This Is All Kyle's Fault

 

The Incidents

2012 and 2013 rewrote what I thought roleplaying games could be, suddenly and violently, and I've been trying to catch up ever since. In those two years I was in the two campaigns that changed everything: I ran Revenge of the Countess of Fire in Burning Wheel and played in Kyle's undocumented Torchbearer campaign. Both of these campaigns completely rewrote how I approached life, nevermind RPGs.

Revenge of the Countess of Fire

Revenge of the Countess of Fire was my second Burning Wheel campaign. It came during a particularly harsh time of my life. I was at the tail end of my time in Atchison. The dreams of and visitations from the black-haired girl had just come to an end, and I was a nervous wreck. I started running the game, and my brain just... couldn't handle it. Maria told me end the campaign. I listened, and told everyone we had three sessions left. And I decided to put in literally everything I possibly could to those last three. I anticipated not running anything for a long time after that, or even thinking about RPGs, as I was utterly fried.

Those last three sessions were some of the best of my life. I had never, not even once, encountered anything like them before that. They were the first three of many. I had no idea what I was doing, but these were sessions that ended with everyone sitting quietly together in a circle, talking about important stuff. It's been 14 years, so the specifics are fuzzy now, but I remember the feeling, clear as a bell. It was this quiet joy, the kind of thing you remember from your childhood. Except we were adults. And we could really talk.

The last session was... revolutionary. It was everything. It was so good that the session ended in total silence. You could literally hear a pin drop. Someone whispered, after a few minutes: "That was something out of Tolkien."

It was a feeling that I had felt before, but in the dark of night, before my icons as I wept, when Silence overcame the turmoil in my soul. But there we were, looking at each other, and realizing that we were all feeling it, together.

I didn't understand what happened. I didn't know if it was on purpose. But there were echoes throughout my years of gaming that told me that this could be done on purpose.

Could.

Kyle's Torchbearer Campaign

Back in 2013, I was part of my brother-in-law Kyle's last great campaign. Not good. Not excellent. Great.

It was like a symphony. The sessions kept building, one upon another. Each challenge felt like it was part of a cohesive whole that was just beyond my ability to ascertain. It's hard to define it, 13 years later, but this wasn't a "Wow, this is something special" that I thought about years later. Right then and there I knew it was special. Knew it. So did the other players.

But the memory of Countess of Fire was still strong in me, and I realized that it was beginning to line up. But, like usual, what I had done by accident, he was doing on purpose. Fully. Kyle knew exactly what he was doing. I couldn't track how he was doing it, but I could tell that he was.

And then the moments starting rolling in. It's hard to define them now, and anyone who has had a real "moment" happen in an RPG knows exactly what I am talking about: the exposure over time builds to things that are far greater than your ability to communicate to anyone else.

When the end came, it brought Ragnorrak in a spectacular manner, one that was incredibly meaningful. And suddenly it clicked. I don't know how, but suddenly I saw Kyle. And I said the only truth I could hold onto: "You just showed us... you."

I heard Kyle's sad smile over the phone. It's not too often that happens.

The Building That Followed

Once that piece fell into place, I knew what I needed to do. What Kyle did by intuition, I could teach myself to do.

Over the years, two places came out of this process: Heranyt and Kalvano.

Heranyt

Heranyt is the place that I find, deep within me. It houses all the intellectual questions I have, put into a world: my feelings about theodicy, concerns of totalitarianism, eugenics and secularism (they're linked!), astrology, and the enchantment of the world. It isn't so much a place of light as a place of the socratic. Heranyt is a place I can ask questions and feel perfectly safe to do so... as well as show some of the answers I have experienced.

At the center of Heranyt shines Elpida, the Flame Reborn, the Presence Imperishable, the one that will eventually spread from Heranyt to the rest of the fallen universe, restoring it and elevating it into Seitsemann, restoring it to the Seven-Storied Mountains. The people of Heranyt, aboard the Apocalypse Ship, will range ahead to help find those who also want to heal what's broken.

I can close my eyes, hold out my hand, and point to the golden Ring of Tears encircling Herany, seeable by day, even. I can tell you exactly what phases the moons are: Tuntameton, the wise blue moon, is at full. Eous, the foul imprisoned moon, is almost invisible. The night sky had a red tinge, but that’s now turning a teal. I can just… close my eyes. I see it.

The Process

I took two years, just to myself, to journal the setting. All the while I listened to BA55, by Switchfoot, which is one of my favorite songs.

Heranyt was arrived at by listening to me, and the things that I cared about, intently. I know of no other way to put it. I found a basis in two basic things I love: Western Europe and its cultural degradation around World War 1, the Desert Fathers, eldritch horror, and the Byzantine Empire. I read and studied about those things, and just... listened to how those things affected me. Not how I thought about them, but how I felt about them.

