it into NYPD Blue. In the same way, published scenarios are selling the promise of something that cannot work.

Here are a couple of write-ups of mine. One is in the form of a comics page for a Tekumel campaign I ran back in 1980. The characters had voyaged to the far side of the continent and found themselves in a deserted palace. They relaxed into unexpected luxury but had a rude awakening when a mechanical sentinel turned up at dawn. (That’s why one of the characters was still in just a tunic.) The “Eye” that explodes is an ancient technological device, probably the Eye of Frigid Breath or the Terrible Eye of Raging Power, given the way that Kinamru tries to use it.

The other write-up (below) is the finale of “The Night of the Jackals”, a published scenario for Cthulhu by Gaslight, though much altered to fit our party by referee Tim Savin. I’ve previously recounted the rest of the scenario. At the end we all got killed and came back to life as regenerating semi-immortals. That was pretty much it for my character, who’d been conceived as a Victorian aesthete, not a steampunk superhero, but this was how I processed that finale. A different player would have had a different experience and come up with a different account of it – but that’s the whole point.

The End of the Affair

‘What chance of a getting a drink now, do you suppose?’

‘Even the orchestra has packed up, but I did find this bottle of whisky rolling around. It’s blended, I’m afraid.’

‘Any port in a storm. By the way, aren’t you Dr Dakkar Singh?’

‘Ice?’

‘Quite enough of that for one night. Thanks. Well, bottoms up.’

‘Jaikara. And yes, I am Dakkar Singh.’

‘If we wedge these armchairs here, they won’t slide about too much. I say, I wouldn’t normally, you know, but under the circumstances… I have to ask. Weren’t you mixed up in that business in Hampstead back in the nineties? The soldiers being murdered?’

‘I’m quite sure the papers invented most of it. I do wonder if Stoker got hold of the story for his book. Not the vampire one; the Seven Stars I mean.’

‘A curse, wasn’t it? Mummies and a dreadful blood vengeance business? Look, I can see you’re reluctant, but in an hour it’ll be between you, me and Davy Jones.’

‘I suppose no harm can come of speaking about it now. I was looking into that business, the murders, for the uncle of a friend of mine. We were really just children then. Hardly the foggiest notion of how to conduct an investigation. Though, in our defence, I will say that we weren’t quite as unfailingly clueless as the police.’

‘The fellow in Hampstead who had the mummy – Hollingsworth? The papers said that he’d murdered his own former comrades in order to keep the thing for himself.’

‘Hollingsworth was a victim in the matter, for all that he brought it on himself. I don’t think we can blame him. A lot of otherwise sane men were driven close to something like madness. The real tragedy is that the fire claimed the life of his young son. He just didn’t care what they said about him after that, you see.’

‘How did the fire start?’

‘I wasn’t there for that part. What happened, the previous night the true murderer had called on Hollingsworth while I and my friends were with him. We knew him to have got away with dreadful crimes. He flaunted it in our faces. There was tension. Some of us entertained the possibility of physical violence…’

‘But?’

‘But nothing came of it. Hollingsworth spoke to the man and was persuaded to part with the mummy.’

‘Must have been a forceful sort of person, eh? Some people can do that. Don’t need threats or strength of arms. Their personality alone is enough to dominate others.’

‘That may be true. This man I speak of was a dirty dog without a scrap of principle. He had indeed resorted to violence and intimidation to achieve his ends. And his persuasive powers, far from being the honest result of strong character, were mesmeric and underhand. After he left, we determined to follow him.’

‘You and your friends, you mean?’

‘Benjamin Herzog was a good cross-country runner, a crack shot, and had picked up some sharp tracking skills from an uncle in the Pinkertons. He set off after the villain’s carriage on foot while I and my servant Edwards saddled a couple of horses and followed on a few minutes later.’

‘And your quarry didn’t notice you all filing along behind him?’

