A Harnessed Death

There was once a humble farmer named Arn, and all he had in the world was a patch of rocky ground where few things grew, and an old horse named Nag. Arn was in love with Lucia, the daughter of the wizard Peng. He had glimpsed her from afar, just once, through the window of Peng’s tower, but from this brief vision Arn had extrapolated a whole portrait of the woman’s appearance, character, habits and thoughts.

Every day, Arn would lead the horse Nag around the little rocky farm by the harness, and he would tell the horse about his latest insight into Lucia, and the horse would ignore him.

“From the way she tossed her hair that day, I know she is free-spirited and yearns to escape her father’s tower”, Arn might say, and the horse would not reply.

Or -

“Though I only saw her face, and then only for a span of three heartbeats, and even then from quite a distance through a narrow window on a cloudy day, I assume from the shape of her nose that she has the most delicate and delightful toes that ever adorned the feet of mortal woman” he would conjecture, and Nag would plod dutifully on.

Or -

“Consider this – she has dwelt in the wizard’s tower all her life, no doubt courted by princes and knights and sorcerers and business executives, but there was no-one else in the room with her. Therefore, she has rejected all of them, and the only explanation can be that she yearns for a simpler, humbler man, one with dirt under his nails and who has but a single old nag to work his farm”, and Nag would not gainsay this speculation.

One day, as Arn and Nag pulled rocks from the stony field where few things grew, the horse fell to his knees, tugging the harness from Arn’s hand. Now, in that country, it was customary for horses to be given the miraculous gift of speech at the moment of their passing. Few used this gift wisely, and their last words were usually along the lines of “No, not the glue factory”

Or -

“Look out for that cliff”

Or -

“I told you I was ill”

Or -

“You idiot, didn’t you see those archers?”

but Nag had been a faithful servant to Arn and Arn’s father all his life, and so he said:

“Arn, I have been a faithful servant to you and before you, your father, all the days of my life, but now I must depart. I leave you with this advice.

First, this is a terrible place for a farm. Go seek your fortune elsewhere.

Secondly, a single glimpse is a very shaky foundation for a lasting relationship. Try talking to the girl. Or find one who isn’t in a wizard’s tower.

Thirdly, if you are set on this Lucia, I leave you with the only gift I can.”

And so Nag died. Arn had no way to move the horse, so he resolved to bury him where he lay in the field.

Now, as Arn bent down to remove the harness from Nag’s chest, he noticed something caught in it. It was like a shadow flapping in the wind, or a little shard of bone. He pulled off the harness, and the dark thing grew, and he saw that it was the horse’s Death.

The Death took on many forms, like:

A skeleton in a long black cloak, carrying the scythe of time

Or

A thunderbolt from the heavens, sudden and terrible

Or

A dark shadow that creeps in, day by day, leeching life and colour and joy until only dust remains

Or

A serpent hiding in the grass, bright green and full of life itself, with venom that burns and rots the living flesh

But it could not free itself of the harness.

Once he had buried Nag and placed a stone to mark the grave of the loyal horse, Arn turned to the Death. “Are you any good at clearing stones from a field?” he asked, and Death made no reply.

“Do you know Lucia, daughter of the wizard Peng, who – based on all the evidence available to me – is my true love?” The Death did not reply, but inclined its head in a way that seemed to say not yet.

“Well, as Nag was the wisest horse I have known and he advised me to seek my fortune and talk to the girl, and you are my only remaining asset, let us set off in search of Lucia.”

They set off, with Arn leading the shadow of Death by harness and brindle as he had led Nag around the field for so many years, and in this fashion they came to the place where Peng’s tower had been. The tower was gone, and all that was there was a great muddy hole in the ground, and in that hole Arn saw a man hunting frogs.

“Where is the tower of the wizard Peng?” asked Arn.

“Why, it flies south for the winter. Every fool knows this” replied the frog-hunter.

“Your horse is invisible” he added a moment later.

“It is not my horse” explained Arn, “it is a shadow of Death, who came to take my horse and was caught in his harness. I intend to present it to the wizard Peng as a gift so that I might woo his daughter.”

“That does seem like an excellent plan,” said the frog-hunter, “for I have heard tell that the wizard Peng is obsessed with death. I wish you the best of luck.” As a gesture of kindness, the frog-hunter gave Arn a bag of frogs to eat on his travels.

Arn and the Death set off south, and walked for many long days.

In time they came to a narrow bridge over a fast-flowing river, and upon that bridge waited six bandits. The chief of the bandits sat astride a great warhorse and carried a shining steel sword. They blocked Arn’s path.

“None may pass this bridge” declared the chief of the bandits, “without paying a toll in gold.”

“I have no gold” said Arn.

“Silver then, of equal worth.”

“Alas no.”

“A large jar of copper pennies, as tall as a man, whose combined value equals that of the gold we desire.”

“Should I have a large jar of copper pennies such as you describe, it would be plainly visible upon my person. I have only the clothes on my back, a few frogs, and this harness that I carry behind me” said Arn.

“Then we shall kill you” said the chief of the bandits, “as an example to other travellers.”

