these are the sorts of things that happen in the world, to those who are looking for them, and sometimes to those who are not.
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I found this Burmese map of the world and immediately knew it to be true, so now I am going to find out what sorts of things go on in it. what this means is that I'm going to cover this map, over time, with a ton of little mini-adventures. these scenarios that should be played and run full tilt, seat of the pants, and extremely well. like a Buster Keaton stunt! Like the map, the world is our own, but also not, and it is full of whatever I can think to put in it.
the players are Questing Men, those who need something to do because they do not know who or what they would be if they were not doing something, and because they are, basically, probably, potentially good people, they end up performing a lot of exorcisms and carrying old men on their backs and fighting alligators
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Here she is... Burma had it all figured out... like this shit is CORRECT !!! |
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| my love! |
the sun king is in a calm fury, viciously playing billiards with the planets while his two older daughters swim in the pool. a kiss from them leaves a char-black mark. by day, if you display it, you will be fawned upon; but by night, in their humiliation and rage, those same doters will come to cut and steal away wherever it lies on your body.
his youngest has run off with a lustful brat, and they are trying to elope. if they do, one of the heirs to the throne of the sun would be a sleepy, unemployed fellow who can't even swim.
each one of the king's billiard balls is a planet. by striking them into one another, you may cause astrological confluences; the first planet struck determines the nature of the subject, which is then affected by the nature of one it strikes, modified by the one it strikes, which is modified by the one it strikes, and on and on.
his men have bare feet and tight suits and fleets of gleaming cars. there are no faster cars in all the world, though in their wake, invisible firestorms rage to the horizon, turning all to black charcoal. the gloves of her fathers men are black, and you can stretch and shape fire with them.
she has gotten married like this before; her father cut off the ring finger of her left hand to annul the marriage. she and the brat are well away from the manor now and the headed to the sea, walking the white, dusty road. if she sees trouble coming she will pull him into the ditch.
if they are cornered, she will fling the golden comb she wears in her hair to the ground. it will become a grove of trees of blinding gold and boiling sap, inhabited by psychotic woodcutters who wear her face and hew with diamond-toothed chainsaws at whatever is closest to them. the chainsaws run on liquid gold, and can cut through anything illuminated by the sun.
she take up a chainsaw, and hide among the woodcutters while her lover climbs into the blazing canopy. she will not cut down the tree that holds him, but if she or he is spotted, she will scramble to climb the tree and they will both leap from the top, her long long hair trailing behind her like a dreadful comet. they will aim for the sea, but will crash like a meteor into Seipursina, a coastal town of fabulous, chatty netmakers and white roosters.
The Cast
the Mother: the most beautiful woman in the world. desires to raise her child well.
the Swallowed Angel: none more protective and righteously furious. desires to exalt her mother.
the Villagers: the most diseased bunch of prophets you've ever seen. desire to debase the mother.
the Birds: terribly pestersome and smothering. desire to snatch and peck.
the Dogs: hungrier than you could imagine. desire to swallow.
the Sheep: spitefully suicidal. desire ruinous death.
an escaping angel disguised herself as a star and fell on the village of Leucospara, famous only for the ill temper of its shepherds. a transgender woman who wanted to bear children swallowed the star and became pregnant. all the animals in the town have become vicious and hostile to all but her; she keeps a counsel over dogs and sheep and birds, all protecting her glowing belly.
all food in the village turns to bitter paste in anyone's mouth but her own, and people are frail, frenzied and starving. some have a furious fever that turns you bright red and burns hot enough to light wood and clothes and hay on fire. some carry a spiny pox, and so do the rolling sea urchins that burst out of the blisters.
cut open the belly of a sheep and find a bezoar. so long as it sits in your stomach no poison nor disease nor drug nor drink can harm you.
in a day or two, the woman's child will free herself from her mother's belly with a sickle made from a tigers claw that cuts without pain. she will have a wheel of burning wings, and four faces; a woman's, an eagles, a bulls and a lion's. if she sees or hears anyone threaten her mother, she will seek to raise an army of beasts against all the temples in the world until they tell her how to get to heaven. then she will make war there too, so that she can make the world safe for mother.
neither the angel nor her mother may break her silver umbilical cord. if you died with it tied around your neck, you'd be born again the next town over and all grown up in a single day.
an old woman, so fevered she might be melting. she has pistol. the devil gave it to her soldier-boy, but when saw each soul he shot was damned, he killed himself with it straight away. after the devil dragged him down, all they found was his hand still holding the gun, and they couldn't pry it free so they sent the whole thing back to her in a little box. could kill an angel and oh golly how the devil would love it if you did.
if the angel's mother is safe, she will live a quiet life as a tender of sheep and a friend to birds, and send them far and wide to tell everyone that her mother is most beautiful woman in the world.
