Completed Let us play a little game...

[Cool name]

NOTE AND DISCLAIMER FOR PEOPLE READING DUE TO NECRO: THIS THREAD, AND ALL POSTS MADE BEFORE 2016, WERE MADE BY THE ORIGINAL USER OF THE 'AGASSI' ACCOUNT NOW RENAMED 'COOL NAME'. THE CURRENT USER WHO HAS MADE ALL 2016 POSTS IS AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PERSON, GIVEN THE PASSWORD TO THIS ACCOUNT IN A SHOCKING DISPLAY OF STAFF NEPOTISM. THIS CURRENT USER IS NOT A GIRL, A WITCH, OR IN ANY WAY AFFILIATED WITH SATAN OR HIS ARMIES OF DARKNESS.

THE THREAD, ALONG WITH ALL PRE-2016 POSTS, HAS BEEN PRESERVED IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM FOR RPGCODEX HISTORICAL REASONS

I ACCEPT NO LIABILITY FOR DAMAGE TO YOUR BODY AND/OR IMMORTAL SOUL CAUSED BY FOLLOWING THE PREVIOUS ACCOUNT-USER'S INSTRUCTIONS.

=======================================

For a while, I have been playing with the idea of doing a little experiment. No, scratch that. A series of little experiments. This thread, and what will transpire on it, is such experiment. As it is an experiment I don't know what will happen. It may work or it may not. It may be fun or it may be horrible. And as I am not the darkest of all underlords, it may be the powers that be decide to stop this little thingie of mine before the end.

On your end the experiment involves nothing but us playing a little game together. This game isn't a videogame, nor is it a CYOA kind of thing. You could say it's one of those 'alternate reality games.' The game will play out in the real world, and the gamemaster, your favorite super-duper-sexy and extra-mega-charming asian Witch, will both explain and coordinate the game by means of this thread.

I will not reveal what the game will encompass just yet, but I want to make one thing clear: You are free to leave the game whenever you want, as it's nature is to be nothing but a game. Even more so, if you are ever taking this as something more than a mere game I would suggest you take some time away to cool off and then continue from where you left. The game is not a race: There are no time limits nor any such thing. You play when you want, and you take a vacation when you feel like it, and then you come back if and when you want.

This game we will playing is an odd game, yet it can be pretty amusing if the proper conditions are met. Will they be met? That I do not know. It is a simple game as well, for all it requires is that you to pay attention, that you take don't yourself seriously, and that you have IT. What's IT? I am unsure. IT may be talent, or IT may be something else entirely. So the game is also a bit of a bet. If you lose the bet, if you don't have IT, you will probably not even notice. The world will remain the same, and so will you. And if you win the bet, if you have IT, well... Let's just say you will like that which will happen. Probably.

The simplicity, however, can be deceptive. Not to take yourself seriously, it is much harder than most assume. Yet to do so is neither a suggestion nor an option, but the first rule of the game. That's why this is a little game, and nothing more. That's why you are a player, and nothing else. If you take either as something more than game and player, you will lose. Even if you have IT, it will be all for naught.

If you follow this first rule to heart, you will be able to complete the first step of the game. And only then, for the first step is maybe the hardest one as well as I will ask you to suspend your disbelief for as long as the game lasts. Yet I don't require that you suspend your disbelief continuously. Instead, I only ask that for as long as the game takes place and as long as you decide to be part of the game you suspend your disbelief just in two particular cases. The first case is whenever you are in this thread. The second case is whenever you decide to play the game. The rest of the time you may believe whatever it is you want to. Yet in those two particular cases the suspension of disbelief must be absolute.

The starting scenario is as follows.