Arn loosened the restraints, and gave the Death more freedom to move. Five of the bandits fell dead upon the spot, and the sixth was so alarmed he hurled himself over the parapet of the bridge and drowned in the rushing waters below, which amounted to much the same thing. The bandit chief’s horse said “I was wondering about that empty harness” and then died too, and Arn was left alone on the bridge with the Death.

They travelled south again, and word of Arn’s deed upon the narrow bridge travelled south ahead of them. And so it was that they met three petitioners in close succession.

The first was a rich merchant, who wore the finest silks and furs and whose fingers were adorned with golden rings and gemstones. His beard, too, was woven into plaits, and each greying plait bore gold and jewels of great worth. The merchant stopped Arn upon the road and spoke to him, saying:

“Is it true that you have a Death caught in your harness?”

Arn explained the circumstances that had led to his possession of a Death. The merchant nodded sagely.

“Dying would be a terrible inconvenience to me. I have all manner of business deals and contracts in the offing, and how will I see them through to the end if I am as mortal as a poor beggar in the ditch? I would like to buy your Death from you, so that I may convince it to spare my life. I offer you the going rate for such mythical wonders, a king’s ransom.”

“How is that determined?” asked Arn, and the merchant explained that the precise value of a king’s ransom was recalculated every five years by a band of shadowy actuaries who kidnapped a randomly selected king from a basket of standardised monarchs and ransomed him back to his kingdom. This was, apparently, an excellent time for Arn to sell, as the most recent kidnap victim was the Caliph of Ashala, who was exceedingly well loved and had fetched a fine price.

“Your offer is most kind” said Arn, “but I intend to use this Death to win the hand of my true love.” He bade the merchant farewell, and the merchant reminded Arn that he would be waiting if he ever changed his mind.

Next, he was stopped by a general at the head of a great army. The general was an old man, bowed down by the threefold burden of his duty, his armour and his moustache.

“You there! Peasant boy! You’re the one with a Death, are you not?”

“I am” said Arn, “I have a Death trapped in this harness.”

“Capital! Tactical advantage, you see. Hard to think of a better weapon than Death itself. Hand it over. Patriotic duty, you see. Quick about it, too!”

“I am sorry,” said Arn, “but I cannot give you this Death, not yet. I must use it to win the hand of Lucia, daughter of the wizard Peng.”

The general’s moustache drooped. “Dash it all. Certain about that? Reward in it for you. Could swing you a knighthood. Maybe even a OBE.”

Arn shook his head. “My heart is set.”

“Right!” barked the general to his men. “Back to the original plan, boys. Make ready to march into the jaws of doom by this time next week.”

Arn felt sorry for the many soldiers who would most certainly die in the war, but as the Death was his only asset, he felt he could not give it over to the war effort without first visiting the wizard Peng.

Soon after leaving the army camp, Arn was accosted by a procession of monks. They wore hooded robes and carried banners that were without any design or sigil. The lead monk knelt in front of Arn.

“We are worshippers of Death, and it has been prophesied that you will come to us bearing a Death, and give it to us that we might venerate it in our temple.”

“How old is this prophecy?” asked Arn with interest.

“About a week” admitted the monk, “ever since we heard about what happened on the bridge.”

“And if I do not give you the Death?”

As one, every monk drew a wickedly sharp curved dagger from beneath his robes.

“Oh,” said Arn, “please don’t. I have lost any taste I have for killing, and you already know that if I loosen this strap, the Death will reach out and take you all.”

The monks conferred, and agreed that they would worship the Death from afar for the moment, but asked Arn to consider donating the Death to their church when he was done. They gave him pamphlets emphasising the spiritual rewards of such a deed, and two of the younger acolytes guided him to the tower of the wizard Peng.

The tower had nested by the side of a crystal-blue lake. It was very tall, with unscalable walls of obsidian and spires of copper and bronze. High atop the tower was a single window, and through that window Arn could see the beautiful face of Lucia.

He watched her for a time, and then remarked “she is not as I remember her.” He made many observations along these lines, like:

“I do not remember her eyes being so downcast, nor so tearful.”

Or -

“Her movements have less joyful grace than I recall.”

Or -

“Her face does not shine with love for me, as I assumed it must.”

Or even, once, quietly -

“Why, I wonder if I was mistaken.”

The Death made no reply to any of these statements, and not for the first time Arn wished that Nag was still alive, for Nag had listened to all of Arn’s previous thoughts on the subject of Lucia and might have offered wise counsel at this juncture.

Arn led the Death up to the door of the tower, and knocked three times, and the door opened.

He wandered the mazy hallways of the tower for a time, and saw all manner of wonders, such as

A room where a dozen disembodied heads sang in chorus

Or -

A room where strange monsters were stabled, like riding-dragons and griffons and pegasi

Or -

A room of dragon eggs in egg-cups the size of man’s head

Or -

A library where all the books were bound in human skin, even the ones on topics like gardening.

Or -

A room of leaping, cackling shadows.

In time, Arn and the Death came upon the study of the wizard Peng, where the wizard Peng awaited them. He was an old man, bald save for a fringe of hair around his ears, and he wore a robe embroidered with various astrological symbols and magical runes in silver thread. His face was kindly, but his eyes were hard and cruel.

