Render Unto Moloch (M:tAw)

[Maugan Ra]

Render Unto Moloch
A Mage: The Awakening Quest


​

There are patterns in the grain.

Blinking, you rub your eyes, trying to chase the images from your mind. It's no good. The second you lower your hand they reappear, crawling in from the edges of your vision to dance across the face of the old wooden desk.

"Don't have time for this…" you mutter, keeping your voice subdued for fear of the librarian's baleful gaze. Nowhere else on the campus can you find the material necessary for your essay, and if she takes sufficient umbrage with your conduct and casts you out your chances of passing this course are lost.

Grunting, you lift your eyes from the wood and its tantalizing secrets and focus instead on the laptop's glowing screen. It burns with pure white light, a searing doorway of light that brands itself into the back of your eye, but you know better than to turn it down to something more comfortable. The last thing you need is to strain yourself staring at a too-dim screen at some ungodly time at night; the glasses you can get on the system won't do nearly enough to counteract the blurred vision or the pain of a migraine that comes from focusing too hard.

Slowly, with grim determination, you touch finger to keyboard and continue to type.

I demonstrate, in the first place, that the state of men without civil society (which state we may properly call the state of nature) is nothing else but a mere war of all against all; and in that war all men have equal right unto all things...

God, the men you cite have been dead for a thousand years and you still want to choke the life from the contemptuous little shits. How is it that ten centuries or more can pass without the words in the mouths of your betters changing so much as an inch? You don't need to pour through dusty tomes and ancient manuscripts to hear such philosophy espoused today; you need only speak to your dearly beloved classmates. They'd be more than happy to expound at some length on the need for a strong hand to keep society in line, and if you were lucky they might even remember the veil the words so that it wasn't completely obvious who exactly they were talking about.

You wouldn't bet on it though. If there's one thing a collection of rich young cunts can be counted on to do, it's to remind you of your place; namely, below theirs.

Sighing, you sit back in your chair. This isn't working. You're just getting distracted, your mind bouncing from topic to topic, unable to stay in one place long enough to actually get any amount of genuine work done. How long have you been in here now? You came in after your last lecture, but already the sky outside the window is black and blue, like a day old bruise. Hours, then, at least, and all you have to show for it is half a page of barely coherent gibberish fit only to be passed around the staff room for a good old fashioned laugh. That's bad, even for your worst day, and you don't know what's causing it.

Grimly, you think of Jen and her gift, the handful of tiny white capsules held in a sun-bronzed hand. A little pick-me-up, she'd called it, something to give you the edge you needed to get through yet another late night of writing and research. It sounded like just the sort of thing you needed, and given the stakes you'd taken the offer without a second thought, handing over a pretty major chunk of what passed for your living allowance for the privilege. You'd never have thought badly of Jen in the past, but… did she slip you something bad, by accident or design? If she did, what are you going to do about it?

Shaking your head firmly, you banish the thought from your mind. Jen is one of a tiny handful of people here who've treated you as anything more than an amusing pet that someone taught to read; if you start doubting her at the first excuse it won't be long before you break down entirely. Maybe you just had a bad reaction…

Sighing, you lean forwards and click the little 'save' icon on your pathetic excuse for an essay. You forgot to do that once, and the memory still haunts you. That done, you turn off the power and fold down the laptop's screen. No use forcing yourself to work when you have so little to show for it, after all. You'll just head back to the halls, catch a quick break and pass out for an hour or two on your skinny little bed, give your mind a chance to rest before you get back to it. You'd like to just give up entirely, take the failure and use the time it buys you to get some proper sleep, but… no. You're the first in your family to ever make it so far, and you won't go crawling back to them a failure.

Fighting the leaden feeling in your limbs, you slide the laptop into the battered old backpack you use to carry your stuff. Everyone else in your class has some kind of fancy leather shoulder bag, but you could never hope to afford the kind of prices people charge for that shit in the capital, so you make do with what you have. Story of your life, really, but at least it matches the rest of your outfit; quilted jacket with a sports logo across the back, cheap t-shirt with a hole or two, faded jeans and a pair of battered old trainers. You stand out like a sore thumb in the halls of power and privilege, but then you were never going to fit in anyhow, and the only thing worse than not wearing a suit around here is wearing a cheap one badly, so…

Croak.

You look up, surprised, and it takes you a few moments to realise that you're not hallucinating. Perched atop one of the stacks is an old, angry looking bird - a raven, you think, though you don't know enough to say for sure. It peers down at you with the same kind of imperious look in its eye as a hundred students who cross your path each day, but unlike them its plumage isn't nearly so refined. Its feathers are torn and fraying, all but ready to fall out at the slightest breeze, and there's a weakness to its cry that tells of age and poor health just barely concealed.

Croak.

"Best get lost, mate," you say in a quiet voice, smiling despite yourself, "or they'll stick you in a pie and serve you to the king."

Wait, shit, was that blackbirds? Ah, what does it matter. Shaking your head you sling the backpack over one shoulder and pick up the hefty tome you were referencing throughout the night. The staff will flay you alive if you just leave it lying around and they'd sooner sell their own daughters than see you carry the books from these halls, so that means you have to put the work back where you found it before you go. Hopefully the bird doesn't shit all over it in the meantime.

Making your way back along the stacks, you do your best to cudgel your brain into remembering where exactly you got the book in your hands from. It's an ancient looking thing bound in green leather than held shut with brass clasps, but that could describe any number of the tomes and chronicles displayed on the shelves around you. Each bookshelf has a little metal plaque detailing the types of works stored within, but apparently the librarians went for poetry over precision and you can't make heads or tails of the directions displayed therein.