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| alright then... keep your secrets... |
The Cast
the Woman: incredibly brusque and casual. she desires only for everyone to be normal.
Her Lover: dotes on her endlessly. desires to make everyone dote on the woman too.
People of Caesia: most wretched. desire to be comforted.
People of Pavopure: most boastful and comfortable. desire to impress.
the Duke of Pavopure: a most fiendish man. desires admiration.
the Judges of Pavopure: most disagreeable. desire to nitpick.
the Wise Men: an entirely sycophantic bunch. desire only praise from Coyote.
the Youth, Coyote: the meanest son of a bitch ever. desires to humiliate and belittle.
a village of sweet bells and blue flowers has been reduced to rubble. it was called Caesia, and everywhere there are snapped necks and parents trying to hold their children's brains in.
a man gives you a silver rattle. the child is dead but the father's mother was a witch and she gave it to him when he was a baby before she went off to dance at the foot of the Needle-Pointed Mountain and he gave it to his child but now his child is dead. so long as it is ringing, the devil must stay in hell.
everyone points with broken wrists and fingers to Pavopure, where the duke and his judges hold sway in big houses of blue tile and the women wear opals and carry cauldrons as big as themselves one on each shoulder.
once the Sun King visited Pavopure, and was so delighted by the heat of the pepper stew they served him that he at once took up and left and went up the dancing river and shot the life out of a gigantic snapping turtle. then he rowed back down to Pavopure in its shell and the shell was so hot that the water was boiling all around him and great plumes of steam rising up. he gave it to them to use as a pot and it has been boiling ever since.
once there was a woman in Pavopure who was so proud of herself and her daughter that she likened herself to the mother of God, and told the wind to carry her up to heaven. now the wind did this, because she was so certain, but the air became fiercer and fiercer until the woman and her child broke apart into their separate atoms. now, when someone boasts in Pavopure, the wind grows strong, and the greater their boast, the stronger the wind.
a young man with long hair sits in the biggest drinking house along with wise men from all over with huge heads and bristling whiskers. even if you struck the head from one of these men, the skull would chatter and babble and flap its jaw with such irritating vigor that any hidden creature or possessing spirit would forced to reveal itself to silence the noise.
they are meeting with the duke and all his judges. the young man is explaining how he can't find his girlfriend anywhere, and the counsel is in the process of deciding that the best thing to do is to smash the town to pieces and hurt and kill everyone until they say where she is hidden. the duke himself is passing out hammers, and any dissenters are the first to have their legs broken and skulls cracked.
when the killing starts, the woman and her lover will flee out across the plain if they can, and the grass will sigh beneath their feet. the grass of the Plains of Breath holds air in it, and the sound that escapes when it is cut or trampled is the dying of that breath. if you pluck it by the roots, you can save the air inside until you have no breath, and need some.
should the youth and his wise men see them, he will grow stride by stride until he is towering and monstrous. He is Coyote, and his hair is a whirling wreath of chattering jaws and racing claws. it eats your intelligence; each time it bites you, it reduces the number of syllables you can use to speak and act: 3, 2, 1! then it reduces the number of words: 3, 2, 1! his long, long arms drag behind him, and the wise men suckle from his fingers even as they swing their hammers.
the women preferred her lover to the dog-god, and he will eat both women alive and make fuck-dolls from their hair. if you wore a pelt of a dog from Coyote's hair, people would think
you are mad, and stupid, and that the things you do mean nothing, and
that the things done to you mean nothing. they would do whatever they
please to you, and they would let you do whatever you please.
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| ai tryna tell me this is dali oh my GOD shut the fuck up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
The Cast
the People of Fearless: the most distant in the world; everyone always looking through each other's eyes. desire to listen to music, smoke cigarettes, and appear thoughtful.
the Shopkeep of the Drowned: even more unflappable than usual. desires to shock and provoke.
the Mayor of Fearless: the shortest, most impassioned man ever!!! desires to get his people excited!!!
the Miller: a truly frightening man. desires to reduce the factory to rubble.
his Apprentices: very stealthy, pop up in the most unlikely places; suitcases, barrels.
desire a couple bucks, eh?
the New Man's Features: they are rather belligerent and stupid. the Hand desires to have things, the Foot to feel superior, the Eye to be astonished, and the Tongue affection.
the Gnomes of the Factory: the most singleminded creatures on earth. they desire only to perform great works, and to be payed great sums.
there is a town where everyone lives in little cube shaped houses and plays the radio loud out their window. the town is called Fearless. there is a river that runs through this town, and once a year it breaks its banks and sweeps everything clean; the people sit on their roofs and count the dead cats and watch airplanes and listen to sad music. this time is coming any day now. the ghost of a small grey cat knows it. he catches the souls of living insects, mice and birds, leaving them as empty vessels, and sleeps in a heavy cold patch on your chest.