‘It was ten o’clock at night, with a thick fog, and they were electrifying the street lights that autumn so most of the old gas-lamps were out. Just as well, as Benjy had possibly had a couple of brandies earlier. He wasn’t on best form that night, put it that way. He told me that a couple of times he nearly ran into the carriage when it halted in the fog. I’d seen Benjy on longer runs than that without getting winded too.’

‘Out of breath, was he? Perhaps that wasn’t the brandy.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t; we were all very jumpy that night. Anyway, we followed the carriage down to Camden Town where it turned off towards Islington. The roads became narrower and in poor repair. On a shabby terraced street near the Caledonian Road, the carriage dropped off two men and Benjy heard the words, “in the morning”.

‘The carriage went on. We assumed it was still carrying our man, and after a short time its progress in the direction of central London seemed to confirm that, so we returned to the terraced house. You see, we had long ago identified our suspect as having one very tall henchman, whom we called Mr Choker – he did the actual killing – and two other accomplices who he’d told the police were his cousins. The cousins were supposedly touring the country, and thus unavailable for interview by the police, but now we’d tracked them down. Or so we thought.’

‘You alerted the police as to their whereabouts?’

‘That was Edwards’ suggestion. I pooh-poohed it. On reflection it would have just got a lot of bobbies killed. Not that I knew that then, of course. I simply wanted – ’

‘Vindication?’

‘Evidence. Plain facts. But there were no plain facts – not of a kind we could ever present in a court of law.  I had no inkling of that as I picked the lock. I suppose I should describe the house, shouldn’t I? Picture a seedy street north of King’s Cross. Steps lead up to darkened porches. These are dingy terraced houses with peeling paintwork, each occupied by several families or groups of day labourers, two or more people to a single uncarpeted room. The lock on my school tuck shop was far more robust.

‘Once inside, we heard voices from the lower ground floor. Benjy and I crept down the stairs – Edwards was outside watching the horses. I think now that I was as silent as a cat, but Benjy trod on a loose board. Maybe it was the other way round; this was nearly a quarter of a century ago. Luckily Benjy was always a quick thinker. He immediately coughed and began mumbling drunkenly as he launched himself loudly up the other flight to the first floor. I waited, then slipped down the rest of the way to the basement door. From inside came two voices speaking in a language I didn’t know. I try to remember it today, applying my knowledge now. Could it have been Arabic? Quite possibly it was a far older tongue. But time and the mind play tricks, as you know. Nothing I am telling you now is certifiably as it happened.’

‘I understand. But you don’t have to build a case, do you? I mean, this isn’t for a court of law. It’s just between the two of us.’

‘So it is. Certainly I wouldn’t trouble with niceties like evidence now. Back then – I really don’t know. Perhaps we hoped for documents that would prove a link between our suspect and these men. Not a confession, though. We already knew them to be fanatics who would stop at nothing. In spite of that I hadn’t brought a gun. In those days I still believed that to take up the sword meant to die by the sword. That and justice.’

‘Justice, eh? “Ruat caelum” and all that.’

‘I did say that we were tender in years and had not yet put away such childish things. I beckoned Edwards over and found that he had brought along a shotgun. He was Scandinavian, you know. Or possibly Austrian. A big man, though not as big as Choker. We waited till the pubs turned out, and when there were a few people roaming loudly in the street we descended to the lower ground floor room. There was silence inside. No light under the door. I picked the lock.

‘I don’t know if I made too much noise, or whether it was Benjy again, but both men inside were instantly awake. We had surprised them in their beds – well, their mats on the floor. Where you or I might keep a glass of water or a book to read, they had loaded revolvers. Pointed at us.

‘Edwards flung aside his shotgun and ran in. Benjy’s pistol appeared as though by a conjurer’s sleight-of-hand. I, noticing that the second man had fumbled his gun, ran over and aimed a wild punch. It was pretty dark, and I got a solid hit on empty air.

