Jinx in Hell
More Memories
Jim Vassilakos (jim.vassilakos@gmail.com)
urcas can’t help but grin. “I think I
like this mother of yours.”
“She had her moments.”
“So when she was gone…all you
had were your zombies?”
“I had myself,” Jinx glares at
Furcas. “And I had all the hills to wander, from
daybreak to dusk, though always one of them would
accompany me. If I was not back by nightfall, all of
them would come looking. Somehow, they always
knew how to find me. Even when I would jump over
this one gorge so as to lose the one who would follow
me, they could sense where I had gone.”
“No running away from home, eh?”
“I remember once…I did leave the tower overnight.
It had been a long time since my mother had visited
me, and for some reason I thought that if I looked for
her toward the land of humans, that I might find her.
In any case, I was bored, and I wanted to explore.”
“What happened?”
“I found some travelers. I could smell their
campfire. It was after dusk, and I knew that the
zombies would already be on their way toward me,
but I didn’t care. I heard a woman’s voice among
them, and so thinking that it might be my mother, I
snuck in closer to see who they were, so close that I
could hear the crackling of their fire, and I could see
several of them, but my mother wasn’t among them.
As I tried backing out, I must have made a noise,
because one of them saw me, and he ran up and
grabbed me by my clothes. ‘What a dirty little thing’
he said. Well, I had learned the human tongue well
enough to know what that meant, so I swung at him
with my dagger, but he took it from me, and before I
knew it, I was in the middle of their camp. There were
seven of them altogether, three men, three women,
and a small boy, although he was probably a year or
two older than me.”
Furcas grins, “So your mother came along and
turned them all into zombies?”
“No, no…they were asking me my name when my
zombie, the one who had followed me, attacked. He
put a sword though the gut of the one whose hands
were on me, but they drew their weapons and cut the
zombie to pieces. After that, they tried to mend their
friend’s wounds, but he was cut deep, and they had no
healer, so they finally decided that they had to stay
there.”
“Did they ask you about the zombie?”
“Oh yes,” Jinx nods. “But I was too afraid to
answer,” she grins, remembering vividly how she had
cried out for her mother. “I had never been at the
mercy of humans before. I thought that they would
carve me up and have me for dinner. Finally, one of
the women told the men to shut up. She took me in her
arms to protect me. Her skin was so warm. It felt good
to be there.”
“But eventually the rest of your zombies showed
up,” Furcas predicts.
“Good guess,” Jinx stretches out her arms, arching
her back slightly off the couch. “So what about your
childhood?”
“I grew up in a palace,” he says. “It was situated on
a lake of fire and blood, a sort of carnage soup.”
“So what of your parents? Were they the king and
queen of this palace?”
“Oh no,” he smiles. “Hardly. There was one called
Beelzebub. My parents would refer to him as ‘Bubba’
when nobody was around to hear them.”
“Nobody except you, apparently.”
“Indeed. I had learnt to have a way with the
darkness, even when I was young, and I could blend
myself into shadow so completely that none could
discern my presence…not even my mother who knew
well of my gift, for she had it herself.”
“What was her name?”
Furcas’ eyes narrow, looking toward Jinx as one
might regard a buzzing insect.
“You did not tell me your mother’s name.”
“Thanks to this wine, I can’t even remember it,”
Jinx retorts.
“Hmm…forgive me if I find that rather hard to
believe.”
“So you’re not going to tell me?”
Furcas rolls his eyes, “Alright. Her name was Lilis.
And since I expect you will soon get around to asking,
my father’s name was Phongor.”
“Phongor and Lilis,” Jinx rolls the names from her
tongue, their sound strangely familiar to her ears,
although she can’t quite recall why. “What did they do
at the palace?”
“Their jobs? They gathered information, my father
as the Grand Inquisitor. As for my mother, she was
much more than merely his consort. She would go
forth from the palace, sometimes as an emissary of
Beelzebub, other times for other purposes. Her ability
to move unseen must have accounted for this.”
“And what about you?”
 “I learned from them both,” Furcas admits,
“although my ability to lurk unseen often allowed me
to learn from others as well.”
“To lurk in the shadows?”