Spoiler

You are part of an online community, Codexia. Back when the big geckos ruled the Earth and the Dodo still had a chance, it was a forum in which to discuss role playing games - Yet it has grown to be something else. It has attracted all kinds of maladjusted individuals: Basement dwellers, nerds, geeks, fetishist pseudo-Nazis, transexuals, autists, faux elitist douchebags, mysoginists, mysanthropes, weaboos, conspiracy nuts, nigers, joos, superhuman bunker architects, and so on. The scum of the Earth, plus one buzzing spelunker who is totally huggable. As it is bound to happen with such a colorful selection of individuals this pseudo-location did develop it's own cultural identity, it's own soul. In time it even developed a pseudo-sentience of its own, a twisted mind by primal imperatives driven to reach out and bring even more troubled souls, plus the occassional wayward dove eyed victim, to itself, as some kind of cheap Silent Hill virtual knockoff. ChonSuNim, the striker of ass and leg.

The setting in which this happens is very similar to the real world. It would dare say it would be the very same were it not for one major difference, which is that Sorcery exists. Yet not the Sorcery of movies and novels, nor the Sorcery of videogames. Neither the Sorcery of old dusty books read at candlelight. It is something else, yet we do not know what it is. All we truly know is what it can do, if properly approached. And even that we know only up to a point.

What separates those who are, or at least can be, Sorcerers from those who neither are nor can be is this mysterious IT I spoke of. We do not know much about IT, but we do all have theories - Drops of truth in a sea of wishful thinking, more often than not. Yet whatever IT is, you just happen to have IT. Truly, you do.

And it also happens that among those troubled souls who wander Codexia there is a cute asian Witch. She has issues, and those issues are both legion and cyclopean, but that shouldn't really matter - After all, how many cute asian witches have noticed your potential and offered to teach you all they know for free, no strings attached?

None?

Well, she just did.

In the thread she just started, she claims there will be neither tricks nor riddles. That she will explain everything plainly and to the best of her ability, without reserves nor 'fool's errands.' That she will go over everything she knows, from the very basics to fairly advanced stuff, and that she will answer any questions you may feel like raising as she does so. And that you are free to do with it as you wish - She doesn't care about your beliefs, your moral values, your philosophical inclinations, nor any other such thing.

And, look! She even assures you there is neither catch nor hidden agenda!

Honest.

Aren't you just lucky?

Now I will give you a while to suspend your disbelief, before continuing.

 

[agentorange]

 

[Tzaero]

What are you up to Lund?

 

[Kane]

 

[Kz3r0]

 

[Hellraiser]

Let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

 

[iqzulk]

Spoiler

 

[oscar]

 

[Crooked Bee]

You did know what the responses would be, didn't you.

 

[Kane]

You did know what the responses will be, didn't you.

 

[Azira]

I'll bite.

 

[LundB]

What are you up to Lund?

The leaked IP match was obviously either a fake or a coincidence, posted by treacherous weasels of questionable motivation. As I always have, I maintain with 98% certainty that BC and I are not the same person. The 2% is the possibility of some Fight Club split personality memory loss thingie thing.

 

[Kipeci]

I'll bite.

 

[TOME]

Wut

 

[Jester]

Information Technology?

Colour me intrigued.
Meting a cute asian Witch isnt half bad. Although if its Sadako or Alma ... neh im game who wish to live forever?

 

[Cool name]

For the time being we will leave trying to turn DU into a super-duper-cute froggy aside and begin with the basics instead. I will be writting this from the perspective you know nothing at all about Sorcery, so today I will deal with the very basics of the basics. Two questions, in other words. And then a little something to get you started.



But before that, it's theme song time!



Why? Because I can.

Suck it up.



Anyway, the first question. What is Sorcery?

And the answer is that we don't bloody know.

We have ten thousand definitions, theories, and so on, and not a single one of them has any purpose beyond helping us cope with the fact we are playing with something we don't come remotely close to understand. If you are so inclined, you are free to go and look for them - But to be honest that would be quite stupid. One of the first thingies you need to know about Sorcery is this, that thingies such as the infamous Wiccan Rede will only shape your Sorcery for as long as you believe in them: No 'evil' bleep you do will return to you thrice unless you tell it to do so, and Sorcery does not care about you hurting people unless you tell it to care.