“I am Arn” said Arn, “and I have captured a Death. Also I am in love with your daughter, Lucia, and wish to marry her, or at least be introduced to her as a potential worthy suitor.”

Peng stroked his beard three times, and weighed each word before speaking it. “I too have captured a Death, but I have gone one better than you. Your Death is in harness; mine, I placed in a box of iron wrapped with many chains, and I hurled it into the depths of the ocean where it will never trouble anyone again.”

“So,” said Arn, “you might be in the market for a replacement, seeing as your first Death is no longer available.”

“Ah,” replied the wizard, “you misunderstand. The Death I caught was not my Death, but hers. Lucia was to have died of a fever many hundreds of years ago, but I stopped her Death before it could claim her, and thus by my art she is immortal.”

Arn magnanimously congratulated the wizard on this accomplishment. “Even if the Death I brought is of no interest to you, I have come a long way, and would very much like to see Lucia.”

“Then gaze upon the beauty of the world!” Peng threw open a door and led Arn to Lucia’s room.

The room was filled with flowers, and their sweet smell was almost enough to hide the smell of death. There was a crystal pitcher of water on a dresser, covered in a thin film of dust.

The girl stood by the window, just as Arn remembered seeing her. She was very beautiful, and very sad. She was not one day older than she had been when Arn first laid eyes on her.

Arn had spent considerable time thinking about what he would do when he met Lucia, and had held many one-sided conversations with Nag about his options.

He could fall to one knee and say “I am Arn, and I am your true love.”

Or -

Sweep her off her feet and kiss her

Or -

Charm her with the wit and grace that he would surely be inspired to spontaneously develop by her presence

Or -

Join her by the window and gaze out, and whisper “I saw you, and I have loved you since I saw you”

Arn did none of these things.

Instead, he thought of a time back on the stony farm, when Nag shied away from a patch of weeds. Arn pushed aside the undergrowth, and found a trapped hare there. It had wedged itself under an old tree-root, and could not free itself no matter how hard it thrashed and fought. Arn bent down and picked it up, very gently, and held the little quivering thing in the palm of his hand. It looked up at him with eyes full of terror and confusion. It craved to be set free but was too terrified to make a move. He remembered letting the rabbit fall and watching it sprint across the field, free and joyful. He even remembered sitting in his house stirring a bowl of soggy vegetables, thinking how much nice a bit of rabbit meat would have been, and convincing himself that the sight of the escaping animal was worth the hunger.

Lucia had the rabbit’s eyes.

Arn reached back to the harness and unbuckled the straps. The Death slipped out.

For a moment, Arn felt a cold breath on the inside of his skin.

The wizard Peng clutched at an amulet around his neck.

And Lucia smiled, and crumpled like a doll.

“What have you done?” roared Peng.

“I have done the one thing I never considered doing,” replied Arn, “and the one thing I think she asked me to do. I am sorry for your loss, even if you are not sorry for mine.”

Peng roared, and wept, and tore at his beard. Arn left the wizard chanting over Lucia’s body, and walked out of the tower. On the way, he found the room of harnessed beasts, and took three more horse-harnesses like the one he already carried. He retraced his steps along the road.

When he met the black monks, they surrounded him with knives drawn, saying “give us the Death, so that we may worship it.” Arn handed over the first of the three empty harnesses, and said “here in this harness is what you worship.” The monks thanked him, and promised that they would pray for him, and have him an excessively elaborate hat.

When he met the general, he said “I have reconsidered my position. Here is the Death you seek,” and handed over the second harness. The general spurred his horse and rode off to the enemy camp. The enemy, having heard rumours about the man who had harnessed Death, were very alarmed by the empty harness, and fled the field. The general was so pleased with his bloodless victory that he promoted Arn on the spot to the rank of Vice Lance-Commodore, and gave him a fine warhorse and armour and all sorts of other heavy accoutrements that were very impressive if inconvenient to carry.

When he met the merchant, he offered to sell him the third harness at a cut-price rate. The merchant was so overjoyed at purchasing a bargain Death that he did not stop to question Arn’s motives. (In fact, the merchant had been worrying himself to an early grave out of fear of death, and his possession of the empty harness so relaxed him that he lived an extra fifty years in happiness and health.) Arn rode on with two chests of gold on a little cart.

He crossed the bandit-free bridge and visited the frog-hunter, and gave him a pouch of gold for his wise counsel and his frogs.

After many days, he came to the little stony farm. He laid the empty harness down on Nag’s mound, and said “you were a good horse, Nag, and wiser than I am. Thank you.”

Arn rode away on his horse, and as he rode, he spoke to his horse, saying -

“I think I shall seek my fortune in the east.”

Or -

“I shall invest in ships, and become a rich merchant.”

Or -

“Does this hat make me the pope of Death?”

Or -

Or -

Or.

He was less than eight weeks old, but we’re doing this through IVF (keep the laptop off your testicles, guys, I mean it), so we’d been fighting and hoping for a year, and we had a few weeks of joy before it was snuffed out. deli blogged about it weeks ago, but this is the first time I’ve felt the impetus to do so.