‘Edwards grappled his man, who fired several shots into the wall. Benjy couldn’t get a clear shot. Then the man I was standing over began to change. A veritable metamorphosis, I mean. His bald head separated into hard sliding plates. Spines like those of a stag beetle sprouted on his arms. His body reconfigured as he grew in stature, developing armoured growths like pauldrons. His face – well, I was glad of the poor light.

‘I think now it was a kind of accelerated pupation. Cell division can occur very rapidly if the energy is available. It took the passage of some years to be able to reflect on the experience with such calm detachment. At the time we simply lost our heads. Fright made us like puppets steered by an outside force. Benjy fled, yet I would have staked my life on him having the courage of Horatio. If I’d had my swordstick, perhaps I’d have skewered the creature as it lay there howling and changing. Or perhaps even then I didn’t think myself a killer. Edwards struggled with his man, but a bullet in the arm made him think better of staying. As he and I ran after Benjy, I snatched up the shotgun. At the top of the stairs, Benjy was in such a state that he no longer knew how to open the door. I turned, felt Edwards go by rather than saw him, then discharged both barrels into the stairwell. It did nothing to the creature. I’m not sure if I hit, but in any case its coleopteran armour looked impervious to firearms.

‘We got into the street – I think Edwards simply took the door clean off its hinges. But panic made us run the wrong way, away from the horses. The creature could see in the fog, and it was faster. Best if I draw a veil – ’

‘But what happened? How did you escape unscathed?’

‘Unscathed? I wouldn’t say that. Not unscathed at all. You know The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin – ’

‘What?’

‘No, of course you wouldn’t. Well, that’s the whisky. Now the black waters rise to embrace us. Drowning, they say, is like going to sleep. See the lifeboats there? Little sparks in the darkness. It could be a painting of human hope, eh?’

‘I might have got aboard one of those lifeboats, you know.’

‘Uh-huh. Me too.’

‘Only I was delayed on other business.’

‘As was I. We both had our appointment in Samarra, eh?’

‘Let’s talk of that in a moment. You were going to tell me about the fire.’

‘I wasn’t there for the fire. It was set, I understand, by Ailean Gris. Ironically he was the most perspicacious about our suspect. He unfairly got locked in jail over a weekend for taking direct action against the villain. His only mistake was that the action in question was not nearly bold enough.’

‘Why did he start a fire, though?’

‘Some vague sense. You could call it intuition. He and Tennyson Thurgood had been waiting all night for news from us. When no telegram arrived by breakfast they became agitated. Ailean presumably tried to destroy the mummy, unaware that no weapon in that house could so much as put a scratch on the adamantine crystal of its coffin.’

‘What I don’t understand, the one thing I could never account for… How are you here? Alive. When – ’

‘When you had Choker kill us?’

‘Ah. Well then, plain speaking now. In your final minutes.’

‘Perhaps I died that night, and all the years since then are a long moment’s dreaming. An Owl Creek Bridge experience. But you won’t be familiar with Ambrose Bierce either, Dr Ghul.’

‘Very fanciful. You are still a dreamer, Dr Dakkar Singh.’

‘Oh no, Ghul. That you did kill. My ideals now are as concrete as a million-ton iceberg. You’re welcome, incidentally. All it took was a little misinformation to a radio operator, and the captain fails to make a small course correction that would have carried us a hundred miles south of here.’

‘You didn’t – You wouldn’t doom a thousand innocents just to get me.’

‘The boy I was then would not have done. That’s what you killed. Decency flowers in the hearts of the young, but the old and rich and greedy snuff it out because they cannot bear to think that dreams are better than the meagre ration of reality they allow themselves. The future must not be shaped by those who remember a long past, but by those for whom the world is eternally remade fresh and clean in a new dawn. But I digress – an old weakness of mine. You want to know about that night.

‘As we ran from that house, with the Choker creature on our heels, in all that blind red panic one thing I do remember clearly. Benjy was just ahead of me and I wanted to call out to him and say: Benjy, you were right. For he had thought of killing you, Ghul, right there in Hollingsworth’s study. I saw it in his eyes. You saw it too. But I laid my hand on his shoulder and the moment was gone.’