by the river is a tobacco factory that was once an old brick mill. this year, a new man bought it. he fired the miller and his apprentices, and did not hire anyone. then he took his left hand, his left foot, his left eye and his tongue and set them to guard the factory. each grew to giant size, and obeyed.
now nobody enters and nobody leaves his factory except the pigeons who roost in the rafters, but the tobacco factory spreads its toasted odor through the town, and they say the new man is rich now, and bought an island for himself.
the miller sleeps atop the great millstone, and dreams of grinding the new man into powder piece by piece. if you were to sleep on it, you would have a similar dream, though not of the new man. someone else, someone you know. if you were to grind them into nothing with this stone, and took that powder as snuff, their ghost would be bound to bear your millstone, and serve you always.
there is a consignment shop in Fearless called the Drowned, which sells the things that wash up in the streets after the floods. in it you can find a dried snake, which died swallowing a frog: the frog bulges, half eaten, from its jaws they will sell this to you. if you wear it around your neck and swallow something poisonous, the poison will sweep from you in grey sweat and afflict the first person you touch as well as yourself.
they also sell a dead man's leather jacket. a pilot flew too low over the floods one year and hit the hard, square temple and was killed. his body lay in the flood for a week before anyone found it and the jacket somehow still smells like it. but it calls to you. it's the coolest jacket you've ever seen...
the cigarettes made in the factory are dogtooth brand cigarettes. they suggest you may contain more potential than you care to exert; a certain rough, ruined-but-for-lack-of-effort air, and a notable reek.
a few days ago, the pigeons flew out in great numbers, spreading their feathers across the town, and each feather this was written: help us! we work in the factory, and we love our work, but we are very small, and when the river rises we will surely drown! the townspeople fear that the new man keeps child slaves, but the truth is stranger; his workers are gnarled little gnomes, each with a single feature much larger than the rest.
they love their work, and only perpetual or monumental labor can satisfy them for long. of course, in return, they demand monumental pay. if you fail to give them sufficient work or sufficient pay, they will pull off your arms and your legs and your nose and your eyes until each one becomes a gnome of its own, and will go on to become violent and deranged saboteurs, creating problems in order to force others to ask for their help.
their shoes are steel, and very small. wear them around your neck, and click them together; you will work thrice as fast until the work is done, then sleep for a day.
if they get wet, they will well into spongy giants, and fall apart, and drown, their bodies will crawl with gigantic hungering maggots.
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| they're hiding artists from me on behance now... behance!!!! |
the Old Men of Hypatia: they have seen more horrors than anyone still living, and know it, and are proud of it. desire to turn everything into a game.
the Youth of Hypatia: the shortest tempers you can imagine; they've earned them. desire to prove there is nothing they need from anyone.
the Cowherds of Hypatia: there are not many still living, but those who are brave beyond belief, and have the scars to prove it. the youth mythologize them, and ignore them, and they allow it. desire to feel like heroes again.
the Cattle of Hypatia: almost silver in their greyness, and incredibly intelligent.
desire to prove their strength.
Someone Who Looks Just Like You: somewhere in the city is someone who looks just like you; only they were a noble, and very cruel. now they are the lowest, most fearful thing, and desire only to be helped and hidden. elsewhere, perhaps, they would still be recognized, and served, but here they will be hunted and killed, and they look just like you.
the apocalypse egg of the cockatrice, viper-bird who will crow from its white head and from its scarlet head at the beginning of the end of the world, teeters on the top of the Needle-Pointed Mountain.
it is the size of a palace, and black as night, and filled with serpents whose breath rots flesh and breeds flies, and whose bite is such pain that those bitten on the hand would chew it from their body and those bitten on the face would behead themselves. but it is filled also with the rubies and sapphires on which these serpents feed, each the size of a pumpkin and enough to beggar a king.
in its shadow, beneath the Needle-Pointed Mountain lies the body of a witch. she danced there until she died, and right before she did she pinned herself to the earth so the devil couldn't take her soul. her longpin, big like a spear, and black, can pierce and bind any two things together; if it is taken out of her corpse, the devil will drag her, suddenly screaming, into the woods and the dark.
the egg will fall soon. it will tilt and fall and roll, and its rolling will flatten forests and stampede cattle before it. it will crush the city of Hypatia, with magnolia gardens, and the lagoons where the tyrants were drowned, and old men playing petanque in the graveyards where, finally, nobody is buried, because everyone was dug up to celebrate the day of revolution.
new to their first free century, the people of the city of Hypatia will listen to no authority at all, and attempts to corral or persuade them to a purpose will result riots and drownings.
they sell bullets forged from the crown of a king of kings in
Hypatia. shoot a leader of
men with these, and all will see an angels hand come down and strike the
head from his shoulders and his men will flee. they sell boots with
laces braided from a princes hair, too, and the seller says so long as
you wear them, no command can bind you.
the palaces of Hypatia were packed with birdcages, because the tyrants could not suffer to see a creature without a chain or yoke, and now that the palaces are empty, the cages are too, and birds of all kinds roost on towers and the benches and the heads of people waiting to buy coffee.