The world feels colder now. There are more things with sharp edges. More sights that make me wince. Other people’s happiness is ringed with knives, especially if it’s connected to kids. I want to scream at them, demand that they acknowledge how lucky they are, how absurdly random their good fortune is, demand that they explain why. There are no words.

I won’t say that I’d made any changes in my life because of the pregnancy, but I’d gotten myself into a mental space where I was ready to make those changes. No-one’s ever ready to be a father, I think – not that I have the slightest clue what “father” means – but I was willing to jump in and do my best. I wanted it.

We’ll try again. We’ve got four more frozen embryos. If they don’t work, then we’re still young enough that another round of IVF would still have moderately good chances, as these things go. It still could happen naturally. And if it doesn’t, we’ll adjust to that too.

Even if it does happen again, we won’t forget what we had, for a brief few weeks in March this year.

BANKERS: Round of wholly uncontroversial golf? Not that we’re having sneaky meetings behind anyone’s backs or anything.

GOVERNMENT: Sure! Shall we take your jet, or will I follow you in the government jet? Because we’re rich and nothing can ever go wrong again.

BANKERS: We’re in a bit of a hole. We got in loads of cheap money, and we lent it to people.

GOVERNMENT: That’s good. Houses! Construction! Celtic tiger! Everyone’s a winner!

BANKERS: Yeah… about that. It turns out handing out billions so some cowboys could build a concrete sprawl in a field that’s six hours commute from anywhere was a bit stupid. They can’t even flog ‘em to the Eastern Europeans who moved here to build houses for other Eastern Europeans. As I said, we’re in a bit of a hole.

GOVERNMENT: So… do you want a loan, or what?

BANKERS: Let’s go for what.

GOVERNMENT: Ok. how about we guarantee your deposits, so there’s no run on the banks.

BANKERS: Yay!

GOVERNMENT: And we’ll guarantee the bond-holders too, and promise them that you’ll repay all the money you borrowed that you then loaned to some bloke you met down the pub so he could build 50,000 houses in a bog somewhere.

BANKERS: Er. OK. Sure. Fine. So, just so we’re clear, you’re guaranteeing us from absolutely everything. We could, like, shoot someone, and you’d take the rap.

GOVERNMENT: But you won’t shoot anyone, right?

BANKERS: Nooo…. by the way, remember that hole?

GOVERNMENT: Yep. Do we have to cover you for a few thousand? No bother, lads, you’ve been good to us and…

BANKERS: Actually, it’s more like a few million….

GOVERNMENT: Here you go.

BANKERS: Billion….

GOVERNMENT: Fine, ok, but don’t do it aga-

BANKERS: Zillion…

GOVERNMENT: You’ve lost zillions?

BANKERS: No, no, no. We’ve lost millions of billions of zillions. A hell of lot more than the country is worth, really.

GOVERNMENT: It’s ok. We’ll get a loan from Europe to repay your debts.
BANKERS: But how will…

GOVERNMENT: The plain people of Ireland will cover your debts, never fear.

BANKERS: Yay!

GOVERNMENT: About time we were going, anyway.

PLAIN PEOPLE OF IRELAND: What the fuck was that? Wasn’t there a Celtic tiger there a minute ago? Why did I got a mortgage for half a million to buy a half-finished bit of concrete in the middle of the North Atlantic?

Anyway, that’s how the usual lot (Fianna Fail) fucked up. In Ireland, we don’t have the usual left/right division. We’ve got the usual lot (Fianna Fail, centre right) and the other lot (Fine Gael) who are…centre right. There’s a difference, but it’s sort of like the difference between African and European elephants. They’re still elephants. Anyway, in this glorious transformative election, we’re voting for the other lot.

At least, the rest of the country is. I’m not sure who I’m voting for. We’ve had no canvassers call to the door, and very little in the way of election flyers. My vote will be based partially on a brief examination of the candidate’s policies as determined by a cursory google, and the look of their election posters. Without further ado…

Cork South Central! (Wikipedia)

Dan Boyle (Green Party): I voted Green last time. You know, a vote for green energy, carbon cuts, alternative fuels, puppies and stuff. The Green Party proceeded to go into coalition with Fianna Fail and presided over the reaming of the nation. They made lots of concerned noises, and threatened to think about maybe considering to hold a meeting to review their position on their commitment to not bring the government down a few times. If they’d had the courage to pull the plug a few years ago, then they’d be a lot higher on my list, and I’ve heard good things about Boyle himself. As it is, lads, your dalliance with the devil has doomed you all, and lost you my vote. Next time, if your party has a next time, don’t go into government with that lot.

Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael): He looks like a gnome.

He looks like a gnome who’s obsessed with mushrooms.

I see him, in the night, scurrying through the undergrowth, rubbing his gnarled gnome hands with glee as he finds a patch of succulent juicy mushrooms. Quick as a flash, he gathers them in his floppy gnome hat before scurrying back to his underground kingdom.

