The Zen and Fury in Healing

Anything you might want to try out that doesn't temporally or thematically fit the serial should go here. This is an ideal space for all your what-ifs and might-have-beens, as well as for your average silliness.
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Shen Long observed Marius intently, as if he could divine the course of his thoughts.

"Is patience the issue? It feels like it couldn't be, doesn't it? Well, then, I have a bit of a tale for you..."

Returning to his kitchen nook, he poured himself more tea and brought another cup to Marius. "We set the stage in Alexandria, long before Ptolemy the Second's birth, long before the Cesariad - but not so far as to remove the city from Greece itself. Here, we find a young member of the guard for the city's golden treasure, the most august of all its hoards - the Library. Men from the world over flock to it, and he grows familiar with all of them, even if his post keeps him spear in hand. Little does he know that keeping the ruffians out is but one of his tasks, as he has only just begun to train for his other assignments. Sprinkles of Coptic Greek and Low Egyptian enter his mind, fragments of various Arabic and Mesopotamian dialects... One could almost swear the lilting tongue of the Hebrides has reached his ears once or twice, and his young mind indolently absorbs it all. Little does he suspect, then, that he has also absorbed the fundaments of the keepers' classification system. He doesn't master it yet, but it lies dormant in the back of his mind..."

He sat at his table. "Then, in what would fail to surprise our modern minds, the Nile's floodplains have their way, as they are wont to do every other year, and the riverbanks burst. Crops are spoiled, Sekhmet's specter prowls the land and her sister in spirit, Eris, is never quite far. To the locals, this is the gods' fury made manifest. To you or I, a preventable metorological hitch in the works. Our dams and levees offer us comfort and safety - but it is not so for the young guardsman..."

The dragon snapped his fingers. "This spells pandemonium for the Library. Late fees pile up, some scrolls are consigned to the well of Time and thought lost to the world, others are frustratingly close but difficult to repatriate. A few in Thebes, five or six in Cairo, two or three in Axum - and some hedge mage in Assur still hasn't returned his alchemical precis, either," he said, chuckling. "Then, worse still, some of them return and panicked scribes consign them to the first nooks available or forget them on lecterns and behind shelves. Before long, it is Pharaoh's hundred holy days and young Marius the Greek is the only one on call with the vaguest of ideas as to how to go about fixing this mess. He isn't immortal yet, cannot yet conceive of living beyond his twentieth in a world rife with disease, so he cannot grasp the magnitude of the task needed in repatriating these volumes."

He stopped for a moment. "All Marius Vlastos can do is fix those scrolls which are in the Library. Even so, it remains a massive task for a single man. Your current instincts would tell you to seek out something more productive, of course, but you aren't there yet. There you stand, and the Library's disarray is your foe."

Another bout of silence. "It took you millennia to accrue fear, respect and power alike. Thousands of years to grow from the confused and nascent undead to who you stand as, as of this moment. Goodwill acts relatively fast - but not that fast, in my experience."

More to illustrate a point than to offer the actual object, Shen Long picked up a small book of Bhuddist koans from the same table and handed it to Marius. "One scroll at a time, Marius. One cell at a time. One row, one collumn. One breath at a time. One act of kindness at a time. The Blood keeps you alive by keeping you abreast of the bigger picture, but the part of you that still is that young man still awkwardly holding a spear has to work one step at a time. Start, my friend, by being kind towards yourself. Acknowledge what you've already built. Acknowledge that what we offer is what you've rightfully earned. Thank yourself for it. Thank the Noise for getting you there in one piece - but reassure it, if you can."

The dragon placed the book in Marius' lap and then rested the same hand on the vampire's shoulder. "The undead can take a breather, in my dojo. The old man can take it from here, as it were."
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

Aspasia nodded as she watched Shen Long hand the book of koans to Marius. "Learning to take minutes, breaths, and so on at one at a time is both the easiest and the hardest thing to do. It's simple when you first look at it, but it's far harder to apply when you go deeper. However, it can be done."