To embrace any such theory or definition, to hold one such model dear, is to bound your Sorcery by its rules both implicit and explicit. Some would say such was the true origin of many of these models and theories and definitions: To shape, to define, to limit. To make it impossible for this or that to work for those who embrace them, to maintain a degree of control on what can be done and for what ends it can be used.

So we are not going to talk definitions, nor theories, nor models. Instead, we will define Sorcery by that which is observable - That which it can do, and the behaviour it shows in doing so.

The former presents us with a new problem, however. If you are half as smart as I believe you to be you already know which problem it is - How can we claim to know what something we don't even begin to understand can do? The answer, again, is that we don't. We understand it can twist reality, and that it can even break it. We understand it can turn 'delusion' into 'truth' and 'truth' into 'delusion.' Otherwise it would be impossible for it to do that which we have seen it do. But how far can it go? That we do not know.

To be a Witch is to understand this, that no matter which you believe to be the limits of Sorcery sooner or later you will witness something that takes one gigantic crap in your expectations. I have been there myself, and I have been in this thingie since the very beginning. Most of my earliest memories are related to this, yet I still believed much of what is written and told to be but metaphor and allegory. Then I saw metaphor, and did allegory. Then I decided it was bigger than I had first imagined, but that there were still such things as mere myths and fairy tales. Then I saw myth, and then I did fairy tale. So my personal take is that there is no hard limit, only the strenght of a Witch's IT.

That's a good starting point, for there is nothing more pointless than needing to unlearn a lot of bleep because you were dumb enough to learn it in the first place. It may not be true, but at least it is not the kind of lie which will impose artificial limits on you.

About the later, that which can be learned from how Sorcery behaves, we actually do know something. Not much, mind you, but enough. Eventually we will go far deeper into this 'behaviour' of Sorcery, but there are three thingies you have to know from the very begining.

The first thing you have to learn about its behaviour is this, that Sorcery isn't 'civilized.' Reason, sanity, philosophy, morality, duty, order, structure, judgement, and all such things will actually work against you. Sorcery is wild, and primal, and chaotic. It is alien and 'other.' You have to be a bit insane to be a Witch. More than a bit. You have to be 'outside.'

Much of the training you will have to go through has the purpose of 'destroying' your mind - To erode that which you have been told about the nature of good and evil, of right and wrong, of real and unreal, of proper and improper. The way you were raised, the context you assimilated, and so on - These are no different from the models and theories and definitions I mentioned earlier. If you want your Sorcery to have no limits, your mind needs to have no limits.

This takes us to the second thing you have to learn about its behaviour, that Sorcery is completely and utterly amoral. Are you killing someone? Are you healing someone? It doesn't bleeping care. If you have IT, Sorcery will answer. If you don't have IT, Sorcery won't. That's all there is to it. However, your own mind will shape your Sorcery accordingly - If you believe this to be evil, you will be shaping your Sorcery accordingly. If you are having second thoughts, you are shaping your Sorcery to be uncertain and insecure. If you doubt it will work, you are telling your Sorcery it does not need to work. If you don't believe on Sorcery, you are telling your Sorcery it doesn't exist - And it will listen.

And this in turn takes us to the third thingie you have to learn about its behaviour, that there are two kinds of 'rules' when it comes to this. There are a few, very few, universal rules or laws which are shared by all Sorcerers and which govern all Sorcery. However, every Sorcerer comes with his or her own set of rules unique to him or her. I find it safe to assume this is because psychological structure, the content of the subconscious mind, the subjective reality the Sorcerer inhabits, and the Sorcerer's own nature - But, yup, we don't bloody know either.

For the time being, that's enough about the first newbie question.

So, we come to the second question. That is, what is a Sorcerer?

And the answer is that we don't bloody know.

Beyond the obvious, I mean - One who is able to use Sorcery and does so. In other words, it is someone who has IT. And as I said before, we don't bloody know what IT is, either. But we do have wild theories to spare!