Deirdre Clune (Fine Gael): I’m irritated by Fine Gael’s social policies (their equality spokeperson just came out against gay marriage, for example) and they’re a lot more right-wing than I’d like. Plus, a quick perusal of her website shows that she’s part of a political family, which is a problem in Irish politics (youtube video).

That said, she’s the Fine Gael innovation and research spokeswoman, and one of the first articles I found on her site was her talking about promoting Cork as a digital hub for gaming. Congratulations, that gets you a higher preference than the rest of your party.

Wait, this is the same party who came out with this (flash game/turd).

Sigh. Is it shallow to be judging a party based on their flash games? Probably. I don’t care. Let’s complete the trifecta.

Simon Coveney (Fine Gael): Christ, it’s an Irish politician who doesn’t look ghastly. That’s something of a novelty. Most of our politicians… well, yeah.

His eyes do tend to follow you, though, boring into your soul with intensity.

Stop staring at me, Simon Coveney.

Seems competent enough, though. I really can’t hold the flash game over them forever, can I?

Paula Desmond (Labour): I was all set to vote Labour (they’d be my other go-to party after the Greens, and I’m genetically Labour to an absurd degree), until their economic spokeswoman had a very, very bad performance (youtube meltdown) on Vincent Browne a few weeks ago.

She’s very much a local candidate, from a quick skim of her wordpress site; Ciaran Lynch is the real Labour prospect for a seat, so if I vote Labour, it’ll probably be for him.

A clutch of independent candidates coming up. This could be a laugh.

Sean Dunphy (Independent): He’s a doctor. That is pretty much all I can find about him. I’m not sure if ‘I’m a doctor’ is an election platform. I mean, it’s great that he’s a doctor, and he’s apparently pro cheaper drugs for people, but still, one likes a little more breadth in candidates than ‘I’m a doctor’.

Mick Finn (Independent): I really should use the other photo off his website, just so I could quote Jeff Winger’s ‘I don’t have an ego. My facebook photo is a landscape‘ line. Another candidate whose policies are almost entirely local.

Why’s that bad? Because. (Not actually a joke. Genuine Irish politician. Lynchpin of independent support for the current government. Really. Yeah.) I don’t mean to tar Mick Finn with the same brush, but… no. Plus, his name is a date rape drug.

Eric Isherwood (Independent): He’s running on a platform of special needs, and I respect his commitment… but, well, if your website looks like a youtube comment thread, I am compelled to dismiss you as a serious candidate.

That said, Isherwood’s streets ahead of Gerard Linehan (independent), who appears to be running on a platform of timecube and being allowed to complain to the government about his divorce or something. It’s bizarre. ‘If elected, it would create an opportunity for me to challenge the Ceann Comhairle in the Dail on the manner in which he and his predecessors, have blocked questions for oral hearing as submitted by the former T.D., Joe Higgins, the technical group, Enda Kenny T.D. and most recently Mary O’ Rourke T.D., on the irregular manner in which Judge Patrick Moran of Cork Circuit Court and others within the judiciary dealt with my family law case.’

Can you anti-vote someone?

Back to the regular parties for a while now.

Ciaran Lynch (Labour): Irritates me instantly because he uses ‘de’ instead of ‘the’ when twittering.

Iwon’tvotebasedongrammarIwon’tvotebasedongrammarIwon’tvotebasedongrammarIprobablywillwhoamifooling?

Voting for Labour in any event is like going on a diet by ordering the chicken burger instead of the steak. It’s marginally healthier, but it’s still greasy and covered in mayonnaise.

Look at the photo, then think ‘covered in mayonnaise.’ He appears to like the idea.

Actually, it’s more like voting for a slightly-to-the-left-of-the-right-of-centre party as opposed to voting for a slightly-to-the-right-of-the-right-of-centre party or a slightly-to-the-bastards-of-right-of-centre party. Gah. Irish politics, designed by Henry Ford. You can have any colour you want, as long as it’s black.

David McCarthy (Independent): Look at his young hair. That’s youfful, energetic hair, that is.

Actually, his policies aren’t half bad. I’ll give him a high preference.

Michael McGrath (Fianna Fail): There’s something deeply sinister about his election posters. The overwhelming impression is one of barely concealed violence behind that fake smile. Vote for me, they say, or I’ll break your legs.

Actually, that’s a pretty effective slogan.

Better than his previous one of let’s build a train oh wait we can’t.

And here is a miracle beyond compare. Behold the man who sprang from nothing not three weeks ago. A man who, despite being in the cabinet throughout the lifetime of the last government, somehow managed to repel all responsibility for anything bad ever. I speak of Michael Martin (Fianna Fail), who’s apparently bringing the Immaculate Conception back into fashion, for he claims to be untainted by Original Sin.

Uh-huh. No.

Ted Neville (Independent): Running on an immigration control platform. Lovely.

One of the stranger byproducts of Ireland having, y’know, an economy and money and stuff was that we actually had immigration. We had people living here who weren’t exactly Irish. Now, we’d been ok with them black people when they made up most of the Irish international football team during Italia ’90 – my grandmother offered up prayers for Paul McGrath’s knees – but them actually living here? That was new. In short, we discovered racism and decided we liked it.