"Mysteries of the fifth gate... ruminations on order... the metaphysical heritage of the old city?" You speak the categories aloud, just about resisting the urge to snort in disbelief. You've clearly wandered into the part of the library meant for the philosophy students, or maybe some of the historians. Either way you won't be finding your law texts here, and at this point you cannot be arsed to keep looking for them. You'll take the work to the front desk and ask them to put it back for you - it's better than leaving it in the aisles, and hey, it's what the old bats are actually being paid for, isn't it?

Croak

The fucking bird is following you, it seems, though… no, this is a new one. The feathers are far glossier, the look in its beady little eyes notable sharper. A relative, or just a hanger on? You consider the thought for a moment, then realise you're daydreaming about the family tree of a fucking bird and force yourself to keep moving. The air in the library is freezing, and you think some of the shelves are actually developing a faint layer of condensation across their wooden frames. Did someone leave all the windows open? Clearly they must have done something of the kind, which makes it all the more important that you put the book back and leave, quickly.

It'd be just your luck to get blamed for this shit.

The library's front desk sits just inside the front entrance, surrounded by a round counter cut from a single block of granite. The stone hasn't been polished or refined in any particular fashion, something which you can only put down to some strange artistic statement, but right now you're more concerned by the fact that there aren't any librarians in sight. Come to think of it you didn't catch sight of any other students on the way here, which is very odd - normally there'd be at least a dozen or so of your peers clustered together around every table, desperately trying to cram enough knowledge into their soft unyielding minds to satisfy the demands of the curriculum.

Frowning, you set the book down on the countertop, looking back and forth as you try to find someone to deliver it to. There's an old brass bell sitting just next to it, the sort of thing you slap to produce a charming little ding sound, but something tells you the attention that ringing that would draw is the sort you'd be better off avoiding.

"Fuck it," you mutter, leaving the book where it lays and turning away, "not my problem anyway."

The doors to the library are the sort of grand, sweeping edifices you'd expect to see in a fantasy novel. Made of some dark polished wood and decorated with the sign of the rose and the thorn, they stand at least three times your height and more than twice your width, so large that you half expect there to be an actual door hidden off somewhere to one side that you're actually meant to use. Two statues of old men in rusted armour stand on either side, looking down at all who pass beneath their feet with expressions of disdain, but neither seeks to stop you as you lean against the wood and push it open.

A flurry of snow hits you full in the face as you open the door, the sting bright and sharp against your bare skin; winter must have come early this year, and it takes you a good thirty seconds or more of blinking to properly adjust your eyes to the harsh morning light. Eventually you lower the hand from your eyes and see…

Article:

What do you see?

[ ] A Stage; beyond it, a theatre long since abandoned. Velvet seats stand in long rows, encrusted with webs, dust lies in piles inches thick. Chains of silver and gold hang from your wrists and coil around your neck, and overhead old floodlights halo you in burning light. Your audience is old and emaciated, clad in finery several centuries out of date, and they stare at you with hollow eyes.

[ ] A Court; the walls are decorated with portraits of your parents, smiling down at you. In the jury sit a dozen caricatures, with bloodshot eyes and teeth stained brown from drink. They watch you hungrily, fixated on your every word, while in the judge's box your twin sits and watches your fumbling speech with naked contempt.

[ ] A Museum; you are a guest here, wandering starstruck through halls lined with portraits and plaques. A hall of statues is being renovated while you watch, each stone form replaced by one a tiny bit older, a tiny bit less refined. You can see the originals, you know, held for posterity in the archive, but that means asking the curator for permission, and his skinless face and cloak of grey discomfort you in a way you cannot quite explain.

[ ] A Church; there is a priest and congregation, of course, but they are made of wax and wood. True faith left this place behind years ago, and now only the light remains. It streams down from on high, broken and repainted by windows of stained glass that stretch almost to the ceiling, and under its touch you could almost fool yourself into thinking the withered mannequins are strong and vital once again.

[ ] A Zoo; you walk between exhibits and around the edge of great enclosures, studying and being studied in turn. Here a horde of rats dig a warren in broken stone, there a flight of pigeons wheel back and forth between a hundred wooden aviaries. There are people all around you, cooing and laughing over the antics of those they came to observe, but they cannot see what you can. The horizon has sprouted bars, and from beyond giants with eyes of fire watch you with an inquisitive gaze.

You may vote for two of the above options. Only one can win, and the vote will be counted by line; the twin vote is simply a measure taken in hopes of reducing the need for tactical voting.

-/-

Welcome, one and all, to Render Unto Moloch - or, as it is known in my planning notes, Magical Lawyer Quest. This is a narrative quest being run by myself and @ManusDomine, set in the New World of Darkness - specifically the world of Mage: The Awakening.

You play as James Green, a young man from humble origins who has somehow managed to get himself enrolled at a prestigious University in the City of London, where he studies Law in the hopes of making it his profession.

This quest has been designed specifically to avoid requiring any great knowledge of the World of Darkness or its specific sub-settings; our protagonist is almost entirely ignorant of the truth of the world around him, and as time passes and he is introduced to its various facets so too will you the readers. As the quest progresses Manus and I will create a series of info-posts, which can be found under the 'informational' threadmark up above.

First thing's first - the vote above, which determines how our young Mage sees the world and what form his magic takes. Remember, you can vote for two options, but only one will win.

 

[NonSequtur]

and locked

snip

Click to shrink...

snip

Click to shrink...

snip

Click to shrink...

snip

Click to shrink...

snip

Click to shrink...

When I unlock this thread, I expect all sides involved in this argument to drop it or start taking Rule 4 infractions.