"With Elysium being defeated after the Battle of Rhode Island in '75, I was uncertain of what was going to happen. I had already met Coach and started forming a friendship with him, but I still had crimes to pay for. Chimeras were hated, and many wanted us simply euthanized. We were placed in holding camps until they could start trials in 1980. I was acquitted in '83. During that time, I had a lot of time on my hands, and time seemed to creep by. I was able to read books on how to manage my perception of life, and taking things moment by moment was one of the most vital aspects of my studies."

Miranda listened as her mother retold her experiences and added, "I didn't go what Mom went through, but the same logic applies with my schooling and martial arts studies. Things take time, but it's better to handle things a little at time. One problem at a time, one punch or sword movement at a time."
User avatar
Karl the Mad
 

Posts: 1260
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:27 am
Location: Oregon

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by Karl the Mad »

One scroll at a time. That was sage advice. He'd gotten used to looking at the big picture, perhaps. He would have to go back down to the level of micromanagement, maybe, back when Alexandria Antiquities was still getting off the ground. The frown eased a bit as he recalled those days for a moment, the stress and the panic, the dim sense of working toward goals that would take generations to manifest...

In retrospect he had wondered if he'd been guided at the time, or manipulated somehow. No doubt he was an easy beaver to yank about from afar, if one knew where the strings began and ended.

But that was all beside the point. Long had the right of it; he had to put all the rest of it to one side and focus on the here and now. He took a couple steadying breaths, and did as the Dragon suggested, thanking himself for his prior sweat and effort, even the Noise for looking out for him in its own way. That felt particularly ridiculous, but the Noise had nothing to say in reply for a few seconds.

After the moments passed he turned to Al. "Duke Allocer, please forgive me. I let the letter of our duel get in the way of the spirit. I trust you are unharmed?" Obviously he was, but the words and the time it took to same them counted for something. He knew THAT much, at least.
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Allocer rolled his eyes, smirked and raised a hand at his neck, massaging the back of it for a few seconds. "Not a Duke anymore, like I've said - but besides that; I'm fine. Thanks for asking," he said, nodding. "I've got a question, though," he started. Shen Long looked attentive, in case he had the answers requested, but the demon actually turned to his Celestial handlers.

"What's the Noise, anyway? I mean, what is it in context of Marius' breed as a vampire?"

Valtiel nodded and brushed his chin with a hand. "That's actually a good question, Allocer. Ultimately, Lilith is the one with complete answers, but our best guess as Lucifer's former peers is that it's a kind of distributed engram, or a single chunk of what used to be a soul, spread out across the entire bloodline. I'd, er, compare it to the way souls inset into Clank bodies tend to fragment and lose resolution if they depersonalize. The Noise used to be the construct of the first one to bear that bloodline, but he or they did something that displeased Lilith greatly and she, well..."

Walt shrugged. "I guess you could say she killed him, but left an indelible memory of him in his spawn, so they'd learn the error of his ways. She felt the Ordo Dracul needed to walk the first one's path to understand its failings, I guess, and that the wisest ones in the bunch would transcend greed and paranoia, rise past the failings Victum had lied about and meet Lilith's promise and expectations. Judging by the name, it probably was a Black Dragon dating back to the tail-ends of the Roman Empire, at least - if not earlier. So many Ordo behave almost exactly like Black Dragons stuck in smaller bodies, it would support that theory."

Allocer looked back to Marius. "What's the Noise like, anyway? Is it just an instinct, or does it have a voice of some kind?"

Shen Long grunted pensively. "I was raised well before the days of Rome, but I eventually did hear of the human warriors worshipping great horned beasts, past the Amur and Volga Rivers. I couldn't believe it when it was first explained to me: dragons who claimed right-of-rule with no project, no concept, no forming thesis. My family planted the seeds for China out of the desire to bring safety to the local populace, to give them the joys of culture and the honor of a respected purpose. We had no hand in the empires that followed and watched as we were mistakenly deified, unable to correct more than a handful of wiser folk in every generation - and the myths eventually snowballed to the point where correcting the first men and women of Qin would have been a futile endeavor."