Diarmuid O Cadhla (Independent): Has apparently invented democracy. Under the new system, everything gets discussed with constituents. It’s government by consensus. That seems plausible, workable and not at all a complete clusterfuck. Yep, I’m convinced. Next!

Finbarr O’Driscoll (Independent): 404 error – candidate not found.

Chris O’Leary (Sinn Fein): No.

So, after all that, how am I voting? I’ll be giving Fine Gael a slightly higher set of preferences than I expected, along with David McGrath. Labour are uninspiring, to put it mildly.

Ah, democracy. No-one tell the Egyptians that it’s a bit crap, really.

The termination came with a month’s notice and a thank-you, nothing more. Such is the lot of the freelancer.

2010 was a chaotic year. I’m still dealing with the aftermath of my mother’s death. I got married. I ran a marathon. I tried to have a kid, found out I’m very close to infertile, started on a course of IVF. Meanwhile, of course, the world decides to go into meltdown, and I watched as the government pushes the country to the brink of bankruptcy and oblivion. 2010 was almost entirely interesting times.

So, what have I learned? The emphasis here, of course, is on the ‘I’; these lessons are painfully obvious to everyone, but they’re what I need to internalise and take from the past year.

Quality, not Quantity: I was successful at Mongoose primarily because I was able to produce lots of moderate-quality material on command on almost any topic. While that’s useful, I need to aim higher. I must break myself of the mindset that the first draft has to be the final draft. When you’re producing a book a month from scratch, there’s no time for planning, editing, rewriting or anything other than getting words out as quickly as possible, but other companies don’t work like that. Not everyone is Mongoose.

Constraint is Focus: I need to relearn the skill of juggling overlapping projects instead of working on them in series, and to do it all without the pressure of monthly deadlines. I’ve taken to using pomodoro for time management, with good results on days when I can get a good run-up at work. Other days, I’m so squeezed for time that I’m forced to focus. I need to make sure that every day is one or the other, and stop wasting time on the internet.

Fail Better: Remember those five million words? I own none of them. They’re all work for hire, and most of them are written for licensed games so they’re doubly not-mine. For someone who’s allegedly prolific, I’ve written only a tiny amount for myself, and an even smaller amount for public consumption. I’m afraid of failure and obscurity, so I don’t even try. To hell with that. Write, fail, write better.

The World is Strange: It was a year when ‘low orbit ion cannons’ were in newspaper headlines, when the roleplaying industry slouched and mutated, when people talked about twitter being an essential service even as the water pipes froze and burst. The older I get, the stranger the world seems, and that is terrifying and inspiring. The lesson to draw from it is that there may be people interested in my stranger ideas, and to break out of my comfort zone. Stop retreading what worked in 2005… or, more accurately, 1982.

Learn Until It Becomes Habit: I have said and blogged these things before. Every year is next year in Jerusalem, the year I finally write that novel, write that game, change the world. So be it – if I have to repeat these assertions and plans until they are become real, then I will. What I tell you three times is true, and what I tell myself a dozen times will eventually become true.

Love is Enough: And I stood on a beach in Kerry in impossible sunshine and I married her, and that is enough. Everything else builds on that.

Nick’s JumpTech series is more than two years old now. It’s an ongoing sci-fi epic. It’s primarily intrigue and trade, but there’ve been costumed aliens, nerf gun shootouts, space battles, props and all sorts of other ambitious elements. The six-hour Gaelcon game included a life pod prob that turned out to contain an NPC, a change of set half-way through, an awful lot of heavily armed nerf warriors, and free alien food. In the first half, I continued my ongoing efforts to bring the various factions together, encourage peace and stability, and supported the establishment of an interstellar police force.

In the second half, the fascist Sol Unity showed up. Suddenly, all the factions I’d been trying to unite found a common goal – going to war with Sol. As the ranking human diplomat, I had to choose between joining this alliance (and dragging the human colony into war) or opening up our own negotiations with the Sol Unity. I picked the dark side. It was an immensely frustrating decision, and not one I was in the right headspace to enjoy. Six hours of larping meant I was far too invested in the character and his failure.

I took the next morning off, then played a moderately entertaining Vampire session and a lot of boardgames, which was just what I needed. (Prosperity for Dominion is the craziest set ever).

Monday morning, I was unexpectedly dragooned into running Necessary Evils for Savage Worlds, as the GMs they’d lined up couldn’t make it to the con because of the Dublin city marathon. The game was ok; the characters were relatively rules-heavy, but one of the players knew the system and we bumbled through to an acceptable finale. The afternoon slot was a test drive for my own Rakehell setting, using a simple take on FATE as the engine. It went unexpectedly well; more on that once I get the scenario rewritten and up for download.

The d4 hotel continues to be an excellent venue. My only critiques of the con organisation are minor ones, and the event ran very smoothly. The con’s improved markedly over the last year or two – and having finally gotten to GM and throw off my funk, roll on next year.