‘You saved your friend from becoming like me, then. A murderer, as you would say.’

‘Murder? Hardly. He would merely have been putting you down like the vermin you are. He had realized something that I knew too, briefly, when I waited on that rooftop with my rifle for Choker. But I had forgotten it, and Benjy had not.’

‘And that was?’

‘That it was total war. I still imagined the world to be orderly and fair, protected by laws. I had a code that would not let me stoop to your level. And so we entered that basement room with lockpicks rather than a shotgun blast. It’s a mistake I have never made since that night. Now I never give the guilty a chance to surrender. Nor even the innocent, sometimes, as you can see by those lifeboats.’

‘A pretty tale. But you understand nothing after all if you think this ploy is even a minor inconvenience. See this body. It was already old and weak when I took it, and I tire of the pretence of being an Englishman. I look out there and I see a thousand mortal hosts waiting for me to take my pick. You may go down into the dark, but I will not.’

‘That was why you wanted the mummy, wasn’t it? For a long time I couldn’t figure that out. I had simply assumed you belonged to some ridiculous magical cult, but then my own researches uncovered certain facts about the epiphysis cerebri. The pineal gland. That was it, wasn’t it? You told us some fable about the mummy. In life I think he possessed an ability I would now term psionic – the ability to impress his thought patterns upon another’s brain, erasing their identity and imposing his own. And I think it was that gland you sought. By transplanting it into your own cranium, you acquired the power. A kind of immortality, I suppose, if you care only for the mind and not for the self inherent in the body.’

‘Mere transplantation! Can you really have supposed anything so crude as that? I thought you were an eminent biologist, Doctor. Rather I extracted certain proteins from the mummy’s pineal gland which, injected into my brain, promoted the development of those capabilities.’

‘Thank you, Doctor. I merely wanted confirmation that it was indeed a function of the brain. The blended whisky – I would have preferred an Islay – that was so the harsh taste would disguise the neuroinhibitory agent you’ve imbibed.’

‘You’re bluffing.’

‘Reach out. See if you can touch any of those minds you thought were yours for the taking. You can’t. You are locked in that body, Ghul, and that body is for the sea bed. That’s two thousand fathoms – as secure a prison as any crystalline sarcophagus.’

‘You’ll die too.’

‘I would happily do so, if necessary, in order to rid the world of you.’

‘Bah, Singh, you are still an idealist.’

‘I intend to leave the world better than I found it. I suppose that might count as idealism. And leave it I will, when the time comes, not prolong my life indefinitely as you would. It’s time to restore the world as it should be, not this travesty forced upon it by immortal golems who think they remember once being men.’

‘But we could both live. Forever. What if you could have a hundred lifetimes? What could you not achieve? Any one of those huddled masses in the lifeboats. Anybody at all. Think of it – whenever you feel the beat of death’s wing, you could reach out, find a new vessel, drop into the space they fill in the world.’

‘Here is my view of immortality: volvox must die as Leeuwenhoek saw it die because it had children and is no longer needed.’

‘What? I don’t understand. You’re mad.’

‘You called me an idealist. Perhaps you forgot, in the lazy luxury of thinking yourself immortal, that there is no more ruthless adversary than an idealist with only one life to lose. But in fact I have not chosen to waste my death entrapping you. As this ship carries you down into oblivion, I will already be on my way from here. There are others like you that I have to deal with, you see. That’s the road you set me on all those years ago, Ghul. Think of me as the scion of your depravity, a Cronus come to do the inevitable deed.’

‘How? How can you hope to escape? Already the water is lapping over the deck!’

‘I dabbled at poetry, in the days before you destroyed my innocence. And as a poet I had a soubriquet, which I have kept though now it serves me as nom de guerre. You know me as Dakkar Singh, but these days I go more usually by that other name. Nemo.’