He looked back to Miranda and Aspasia. "As ever, it pleases me to see that some may still break free of indoctrination. By the time the First Emperor had contracted Minamata, he had entire battalions of his men wade out into the sea, taking spears to the waves to supposedly conquer its inhabitants..."

Allocer scratched his cheek. "Do you think he could've been influenced by Squids?
- No," nodded Shen Long, "pseudomagic was involved. For once, History is not some pallid retelling of mystical truths: some pok gai with delusions of arcane ability mistook mercury's free-flowing properties as being some sort of divine sign. He had mercury paste balls seasoned and cooked for Qin Shihuangdi to ingest, assuring the ruler that he would attain immortality or incorruptibility. As for what happened, ask any Roman immortal with a Lithium prescription or Fae Victorian hatter with a history of tremors and hallucinations."
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

Aspasia shrugged at Shen Long's summary of what had transpired in China's earlier history. "Sometimes you don't have to be a mastermind in order to manipulate people into doing foolish things. Self-delusion can be a powerful and dangerous trait."

Her mother's assessment got the teenager to thinking, and Miranda asked, "I understand that Lilith probably designed the Voice to be a useful part of that bloodline, while it still had its issues. Is it possible that she intended for the bloodline progenitor's descendants to confront the Voice and be able to discern what's useful or not useful to that vampire's existence? A form of not necessarily enlightenment, but clarity?"
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

"Bring conscious thought to what I'm suggesting," extrapolated Allocer. "Understand how deeply-seeded I am inside you, and realize I'm coming from the same place as common toxic behaviors."

He then shrugged slightly. "Or at least, that seems to be like it could be the Noise's subtext to me. Some Pride natives still swear up and down that they can feel the Goat's will in the back of their minds, but Vienna's trying to develop a therapeutic approach to this. Marius has an active dark passenger of sorts; it's not something that lying down on the proverbial crying couch is going to fix in one fell swoop."

Shen Long agreed. "No, hence the need for patience - for breath and for time. For self-directed compassion. It might seem especially simple to those of us closer to the mundane condition, but even Miranda could lose sight of her focus. All it would take is tragedy enough, pain enough to spur her. Rage, anger, frustration - all are very powerful vectors for action. Powerful - but short-sighted. Inescapably human, too."

Walt shifted in his seat. "Somehow, I just can't see you blowing a gasket, sifu.
- Oh, but I have," countered the dragon with a slight hanging of his head. "Peace is always painfully fought for, its lessons remain bitter no matter how old one is. In all my years, the wisest men and women I have encountered had been destructive forces with unseen levels of power, before being humbled. I was one of them, myself."

He smiled back at Marius. "That is why I have faith in you, Marius."
User avatar
Karl the Mad
 

Posts: 1260
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:27 am
Location: Oregon

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by Karl the Mad »

"To me, the Noise is a voice in my head," Marius explained. "Somewhat male, deep and hysterical... always demanding I drop what I'm doing and return home, to my vaults, my treasures, my artifacts. Yet when I'm there it still isn't satisfied, and it demands I go out and accrue more treasures and artifacts. Any treasures. I'd name it Smaug, but I don't want to give it that much respect, so it's just the Noise to me." The old vamp heaved a sigh. "Even now, even now it wants me to disable all of you so you'll stop wasting my time, and it has some very creative ideas on how to do so. Possibly an improvement, when I first got here it just wanted all of you dead. I guess if I laugh at it enough it'll go back to form, however."

The notion of Long blowing a gasket was hard to imagine, but he supposed it had to have happened at some point. He was familiar with blown gaskets himself, in more than one sense. "Shield has humbled me already, when my schemes were derailed. I humbled myself again later on when I fled to Mars at the start of the Goat's attempted invasion." He laughed a little at some thought. "It's funny, though, you'd think the Noise would have been furious that I was leaving Earth and all my possessions behind, but no. It actually wanted me to run further, to Paradise or somewhere. It wanted me alive to torment, I'm sure."
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Allocer shook his head. "I couldn't do it, personally. I couldn't do it the way you do," he told Marius. "I can't imagine living with a part of me inside my own head that feels... other. It feels like Lilith's taken the essence of schizophrenia, shaped it into a single-minded drive and slapped it onto you and everyone else that's unfortunate enough to be part of the Order of the Dragon," he said, scoffing. "I imagine a few Wallachian voivodes misheard stories about you or some of your peers, thought it sounded cool and related well to their history as remorseless killers and butchers of their Turkish neighbours. Fate caught up to them and now Vlad Tepes is more or less in the inverse of your situation: driven away into hiding by impulses nobody knows if he's internalized the way you have yours. Maybe he's made it off to Paradise, for all we know, and you had guts enough to leave Mars and come back."