“To become like a shadow,” he corrects. “For within
shadows, there is the greatest truth. For my mother, it
was from shadow where she heard the most secret
whispers. For my father, it was the shadowy layer of
the soul which interested him most, for there is
concealed one’s darkest, truest self.”
“These things interested you?”
“No…they fascinated me, for most think of shadow
only as a place of death or the absence of light, but it
is so much more. I think it is the very reason my
parents came to the Hells, although they did not know
it at the time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your mother never told you the tale of the first
GodsWar?”
“I doubt she even told me her name,” Jinx replies,
still trying to bring it to mind.
“It was a rebellion long ago executed by the elder
gods and their minions against the one they call the
Light, who was their father.”
“Was it successful?”
“We are here, are we not? One of the Light’s sons,
some would say his favorite, was named Lucifer. It
was he who led my parents among others to the
Hells.”
Furcas blinks at the last of his words, as though his
mind were suddenly flooded by an overwhelming rush
of memories.
“So how did this Beelzebub end up in charge of
everything?”
“He had overthrown Lucifer before I was born,
imprisoned his essence and tapped it to magnify his
own powers.”1
“Why did this rebellion happen in the first place?”
“The Light was a tyrant in disguise. He preached
harmony but would tolerate nothing save complete
obedience. To test this obedience, he set his offspring
against one another, all the while telling them to play
nicely. Apparently he seemed to do this for his own
amusement, although to Lucifer he professed it to be
for a higher purpose.”
1
Jinx’s memory of this conversation is later psychically
edited, and what she is made to remember of this sentence
is as follows:
“He had overthrown Lucifer before I was born, cast him
from the Hells entirely, and left him as a nomad amongst
the planes.”
“Did he go back to his father to seek redemption?”
“I don’t know,” he replies. “Neither did my parents. Now
that I think about it, I doubt that even Beelzebub knew the
answer to that one.”
This is, however, a lie, and it is done because Lucifer’s
imprisonment is a state secret.
“What purpose?”
“Look into that shadow and tell me what you see,”
Furcas says, pointing to the shifting shadow of his
own arm against the lights dancing above.
“I don’t understand.”
“Look at it. What do you see?”
“I see…the shadow of your arm. It is darker than the
rest of the table. So what?”
“As the shadow to the light, so you are to me, or so
the Light said to Lucifer.”
Jinx ponders this for a moment, not quite knowing
what to make of it.
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither did he. He thought that the Light was
mocking him, calling him, at best, an insubstantial
nothing, worth nothing and signifying nothing. Some
years after the rebellion, before I was born, my father
had formed an alternate hypothesis, but by then, of
course, the time for mentioning it had passed.”
“What sort of hypothesis?”
“Within shadow there is the greatest truth,” Furcas
repeats. “Just as my shadow is an aspect of myself, a
perspective if you will, so too were the Light’s sons
and daughters to him. By examining their character,
he was learning his own…or so goes the theory.”
“Your father’s theory?”
“He told me that Lucifer’s mind descended into
madness, like a stone plummeting to the bottom of a
great ocean. He became the very tyrant that he had
once accused the Light of being. Thus it was that
Beelzebub came to power, because Lucifer’s former
followers had enough of it and could stand no more.”
Jinx ponders the story for a long moment, the gulf of
silence widening to the corners of the room until the
only sound she can hear is the steady rhythm of her
heart.
“It’s an odd story,” she finally surmises.
“Yes,” Furcas grins, “you tell me about a few
humans getting whacked by some zombies, and in
exchange, I tell you the history of the multiverse. This
hardly seems to me a fair game that we are playing. It
is your turn to talk now, and you shall continue talking
until what I have heard equals what you have heard.”
“You order me around like I am your consort.”
“Perhaps you are,” Furcas smiles, his eyes lingering
on her somewhat hopefully.
“If I were, I think we would sense it.”
“Instead of talking so much about the present, of
which we know nothing, tell me more about your past.
The present, I think, will come to us in its own time.”
Comments on A&E #394:
Myles Corcoran: Thanks for mentioning
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/al
ttext/2008/06/alttext_0618. It was even more fun than
all the soft-core porn you courteously included.
Lee Gold: ryct Marco re you telling Barry that he
didn’t have the right to die: Now, that’s love. 
