Chapter 1: The Evil Genius

From Summoner

Revision as of 23:01, 8 January 2008

The Blank World

What if the world is nothing more than a thought? What if everything we know, everything we perceive, is only such because we think it to be so? Why, then, do we live in a World of Darkness, where the shadows are deep and rarely empty? Do we wish this to be so?

Or is something else at work?

Rene Descartes, in his Meditations, considered the nature of existence. What can we know, beyond suspicion? Our friends can lie to us, as can our loved ones. Our religions could be fabrications. Our own senses can lie, with mirages and hallucinations. What can we believe, if everything we know could be an illusion, perhaps some grand fantasy crafted by an evil genius?

Many walk through the world, ignorant of this uncertainty. Some, however, feel an itching in their hearts, a doubt, or a need for an absolute truth. Descartes felt a similar drive, which drove him to his question: What can I know to be true?

His answer is the resounding truth of those who call themselves Summoners. Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

This truth awakens an inner mutability in the souls, spirits, consciousness...in the whatever of certain people, and opens their perspective to a new world. When looking back, the rest of the world seems oddly oblivious. They just don't know. To most of them, they wouldn't want to know if they could. There's a certain comfort in taking one's existence for granted. However, this leaves them vulnerable to many forces, defenseless when the hungry things from behind the Mirror find a way out.

Those called Summoners are not defenseless. By knowing themselves, they can bring to bear their own inner heroes and demons, legends and monsters, and turn them into a weapon to assert their point of view onto the blank slate of the world. They can deny the soul hunger of the Demons with a battle cry and their Arts.

They define their own world, on their terms. The road of Ego, however, can be as much of a prison as the Blank World ever was...

Drawing the Fool

The difference between any other person and a Summoner is Ego. Not to be mistaken with egotism (though you'll certainly find it among many Summoners), Ego in this case represents consciousness. A Summoner, by nature, is aware of himself, and of the world around him. Ego serves as a mediator between the Self and Reality, and that sense of identity is what eventually gives birth to the Alter Self, an ideal abstraction of one part of a Summoner's psyche.

Cutting the Deck

The first step to awakening Ego is to realize that something is amiss. Many walk through this world with the potential to realize their Ego, but never do so. They tend towards looking for answers, either through organized religions, scientific enquiry, cults, drugs, or more unusual explorations of their limits and boundaries. Many forget that uncertainty and return calmly to their sleep. Others, continually disturbed, seek out the answers with renewed vigor.

What, then, triggers the change? Many forces can contribute to the shift. More often than not, a brush with the supernatural can set someone along the road to an awakened Ego. Many suffer terrifying and beautiful nightmares. Others receive a more direct shock, as demons seek out their simmering Id as a rather delicious meal. Most confusing, others are visited by beings of the Mirror, who mentally prepare them for the transition. These last draw the most interest and suspicion from other Summoners. Who is out there, awakening Summoners, and for what purpose?

Regardless of the method, someone with a wakeful Ego but is otherwise normal makes for a shining beacon to Summoners and free Demons. It is usually a race to see if they are found by those with friendly intentions, Devoured into empty husks of matter, or awaken to their power on their own. Most often, it is a close dash between the latter two.

The Alter Self

The Alter Self, called the Persona by some, is an outward manifestation of the Ego, and a powerful one at that. The Alter Self is a need, a desire, or a behavior given shape and truth. Someone who, in Drawing the Fool, had the need to protect and preserve a loved one might call out an Alter Self with great gleaming armor, a shield, or even a 'living shield', riddled with hardened bones and scarred flesh. The imagery can range from platonic perfection to a terror Giger would conceive. It all depends on the psyche and Ego that draws the spirit out.

The first time a Persona is called, it represents the full awakening from simply a being with Ego to a true Summoner. Demons grow wary, or attack outright. The Blank World recoils and warps from the pressure of an awakened spirit. The event is felt by anyone with the proper sensitivity, and in rare cases, even other supernaturals may grow aware of a particularly traumatic or powerful Alter Self's ascension to the fore.

Alter Selves tend towards the mythological, and can sometimes surprise even the Summoner, being based on knowledge they never had about stories they've never heard. This phenomenon has many, especially the Wand Peasantry, convinced of some sort of link between the Ego, a Summoner's personal Unconscious, and the deeper wonders and perspectives of the Mirror. Regardless, the Alter Soul resounds with the truth of an Ego's needs, and takes on an arcanum best suited to what it is meant to represent.

The Unconscious

The primary method of communication between a Summoner and his Alter Self is through dreams. In a realm all his own, he may converse freely with his various masks, learning more about himself. To change or create a new Alter Self, he must delve into this Realm, the Unconscious, and shape and mold his inner shadows into a more concrete form.