If your Skin’s broken, the Desert gets inside you. The scenes in the final two acts of the game should be based around the character’s injuries. If you lose your girlfriend in Act II, and that’s marked down as an Injury, then she’s bound to come back as a ghost or hallucination in Act IV. If you get bitten by a rattlesnake in one scene, then in the Desert you run out of anti-venom.

Setting: As the parameters of the game are defined in the opening scenes, the setting has to remain nebulous. The Desert’s assumed to be somewhere in the American southwest, but not quite in our reality. Lots of low-key surrealism; a Moorcock heist movie.

(If I go with Ye Traditional Atomic Wasteland for the Desert, then the meaning of Skin may change. In this variant, character start with some form of protection against the hazards of the desert, but can lose this protection over the course of play.)

Future Development: The first thing that needs to be done is number-crunching and playtesting. The game lives and dies by the Edge economy, so the cost of winning has to be correctly balanced. The players should have to think seriously about whether or not they want to win the scene, but they should win enough that the game doesn’t become a completely oppressive beatdown.

Beats

This game is inspired by Robin Laws’ Hamlet’s Hit Points. If you haven’t read it, you should – it’s about beat analysis with special reference to roleplaying games. The book traces the development of the plot and the associated emotional arc in three famous works – Hamlet, Casablanca and Dr No, and discusses how to identify and use beats in roleplaying games.

This is an attempt to explicitly use beats to create story.

Beats can be upbeats or downbeats. An upbeat is one where the characters win and the players feel good – they win a fight, accomplish a goal, convince someone to help them, learn something important, have a laugh, have sex, get cool stuff. Downbeats are defeats or threats; the characters lose a fight, get hurt, fail to do something, get into arguments, lose stuff and other bad things.

In this game, by default, almost all the beat are downbeats. The world hates your character and wants him to lose.

However, just because a scene is certain to end badly for your character doesn’t mean you’re powerless. You can still take action to push the bad ending one way or another. Let’s say you go to talk to your own mentor and get his advice. It’s a downbeat scene, so it’s going to end in a defeat for your character – but depending on what you do, that defeat might be:

• Your mentor refuses to talk to you
• Your mentor turns out to be working for the bad guys, and tries to kill you
• Your mentor gets shot by the bad guys before he can tell you what he knows
• Your mentor gets shot by the bad guys, and tells you his secret right before he dies in your arms

Edge

Edge is a measure of the characters’ good luck, skill, preparedness and tenacity. Edge lets you turn a downbeat into an upbeat. You get Edge by accepting downbeats. So, if you pick the right battles to lose, you can win the battles that really matter to you.

The Desert of the Weird

The desert is where the story happens. It’s a wasteland – mile after mile of rolling dunes and broken rock. It wasn’t always all like this, so there are ruined towns and abandoned places here. Abandoned things too, fairground rides and surgical tools and moon rockets and A-bombs all bleached white as bone. The plants and animals of the desert are freakish things that are found only here, and most of them want to eat you. During the day, the sun beats you down like a white-hot baseball bat. At night, it’s bitterly cold and the sky glows with the ghosts of neon advertising for brands you don’t recognise.

At the edge of the desert, there are a few little settlements. Gas station, store, diner, that’s about it. There are so few people here in the desert that everyone’s significant.

Deep in the desert, it gets very weird. You don’t go into the deep desert unless you have to, and if you don’t have protective gear – we’re talking NBC hazard suits or the homemade equivalent – you’re fucked. The desert will get inside you and change you.

Outside the desert – actually, we don’t care about outside the desert. It could all be normal out there, whatever normal means. Maybe the weirdness started with the first atom bomb tests. Maybe the desert’s always been weird, a psychic wasteland where successive Americas go to die. Maybe the government knows the desert is weird, and has built a giant wall around it to keep the weirdness contained, and the Nevada national guard are shooting at mutant ants over the next dune. Maybe it’s not a desert at all. Call it a stripped-down setting.

Skin

Skin is a measure of how intact your character is. It tracks mental and physical damage. If your skin’s broken, the desert can get inside you and twist things.

Traits

Traits are facts about your character. You’ll define some traits early in the game, and pick more up as you go along.

Your Character

Unlike most roleplaying games, you don’t start off with a character pre-planned. You’ll introduce him in the first scene and work from there.

The Plot Arc

The first thing to do is to decide what the plot arc is going to be. Pick one of the following or roll your own. Note that each plot arc has a series of questions that must be answered – those questions are there to give structure to the first few scenes.

Revenge: Someone crossed the characters, and they’re out for revenge.

• Who are the characters?
• Who is the bad guy?
• What did he do to the characters?
• How do they find his hiding place?
• What dangers are there on the way?

Rescue: Someone is in trouble, and the characters are riding to the rescue.

• Who are the characters?
• Who’s in danger?
• Where are they?
• What do the characters need to save the person in danger?
• What dangers are there on the way?

On The Run: The characters are fleeing something or someone.

• Who are the characters?
• Why are they on the run?
• What are they running from?
• How do they stay ahead of the bad guys?
• Where are they going?

The Opening Scene: The GM describes the desert. It’s still and empty…and then there’s a dust cloud. Our heroes – the player characters – have arrived. The players each describe their character’s physical appearance. Each character gets one trait from this description.