Since you mentioned the LASFS website (in your
comment to Brian Misiaszek), I had to have a peek
and happened across the photo of one Lee Klingstein.
What’s that on your shoulder?
Brian Misiaszek: Good description in your WFRP
write-up. Great dialogue between the characters. I
think I mentioned something last issue about not
having a strong sense of people’s campaigns, but now
I have to eat my words, as this is an excellent write-
up. Well done.
However, as for the “mechanical advantage” pulley
trick with the rope, I think I would have had them take
a luck roll to see if the rope would break. Nonetheless,
being on the outside, Anita could have used her sword
to either break or pry off the door’s hinges. Just a
thought for next time, as it might be amusing to see
how the party reacts when their well thought-out plan
comes to naught.
Also, you call Daniel’s hunter Rivendill in the
character list and, at one point, Rivendell in the actual
write-up, but this is a minor nit. Just thought I’d call
your attention to it. Perhaps the reason it caught my
eye was that it reminded me of Tolkein’s Rivendell.
Possibly it wasn’t the best choice as a character
name.2
Finally, about Tomaz’s outburst at Gerhard, at first
it appeared to me to be something of one character
trying to rub-it-in-the-nose of another, and I suppose it
still does, at least on a superficial level, however, I
was forced to remind myself that Tomaz was, of
course, correct. What happened happened as a result
of his actions. However, Tomaz could have
presumably reached out and stopped Gerhard from
conducting himself as he did in the incident in
question. But he apparently chose not to, decided it
wasn’t worth his effort, or otherwise floundered his
opportunity. Hence, his outburst does seem a bit of
after-the-fact “I told you so, even though I did so only
barely.”
But having said that, I think it is true that people,
back in the day, got upset at each other over what to
us may seem fairly trivial matters, such as somebody
stealing a loaf of bread or someone stepping on a stick
and thus scaring away the deer. Today, we more or
2
A choice which I assume is attributable to the player of the
character in question. Now, if the character had been named
Imladris or Karningul, we would have a different situation
entirely.
less drink beers and laugh3, but back then, even the
high crime of stepping on a stick could carry a severe
penalty: starvation. Nature herself, it seems, our
common mother, so to speak, is merciless. And hence,
it would seem that Tomaz’s outburst at Gerhard is
justified, for any action, however small, that can
destroy us must be dealt with.4
But by not dealing with it forcefully from the very
beginning, by physically stopping Gerhard or by at
least extenuating his objection, Tomaz betrays his
uncertainty, and thus his forceful words at the end
seem just a tad overwrought.
I recall that somewhere in the Bloody Ardy rules, it
seems to me that there’s a calendar day where the
unburied dead rise from where they lay upon the
earth, envious of the living, enraged at the torment of
their existence, their souls bound to rotting corpses,
their hunger unknowable. At least, that’s my personal
take. I’m to understand from somewhere that the
Latins of old, the Romans, used to believe something
like this.5
Now, I don’t know much about Warhammer, but if I
were GMing, and they just left the corpse out there at
the suggestion of a particular party member, I might
roll some luck dice and see if it decided to rise
sometime later to take vengeance before the final rest.
All in all, this is the sort of stuff that I prefer to read
in A&E, although inserting a map of the area would
have also helped. If I had an Ethereal Familiar for
Excellence in Roleplaying, I’d consider bestowing one
upon you.6
Lisa Padol: re your comment “Jinx categorizes
Cedric as someone who doesn’t matter”: Both true
and false. To Jinx, Cedric is your run-of-the-mill
mage, one who has grown old and overly-cautious and
is thus difficult to motivate. She’s met more then a
few during her storied career, and while she doesn’t
harbor ill-will toward such personalities, she tends to
view them as “has-beens”.
Nonetheless, notice that she respects Cedric enough
not to lie to him. In fact, she was practically doing
cartwheels in order to avoid lying, and as Cedric, I
was doing everything I could to pin her down…in
essence, to force her to lie. I found it interesting to see
3
I wonder when was the last time someone was actually,
literally prosecuted for stealing a loaf of bread.