For example, once upon a time it was said that when a baby was born an angel would come and breath a spirit into him or her, moment in which it would stop being a blob of meat and become a proper human being. Yet a Sorcerer was special, for when one was to be born God himself would breath a spirit into it - And with such a 'high purity' spirit came Sorcery, which was nothing but the very power of creation God himself had used when he went 'fiat lux' and some such. The flaw on this theory is that, uhm... Evil left handed Sorcerers, anyone? Those.

Another version, and one which has seen quite a revival in modern times, is that Sorcery is inherited from a distant ancestor who did the nasty with a supernatural being of some kind. The nature of this supernatural being varies depending on location and era, but in the present day the most popular ones are a fairy, if the one proposing the theory is a girl, or a demon, if the one proposing the theory is a boy. Bonus points if the girl never heard of the sidhe and the boy's entire understanding of demonology comes from metal albums.

But if there are two thingies the modern world is sick with, those are humanism and democracy. And thus the most popular modern mythos is that everyone is a Sorcerer! Cue endless excuses of why most assholes who try to become Sorcerers never amount to anything at all.

Because at the end of the day that's all we know about Sorcerers, that most people who try their hand at this never amounts to anything at all yet some do. Is this because Sorcerers are unique snowflakes? We don't bloody know. Is this because there are unknown variables which impede the awakening of the little Sorcerer everyone has inside? We don't bloody know.

See the pattern yet?

In other words, a Sorcerer is someone who has IT, doesn't know bleep about IT, and decides blindly using IT to screw around with reality is a good idea because reasons. And 'reasons' usually means either 'I know better' or 'chocoabs! pussy! dick! money! new car! PS4! Levenge!'

And so you may be wondering, isn't this a little bit crazy? I mean, it could be said to give Codexia Sorcery is not that different from giving a pack of rabid monkeys each a rocket launcher which fires NBCs and has infinite ammo. And it would be right to think so. That's the entire point - I am expecting great things from the lot of you! Which is why we will begin by teaching you a little something to ensure you will survive long enough to make me proud.

Let us talk about decoys for a moment.

For some reason which escapes me, the Western Occult Traditions don't really use decoys. Take a random grimoire and you will find more protective talismans and amulets than you can shake a wand at, and ten thousand ways to cast a circle and raise a barrier, but nothing about decoys. Lucky for you, adorkable asian witches know better! Shamans do as well, but saying 'adorkable asian witches and shamans all over the world know best!' is not cultural supremacist enough for me, so meh.

A decoy is simply something which you make in such a way it counts as being YOU for the purpose of dying a messy death, getting omnomnomed by demons, being in the receiving end of your fellow Codexers' experiments, and so on. Anything and everything can be used as a decoy. Little fluffy animals, for example, are particularly good, as not only will they do the metaphysical equivalent of jumping in front of you and taking the bullet with your name on it but will die painfully in doing so, in the process alerting you that asshole you made fun of in GD is being mature about it.

The problem with little fluffy animals is that they are cute and loveable, and then you feel like crap for using one as a fluffy shield. Yes, I know. You are Macho McHombre and don't care. But then I am an evil witch of the left hand and still felt like crap the first time I saw a guinea pig go DEAD because decoys. Good thingie then you can also use other people as decoys! And people in general is neither cute nor fluffy nor pretty nor fashionable, so screw them.

Of course right now your decoys are not going to be particularly impressive, if they even work. Some would say decoys are a pretty advanced form of Sorcery. However, the point is that decoys should be something you make constantly. Are you going for a walk? Make a decoy and hide it somewhere along the way. Are you taking a crap? Decoy time, and then flush it! You are going to get a burger? Decoy, motherfucker, and then leave it in a trash can along the leftovers. Your first ones will be pathetic, sure, but so will be the Sorcery of most of your fellow rabid monkeys, and by making sure this is the first bleep you learn with some luck it will be constantly kept a few ranks ahead of whatever other bleep I decide to teach you. And by making decoys all the bleeping time, by the time someone decides to gun for you there will be, like, five million decoys spread half over the world? Always remember, anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