While Heranyt started as a Burning Wheel setting, it's at is best in Crescendo. It is the place I feel most comfortable. It just... came from within. All of it.

Kalvano

Calling Kalvano the dark twin of Heranyt is not correct. Kalvano has at her center Nalkalapsi, the Star Eater, the Wyrm That Devours, who will be released from the confines of Kalvano to ravage those who will refuse to embrace Elpida when She is released to heal the universe. 

Because of Nalkalapsi, the planet is corrupted from the core, outwards. The Star Eater has an uncanny knowledge of the peoples of his and other planets, using their own unspoken desires, fears, and internal vices against them. Where Heranyt invites Socratic questioning to restore the soul, Kalvano turns those same questions into wedges of doubt and self-destruction. Even the dead do not stay so: they return, fully cognizant and malicious.

Nalkalapsi would have destroyed the people of Kalvano, but they cried for help, and The Outsider intervened. He created the Shadow Hands, and they grabbed the last portion of the planet that wasn't totally corrupted, forced the survivors onto it, and then held it aloft. Forever. This is called The Elevated Plateau. The people of Kalvano had a respite.

But, even with the Elevated Plateau, Nalkalapsi's power was too great. He snaked up around the Shadow Hands, and burrowed into the Elevated Plateau. The dead began to rise, and forgotten places in the world began to be converted to evil. Once again, the people cried for aid. And this time the Immortals of Sota heard them. They, in turn, implored the stars for aid... and they came down themselves, burrowing into the Elevated Plateau. Sanctifying it. Driving back the corruption of Nalkalapsi. Not a lot of stars have this done this, so the Elevated Plateau hasn't been totally recovered, but it has begun. People can at least live, especially the land of Rikuma, where the most stars have fallen.

Orbiting Kalvano is Sota, the Moon of the Immortals. It shines so brightly that its red light can be seen in the daytime. Battles the size of continents have been witnessed ranging acrost its surface. The Immortals train for when they will be needed, but some of them, usually the lower ones, come to Kalvano and help as they can.

And yet, when the time comes, and Nalkalapsi emerges from the wreckage of Kalvano, the centuries will have forged the peoples of Kalvano and Sota into a force capable of of protecting the worthy from the Star Eater.

The Process

I first discovered Kalvano while on deployment in 2016, in a Burning Wheel game I ran. I loved the setting immediately, but didn't quite understand what I do about the place now. The game was a lot of fun, but it ended sooner than I would have liked.

Before I could really argue the point with the players, I had a mental breakdown while on deployment. 

They shipped me home. And it took another two horrifyingly difficult years before I was able to run another game: The Giggling Dark, which ran for two years, and then Autarchy, which unfortunately never finished.

And then all the events in the Elephant in the Room happened.

The point is. I've been busy.

I haven't really been able to focus like I used to, until... well... now? I suppose? And, when I finally focus like I used to, I find a living world. I find a place eerily similar to the pre-Imperial Romans. As in, Plutarch's Lives. Because, yes, I read that for school. A proud people, filled with pride in their res publica, the people. The idea of races being a real dividing issue beyond simple biology is nonsense. Biology can go so wrong that what's important is what someone can give you, not what they are. The dead can rise, corrupted. Who cares if not all the living can procreate with me?

I don't find wisdom when I look into Kalvano. I don't find the yearning for a higher truth, I don't find the surprise from wandering into a wider world. I find exhaustion. I find stoicism. And I find that nobody can get away with not fighting. I find a pragmatism and exhaustion that either leads to heroism or death. There isn't room for true corruption. 

There's the war. 

Sure, there's vultures who pick the battlefields and graves, but that's not the same thing as "becoming an evil creature" like in Heranyt. You either cower behind the people who hold the shields, hold the shield, or pick the corpses.

Oh, that's just Torchbearer.

Literally: the Grind makes time a threatening blade, advancement can only be gained with failure and making mistakes, and recovery is a key part of the game. But it's not mudcore: the game gives plenty of opportunities for amazing bursts of awesomeness. It's just that those moments of awesome are weighted down a bit by whether you have any water in your canteen, or if you lost your temper at the door you were trying to unlock.

Go ahead, be a hero. Just remember that you literally have to put your pants on like everyone else: one leg at a time.

The thing is: I'm terrible at this kind of thing in real life. If Heranyt is something that naturally comes out of me, Kalvano is talking about something I'm weak at: simply living.

Or, at least I think so. I have no idea what's going to come out of this process.

Normally, 

I try and find a way to conclude these things. It's what a good writers does, after all, and I'm not a terrible one. But here, after everything I just wrote... I'm done. For now, at least. I don't know why, but this is where I'm supposed to stop.

So I am.

For now?