4
This, it seems to me, is perhaps why it is in the nature of
some people to become angry over political speech with
which they disagree. It is because “stupid” voters, or rather
simply improperly-focused tribe-members, are an
impediment to one’s survival, which, of course, was
Heinlein’s point, as it seems to be Louis’, although they
would each go about achieving a solution to this problem
by different means. Ah, but I digress.
5
Clarification, anyone?
6
Perhaps someone should establish just such a prize.
how Jinx’s player navigated the scene, as what Cedric
was asking for, simply to converse with his niece,
seemed perfectly within reason. He would be remiss
to insist upon anything less. Jinx, however, didn’t
want this to happen…and for reasons that should be
fairly obvious to the reader. (“Hi, Uncle. Oh, I’m fine.
‘Where’ve I been,’ oh…Jinx has me quartered in
some ArchNecromancer’s fortress in Hell, but aside
from all the devils and undead standing guard
everywhere, everything’s pretty much dandy.”)
Often, as GMs, we confront characters with
adversity, and then we watch them try to squirm their
way to safety, whether this involves combat, dialogue,
or simply hiding in shadows. However, how often do
we put characters into a situation where they have
complete control over the scene, where they are so
powerful that their will, whether morally constrained
or not, decides the outcome in nearly each and every
detail? I think this is a useful exercise and one
particularly easy to justify with “high-level”
characters, as it’s in these moments of powerfulness
that characters will often show their true colors. They
must then decide what it is that interests them. That
said, of course, it would obviously make for a boring
campaign if every scene were such a cakewalk. But
for a certain type of characterization, I think such
scenes are useful.
Re your Aldea overview: RAE. It sounds like it
would be a fun setting as well as good source from
which to loot ideas. I especially like the notion of a
sentient or quasi-sentient magic item (the Blue Rose
Scepter) essentially controlling access to the highest
class as well as the identity of the ultimate ruler. After
seeing the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD, I
became rather enamored of way the palantir were used
in the story, and the thought occurred to me of what
could be an interesting fantasy setting.
What I imagined was a world where some number
of magical orbs fall from the sky, scattering randomly
upon the landscape and in the ocean. Each orb serves
as a psychic conduit to a powerful, alien being. These
beings (gods) can cast powerful magic and control
lesser beings (mortals) though these orbs, and they
are, for the most part, of differing moral persuasions
(alignments). Each orb, therefore, seeks a champion or
wizard-king which it controls directly, as in the
intellect of the god inhabiting that individual so long
as they are in close proximity to the god’s orb.
Likewise, any who come into close proximity to an
orb are likely to become controlled by the god, and
any who touch an orb are certain to be controlled by
that god.
Now, these gods are all aware of one another, and
they are all playing a sort of game to see who can
dominate the others. Each wish to imprison the others,
and the way that this typically happens is that the
society that discovers one of these orbs is driven to
war against the others. Upon the subdual or
destruction of one society by another, the victor takes
the conquered orb (careful not to touch it), and places
in molten lava, or buries it in a pile of festering dung,
or so on and so forth, where the losers must reside in a
state of torment and humiliation until the end of the
contest.
I could see the greater devils of the Jinx campaign
playing such a game, destroying worlds for their
amusement, the inhabitants, to them, like ants. Yes, to
them, Cedric wouldn’t matter at all.
Brian Rogers: Excellent Harry Potter write-up. As
I’ve only seen the first of the movies and haven’t read
any of the books, I’m probably not your target
audience, but I found Dumbledore’s “odd speech”
truly inspired, and I very much enjoyed Professor
Night’s class (even the swooning was interesting). As
for the personal feud, at first I thought that trying to
magically strangle the object of one’s animosity,
purely as a practical joke, mind you, was perhaps just
a tad bit extreme, even for a spoiled brat (although, I
suppose this all depends on the degree of spoilage),
but then I realized that the scarf was only strangling
Juliet’s head, not her neck. I’m going to have to read
your submissions more carefully from now on, but
suffice it to say that this was an exceedingly strong
submission, and even though I’m probably about the
furthest thing from your target audience, I found
myself quite taken up with the characters. More of the
same, please…and more dialogue, if you can manage
to squeeze it in.
On the subject of Sulu: This seems a tad too political
to answer here. Please see my personal/political blog
(specifically the entry for July 21st).7
7
http://jim-vassilakos.livejournal.com