Set-Up Scenes: In the next few scenes, some of the initial questions posed by the plot are answered. These are Anticipation Beats – they’re free upbeats, designed to make us like the player characters. So, the character can do ultra-competent stuff without worrying about failure. There is one spotlight scene for each player character. Each character gets another two traits out of his spotlight scene. Spotlight scenes are automatically successful, but don’t earn Edge. Optionally, a GM can choose to interweave Act I scenes with the Set-Up scenes.

The Beatdown Begins: By this stage, the characters should have a direction and the inkling of a plot. It’s now up to the GM to crush them. In each scene, the characters will lose unless they spend Edge. The amount of Edge that has to be spent varies depending on the number of players and the state of the game.

The GM may tweak the Edge cost up or down. Depending on the scene, it may be permissable for some players to win the scene and some to lose, in which case use the individual Edge cost column.

The acts are a loose guide to the progression of the plot. Act 1 covers the initial situation, and comprises the opening scene, the set-up scenes, and 2-3 other scenes. In act 2, tensions and threats set up in the initial situation come into play. There should be a twist around the end of act 2, after 3-5 scenes. Act three – everything goes to hell. The cost to win scenes is so high that the players might be able to eke a single victory out of the 3-5 scenes in this act. Act 3 should involve entering the inner desert. Finally, Act 4 is the denouement – it’s still hard for the PCs to win, but they have so much Edge from the kicking of Act 3 that they should be able to win a few key scenes.

Action Within A Scene: Characters can take actions within a scene. To determine whether or not an action succeeds, roll 1d6. On a 4+, the action succeeds.

• Having a relevant trait gives a +1 bonus to the dice roll
• Having a relevant scar gives a -1 penalty to the dice roll (see Skin, below)
• If the action’s particularly easy, that’s worth another +1
• If it’s hard, there’s a -1 penalty
• If it’s very hard, there’s a -2 penalty.

New Traits: You can pick up new traits during a scene. The first new trait you get costs 1 Edge, the second 2 Edge and so on. Sample traits:

• Armed & Dangerous
• Protective Suit
• Rebreather
• Anti-Rad Drugs
• Determined to Succeed
• Out for Revenge
• Has A Big Truck
• Bad Guys Think I’m Dead

Scars: Scars are negative traits. You pick up a Scar when you lose a scene. Depending on actions within the scene, either all player characters get a scar, or just some of them.

To Come… The Desert, Finales, Examples and more setting stuff…

Enter Hamlet’s Hit Points, by Robin Laws. A while back, Robin did a beat analysis of Hamlet on his blog, tracing the emotional and procedural upbeats and downbeats of the story with special emphasis on its relevance to roleplaying games. The book discusses this technique and adds beat analyses of Casablanca and Dr. No. (It’s worth reading if you’ve an interest in narrative construction and writing. I got my money’s worth ten minutes in, at an observation about maintaining suspense in literary fiction which helped me crack an problem in a decidedly not-literary outline.)

Hamlet’s Hit Points has a whole list of beats – Commentary, Anticipation, Gratification, Pipe, Question, and most importantly Emotional and Procedural upbeats and downbeats. My initial idea for Gamechef is to create a system that uses beats. The basic idea – in a conflict, one side or the other has Edge. If you have Edge, you’re going to win. If you don’t have it, you’re going to lose.

The game’s called Beatdown. Getting it into a workable state in time for the GameChef deadline is unlikely (blame Halo: Reach), but I’ll kick it into shape regardless.

However, if you lose a conflict because of Edge, you get Edge in the next fight. The gimmick is that the PCs will have to suffer several defeats in a row to accumulate enough Edge to beat the big bad guy. Conflicts don’t have to be physical – you suffer a nasty emotional blow, and you get to kick ass next scene. If the mechanics properly balanced, you should get a nice emotional arc to the game.

• The wedding (HUGE SUCCESS)
• Honeymoon in Iceland (also fun; considerably less ice than expected though)
• Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, as we found out we were extremely unlikely to have kids using conventional methods. Now, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they go and talk to a nice Chinese laboratory technician who claims his name is Sean… (current status: there are eight viable embryos in a freezer)

In between those, and the dog walking/house renovation/rolling family nonsense/ongoing rpg campaigns/xbox360 quotidien existence, I’ve been cramming in as much freelancing as I can manage. The Laundry just came out in pdf (print should be out in the middle of next month), and the first two supplements (Black Bag Jobs, an adventure anthology, and a player’s guide) are close behind it in the production queue. My first adventure for D&D, the Goblin Hole, came out in July; I’ve got another four Pathfinder articles coming out from Paizo in the next few months. I’ve also got two ongoing gigs – I’m updating Secrets of the Ancients for Mongoose, and I’ll be doing a series of short supplements for Pelgrane’s lines over the year.

Any gaps in my schedule, I’m planning to fill with my own material, like the poor neglected Milkyfish projects, but as my freelancing is our major source of income right now, I’m concentrating on work-for-hire that pays off moderately quickly.

The last six months were all about treading water while we survived the wedding; now, we’re finally moving forward.