To make a decoy you need only a name. Your birth name is often enough, but you can use any name you want as long as you feel identified by it. It can be a nickname, it can be a screen name, it can be a pet name, it can be the name of that mary sue character in your self insert Planescape Planetscape fanfic, it can be the name of your favorite P&P PC, it can be anything you bloody want - As long as it is a name which is YOU. A disclaimer, though: It isn't a name which you believe sounds 'cool', or 'badass', or any such thing. Is a name which identifies YOU when you say it, or think about it, or hear it. It is a name which feels YOU - And the more you feel bound to it and refered by it, the better. If that happens to be, I don't know, 'honey muffin' instead of 'Evildark Doomrider of DOOM', though luck. Honey muffin it is.

Which doesn't mean you will be making decoys with nothing but a name, of course. It means once you know which side of the wand goes on the hungry ghost you can get away with using nothing but a name in a pinch. In the next post I will go into detail in how to make cool decoys and stuffies, but for today we will only use the name. Why? Because the purpose of the exercise is not to have you making super awesome decoys, but something else entirely.

The basic decoy is actually pretty simple to make. Make a little paper guy. Write your name on it. Tell him, he is now a decoy. That's it, now you have a decoy. Go ahead, try it. It's free! Cut a paper doll. Write your name on it. Tell him. Or if you are a man of monocled refinement and taste write your name on a sheet of paper and then make an origami dude with it, and then tell him. Go on, I'll wait. Even better, make several.

And once you are finished, I want you to post what were you thinking while you made it, and what were you feeling. Did you feel dumb? Did you think this was stupid? Be honest. I want to know how stupid and dumb it was. Were you sure I was making fun of you? Are you affraid of posting because you will lose Kodex Kool Kredits? I want to know it all. Hell, you can even PM me you answer if you are too much of a pansy to post it for all to see. Pansy.

And make sure to answer the following question as well: Which part of the process is the one which creates the decoy?

And that's enough for today.

You did know what the responses would be, didn't you.

All I do, I do for amusement. The responses are but part of that.

And this bleep? People who take it seriously, they rarely make it far. So far, so good. :D

The leaked IP match was obviously either a fake or a coincidence, posted by treacherous weasels of questionable motivation. As I always have, I maintain with 98% certainty that BC and I are not the same person. The 2% is the possibility of some Fight Club split personality memory loss thingie thing.

What leak was it? O.O I totally missed that.

 

[evdk]

Lundy, what the hell are you doing? Plz explain.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

The plot thickens.

So does my hyperweapon.

 

[Kz3r0]

 

[Kz3r0]

By the way, imaginary acts count as well or we have to physically do it?

 

[Azira]

I didn't cut anything in shape. I took a post-it and wrote my "name" on it. I was amused.
The part that creates the decoy is the part where you will it to happen. When you actually think, "this is my decoy. Oh, and incidentally, it's quite crappy! Should suit me just fine for a first attempt. Now I'm hungry. Wonder what I should eat"

Totally doing magic stuffies!

 

[oscar]

I felt curious but still the weariness and worry that I really am dabbling in the unholy whenever I engage with occult practice.

The part that makes the decoy would seem to be the emotional investment when creating your decoy doll and thinking how it symbolises yourself.

 

[Azira]

You're taking all this too seriously oscar. The instructions as well. We're specifically told not to pay too much heed to what we're told from one source or the other. That, by definition, includes Agassi. Want to master sorcery? Find your own path.

 

[oscar]

I have my own path though I wouldn't call it sorcery and imagine it is very distinct from what Agassi engages in. Her first hand experience also massively trumps my own.

If I sound serious in truth it's because Codexian 'humour' has grown rather stale to me (perhaps more broadly irony in general).

 

[1451]

With my sharp toe nail I carved an idol out of a carton. I named it Eric Cartona. While making it I was thinking that I should cut my nails. The creation of this decoy was boring.