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| makes my heart rate slow a lil <3 |
The Cast
the Wizard: the most regretful man in the world. desires to let his wife kill him.
the King of Crime: the world's least satisfied man. desires one perfect experience.
the King of Crime's Sister: insanely competitive. desires to one up her brother in all things.
the Headless Monk: the most godawful lecher. desires to touch and grab.
the Philosopher of Rot: the most persuasive man with the most rotten teeth. desires to kill things.
the People of Vesper: the most ominous to be found anywhere. desire to live it up right now,
before something awful happens...
the Waiters of the Dome of Sugar: the finest acrobats in the world. desire to uphold the good name of the restaurant above all things.
the Cooks of the Dome of Sugar: the most frightened and overwhelmed people you can think of. desire just a little help please jesus christ!!!!
there was a wizard in the city of Vesper, which is a city of palm trees and pink mansions and distant thunderstorms and wailing singers. in the summer heat, the wizard went mad, as do we all, only he was a wizard and so, to prove his love for his wife, he turned her into the most precious diamond in the world. it was rough and raw and the color of roses and if you spoke too harsh or loudly it would shatter into a million pieces. and then when he saw what he had done he flung it from him and took enough heroin to kill anyone who was not a wizard.
now he is awake, but only barely, and half still dreaming tells you that in his dreams he sees his wife on the ring of the king of crime. he must have her back from him.
in the wizard's home are many interesting things, and some of them are useful. there is the lover's gate charm, which like two clay hands connected with a chain. one hand is shaped to grasp, the other beckons with a finger. if someones hair is placed in the grasping hand, and the charm is hung over a threshold, that person must cross that threshold even if it kills them.
there is a horsehair tapestry which shows a city falling screaming into the earth, and whatever wall it is hung on will not shatter or fall even if the house around it is utterly destroyed.
there is a necklace of shells, one of which holds a single pearl in its half-open mouth, and if that pearl is held by another, and the holder pursues the wearer of the necklace, for each step they take it is though they were a sandcastle lapped by the sea and soon they will be nothing at all.
in the streets of the city is the ghost of a woman who was cursed because she heard dancing in a temple, and when she went in and saw the monks dancing in their sleep, she did not wake them, but danced all night and in the morning she died. she tells you her soul can be saved if you beg one hundred dollars in pennies and give it to a monk as alms. this is true; her soul will go to heaven, but the next time you sleep, your body will try and take you to a temple to dance there all night, and if you do, when you wake, one hundred stinging flies will come to kill you.
at midnight the king of crime will dine on sharkfin and cold prawns in a restaurant which is called the Dome of Sugar. Indeed, it is all made from clear, crystal sugar, and sits in a garden of long wet grass and swaying lilies that are so tall you could climb them like trees. beneath its floors, which are of still more glassy sugar, you can see a dark tank of blind pale sharks, and the trembling cooks who go with big hooks to haul them towards the cleavers.
if the sugar ever gets wet, it melts straightaway. there are many swift and acrobatic waiters who stand, at the ready to somersault carthwheel catch a single spilled drop of wine in their hands.
in the garden there are fireflies which swarm in great numbers, landing on people until they are like glowing ghosts. in the garden too are white tigers, and blue monkeys which sleep in the lily-flowers and scream if they are awoken. if you hear them scream you must bite your lips or you will scream too, scream until you are coughing blood all over the grass.
the king of crime is a thin man with a flat face and a wide mouth. he wears small black sunglasses, and eats things slowly, but all at once; a whole shrimp in a single bite, then a long pause while he considers the ways it disappointed him. the rose diamond is on a ring on his left hand, and it is so large that it presses his hand flat onto the table, and he lifts his fork only with his right. when he walks, he rests his left hand on the shoulder of one of the men who sits next to him.
across from the king of crime sits his sister. she is a tall and lethal woman with hair to her heels in a black shirt with a stuff collar. they have been rivals since childhood; he enjoys it, she loathes it, and outdoes him whenever possible.
on his left is headless monk, who once swore by mistake and cut off his own head as penance. now, free from its own watchful eyes, his body does all the evil it wants to. he lusts for the king of crime's sister, who is disgusted by him.
on his right is a philosopher, who eats only rotten food. he believes that things can only be truly known in their dying, so he kills them, and his long beard is stained with blood. he convinced the monk to behead himself to prove his theorem.
if the wizards wife is returned to him, he will rise like a manic tower, seize that huge, rough stone, and beat his breast with it until he has pierced his ribs and bludgeoned his heart to death.
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| more soon okay im just getting started <3 |
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