Walt shrugged. "I think this is more personal to Marius than you'd think, Allocer. The Council's Chairman calls his Noise the Itch, and he says it's probably shaped by his being a rodent anthro."

That surprised Allocer. "You've spoken to Forsythe Holden?
- Well, not directly. I'm an angel, obviously, and that means we have to intuit the makings of each and every mortal soul. The Socratic demons developed their expertise; we were designed with it in mind. Terrestrial concepts like privacy and free speech limit how much I can access while respecting this plane's laws - but before the merger?"

Valtiel sniffed. "Before the merger, I could freely delve into each and every one of you. The Pitspawn have to find handholds to push you down, we were made to find points of contact enough to elevate you - within reason. Even guardian angels are extremely limited in how much they can influence mortals or immortals. Too much direct pressure would upset the equation, nullify the perks of sentient thought. God needs all creatures down here to be free to act of their own accord - and it is no small wonder to us that He hasn't intervened to oppose Lilith. We already know she has a plan but if I had been Lucifer, I would've imbued her with my mantle directly - turned her into a demigod or a superhuman in the classic sense of the term."

He looked back to Marius. "Your struggles speak highly of you, mister Vlastos - but the pain they bring you, the inner turmoil? That's unconscionable to me. No soul should have to rise to greatness with your sort of burden. I'll be part of those paying very close attention to Lilith's justifications, if she ever provides any. If testing your mettle were all she needed, she could've just made you physically weak and forced you to endure, to rebuild yourself - or she could've given you something more concrete than a hazy sense that formless plans need to be fulfilled. For all we know, you're stuck with a broken dragon's mind playing on Repeat, with no real focus or drive or anything all its own - and it's like feedback noise over your own aspirations."

Allocer gestured with a hand. "So why make the Freaks insane? Why give the Carmilla more empathy than most? Why isolate a single vampire during the battle, months ago, and bestow him with blood-bending powers? Why create a new bloodline now, of all times?"

Shen Long nodded his head a few times, as if processing what Allocer was driving at. "I, myself, am a dragon and Marius is Ordo Dracul. We both know something of plans, of contingencies, of perceived needs articulated over centuries, of being forced into holding patterns for generations for the right time to strike. I think I speak for both of us schemers when I say Lilith is only just beginning to constitute her gameboard's pieces."

Allocer shook his head in a double-take. "What - Just beginning?! She's been at it since the beginning of Civilization! Vampires already number in the millions globally! What more does she need?!"

Shen Long looked back to Marius. "Some refinement, perhaps. Some blades are tempered and quenched multiple times, before being considered usable.
- That doesn't really sell me on the Freaks being useful," noted the former Duke. "Tactically, I mean. I have a hard time piecing the different vampire breeds together from a strategic point of view."
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

Miranda listened to the discourse regarding Marius and the logic behind vampire design. She had been around some vampires, but all of the ins and outs of vampirism wasn't a subject she was strong on.

Aspasia ventured over to her bag and pulled out a water bottle, taking a few sips. She quirked a pale brow and commented, "Lilith's a tactician, just as much as gods or nature can be, Allocer. I can only imagine she views her children as a protective force in the long run, like angels, demons, and Void Weavers were originally meant to be. She observes the events of history and determines when it's the best time to reveal a new strain or add a trait to an existing bloodline."