There are many common threads that delve into the Unconscious, most startling of all being the Psychopomp...or Psychopomps. Wanderers among the dreams of Summoners, these beings are servants of higher forces, and are normally sworn to bring no unrequested harm to a Summoner. They bring their own pocket homes into the realms of the Unconscious, and some even have potent powers to create paths to the Unconscious within the World. However, despite their neutrality, these beings can offer a variety of useful tools, and assist regularly in the shaping and even the Fusion of Alter Selves. Their ultimate goals are a mystery, or even if they truly exist. Many Peasants theorize that they are simply a common symbol, a need within the human soul for guidance in a difficult self-realization. Others find it to be too much of a coincidence...

Demons

Carl Jung describes the shadow as unexpressed aspects of the human psyche. Demons are manifestations of these desires given shape within the Mirror. Normally, these forces are largely harmless, occasionally influencing places to tease unaccustomed actions from a sensitive mind. However, in places where the Mirror is cracked, these Demons can take true shape, weaned on the Id that all beings contain. Once they grow powerful enough, they can even take shape within the World...where they often begin to feast. Alien in mind and concept, they are rarely merciful.

Despite their name, not all demons are evil. There are perhaps just as many unexpressed kindnesses in the collective of man as there are hidden lusts and rages. Each demon can be classified by Arcanum, Virtue, and Vice. The interections between the major arcana or 'Trumps' of the tarot are a mystery to the Summoners, and while they're fairly certain that Summoners predate most modern tarot decks, it is difficult to determine whether the cards were inspired by the Summoners, or vice versa. The only single truth that runs across all demons is that they desire Id to grow and maintain their forms. How far they are willing to go, however...that can depend.

There is often an interesting level of delicate politics between demons and Summoners. For every zealous or murderous demon, there's another who just couldn't be bothered, and is more than willing to trade for whatever their alien minds desire. Certain Arts allow for the exchange of Id, and even for the binding of demons into tarot cards, both willing and unwilling. Perhaps most concerning of all, many demons can be expressed as new Alter Selves with the proper work in the Unconscious...and many show a disturbing similarity to Alter Selves in general, both in nature and appearance. In fact, the only real difference that can be proven is that demons come from without, while a true Alter Self invariably comes from within the Summoner's own psyche.

The Mirror

Few Summoners willingly venture into the natural home of demons, and fewer still return unchanged by their experiences. The Mirror is a place of forgotten concepts, of things long left behind. Where the Shadow is a place that lives, breathes, and interacts with the World, the Mirror is a junkyard of ideas, where the forgotten, the unloved, and the too dangerous wander free. It is realm of thought, and of the not-yet-imagined. Some offer theories that the place only takes a shape at all because it is shaped by being perceived. Really, the Mirror is one of many mysteries, and changes just often enough to invalidate most solid research into its nature.

The Mirror is most easily perceived at the cracks. Otherwise, it is difficult to perceive at all, and nearly impossible to reach. But when some event creates a fracture in the fabric that kepts the worlds apart, the World is changed. Buildings warp and take on new dimensions. Doors go to places they never did, or to nowhere at all. People can share or exchange thoughts at random, or find themselves caught up as puppets in the games and hunts of Demons. It is usually more a nightmare than a dream, as benevolent shadows rarely surge first through the breach.

Within the Mirror itself are various ley lines in a vast network of nodes, which some Summoners try to exploit for power or rapid travel. This is at best a dangerous exercise, and at worse an act of hubris that could unravel part of the World, if not worse. Demons course through these places of power like tides, and some rarer, more dangerous demons claim this network as their domain. Some claim that the network itself is made out of lost or Devoured souls...others still claim it is the Hindu or Buddhic path of reincarnation given form as a flowing, endlessly branching river. In the end, the network is as much a mystery to those born of the World as anything else that is part of the Mirror.

    Some Mages note the interesting anomalies in spacial relations 
    that Mirror breaches can cause, as well as the deleterious effects
    it can have on the human mind. Is this place Pandemonium, with a 
    Watchtower far into its depths? That is a question that interests 
    the few mages who deal with Summoners, but one left as of yet 
    unanswered.

The Undefined

When demons walk the World, mortals without defenses are often helpless to face them. The Undefined are the result of one who has been deeply harvested for Id.

Shells

Here are the hollow men, the straw men...

Memes

Anonymous is powerful, because Anonymous is no one...but Anonymous becomes oneself, and then there is no self...there is only Anonymous. And Anonymous does not forgive.

Phantoms

Everyone knows the story...everyone knows the word on the street. And even if it wasn't true...rumors have a way of seeping into the empty places...and taking root.

Life as a Summoner

Estates