"You don't see the pros of the Freaks being useful because that's one of their strong points. They have unpredictability on their side, the benefit of not being considered cohesive enough to be a threat. That's a considerable boon on the battlefield. Become too predictable, and you're easily vulnerable. After all, it was Horace Grimley who played a role in bringing down Valefor."

"The Carmilla have empathy in spades as they can potentially relate to humanity the most, when they don't become jaded or cruel. Empathy is crucial on the battlefield when forging alliances, whether that's on a interpersonal level or on a wider scale. It allows you to see things from a variety of perspectives and care about who you're with."

"Having a single vampire who can manipulate blood has numerous applications. Healing, offense and defense, just to name a few purposes," she stated.

"Rendell taught us about the different strains' strengths and weaknesses, so that's why I could offer insights into their various tactical usefulness. However, given recent developments, that knowledge is outdated. I've never met Lilith and only have a limited understanding into her logic, but there's method to her madness, even if you can't obviously see it."
User avatar
Karl the Mad
 

Posts: 1260
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:27 am
Location: Oregon

Re: The Zen and Fury in Healing

Post by Karl the Mad »

Marius opened his mouth to tell them about his visit to the Darkhallow, then changed his mind. As open as they seemed to be, he wondered how they'd take to hearing about him consorting with the Squids. Never mind that they had probably already heard about the few minutes he'd spent dreaming, and the architectural endeavors he had undertaken upon waking. Parts of Tom's tower still had an Egyptian flair to them, from his meddling. He was proud of it.

He focused on their discussions of the vampire races instead. "Any vampire who lives long enough finds themselves blessed with extreme physical attributes, as well," he added. "It's the living long enough part that gets tricky for some. Of the tens of thousands that are around today, perhaps two dozen can count a thousand or more years behind them."

He nodded to Long. "Long is correct, Lilith is indeed planning a very long game. We all have extant circumstances driving us to hold our plans close, or shelve them altogether until much later. Mine were obvious; the angelic curse, and the simple passage of time needed for technology to catch up with my designs. I put both to use, studying the curse to learn what I could and biding my time as an anonymous immortal. I'm sure at first I had something else in mind to do with my life, but as the years went by and my isolation continued without relent..."

He looked away, and a shamed expression crossed his face. "It wasn't perfect, of course, and even when used correctly, a very few must continue remembering the victims of Damnatio Memoriae, so that the rest of us don't have to. In my case, mental and physical trauma were enough to impress my presence upon those around me. I literally had to beat myself upon others if I wanted any interaction, and of course that colored the nature of that interaction... In hindsight it is perhaps obvious how I turned out the way I did, no?

"One thing I grew weary of over time was the nightly transformations, which grew more and more monstrous as the years went by." He brought out his phone, got into his photo gallery, and showed them a horrific image of himself at night, clearly taken by someone else. Seven feet tall, a scarred draconic visage, leathery wings, bulging muscles, claws and scales and everything. His age was somehow even more apparent; the scars were faded, one eye was pale and filmed over, his scales were white and pocked, wings cracked and dry-looking. One horn was broken off and the other was worn down, blunted. He was shirtless, dressed only in white trousers (the better to stand out at night, perhaps), and his chest was sunken and hollow despite the muscle, his shoulders sloped, hunched against a heavy burden of years. "As you can imagine, I was quite happy to learn of the suppressive enzymes developed to counter this transformation."

He let them all have a look, then took his phone back and put it away. "I apologize for changing the subject... I doubt Lilith had anything to do with the tribulations of my later years, Valtiel. Unless you seriously think she has the time and energy to personally meddle with every bloodsucker on the planet? I don't." He scoffed at the idea. "No, my burdens were of my own making, even those stemming from the ones who intervened in my life. Had I chosen to ignore that old Coptic church, Uriel would never have cursed me; had I not done... whatever it was I had done to catch the attention of the Void Weavers, they would not have infected me with that Black Speech of theirs. Would I take those actions back, given the choice? I doubt it, for today I have useful tools and abilities stemming from those choices. And I would not have them were it not for the pain and turmoil brought on by those burdens."

Looking for a silver lining... Marius was already internalizing some of Long's lessons, it seemed.
Post Reply