X-Topic-No: 11
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 94 16:55:17 PDT
From: calsci!al@gv-gate.gvg.TEK.COM (Al Petterson)
To: mage-l@wizards.com
Subject: A visit to the SF chantry...
Message-ID: <940830-1655-A8192@calsci.UUCP>

I sent this to one of my Mage players a few weeks ago.  A description of the
public dance club area of the Hollow One's SF chantry, as seen through the
eyes of Slade, a just-awakened Orphan (at the time of writing Slade had Life
1, Spirit 2 only).  Among other things, it has a Hunters Hunted turnabout
scene (as a neonate wanders into a place where he Does Not Belong), as well
as the beginning of a Coincidental Spirit 2 communication with a ghost
outside the Gauntlet...

I welcome comments.  My most reliable address is aamp@alumni.caltech.edu.
The following is probably PG-13 or R-rated for sexual content;  please
police yourselves.

- -=-=-=-=-

As you descend the somewhat grubby stairs to the basement-level entrance,
and then descend another flight once inside to reach the floor of the club,
you are assaulted by a solid wall of sound and dazzled by the total absence
of color.  A band dressed in black with black instruments and dyed-black
hair plays frenetic Nirvana-wannabe grunge on a black stage backlit by
strobe lights, as hordes of tragically-hip twentysomethings wander about the
dance floor pretending that they don't want to dance.  Pale white faces,
necks, and hands stand out starkly against what is otherwise mostly
featureless black.  Strobe lights encircle the club, flashing in slow and
perfect synch.  The only people actually dancing are doing so on a catwalk
which surrounds the room.

Some sections of the floor have slow, barely discernable turntables built
in;  you realize occasionally that you have turned to face a different wall
without being conscious of the movement (over the period of successive
strobes the room *shifts*, making it hard to maintain any sort of
orientation.) The two-storey-high ceiling is draped with enormous swaths of
black cloths and black lace, some pieces of which hang down to eye level,
making it even harder to see far across the room or keep your bearings.

There are enormous numbers of alcoved booths around the perimeter and within
the center of the club.

The normally disorienting effect of strobe lights causes some bizarre
hallucinations when coupled with the press of bodies, typical modes of
dress, turntables, hanging obstacles, and complete lack of other light:
occasionally it confuses you into seeing people (as "disembodied" heads or
hands) who appear to be there for only one flash of the strobe.

The music is loud enough that except for times when the band takes breaks,
there seems to be almost no attempt at conversation except through body
language, adding to the already eerie atmosphere.

A girl who looks about sixteen or seventeen (but who *must* be older;  this
place serves alcohol...), with an almost expressionless face and yet almost
unbearable sensuality, presses herself against you, and without a word takes
your hand and leads you to a booth.  Assuming you're willing, you and she
engage in heavy petting for perhaps ten minutes (heavy enough that you'd get
arrested for doing in public what you do with her in the booth), after which
she gets up and disappears back into the crowd without a single word being
spoken.  (If you ask her questions she will ignore them and do her best to
distract you;  if you persist in your questions, or make a serious effort to
push her away, she will stop and go elsewhere.) If you wish, you may remain
seated for a while to take inventory of your condition;  you certainly do
not feel more physically drained than would be expected (you feel none of
the wooziness associated with donating blood, for example), but you feel
- -emotionally- somewhat drained.

Despite initial appearances, these people look, and feel, _very_ alive.  Up
close, the pale complexions are from makeup.  Hands and bodies are warm.
Mixed with the heavy thickness of clove and pot smoke are the scents of
humanity: sweat and pheromones.  Healthy, sensual young men and women.


The band's vocalist is female but does an excellent impression of Kurt
Cobain's style (before he shot himself, that is).  The lyrics are
unintelligible, even if you concentrate;  while you can identify individual
words, you suspect it's gibberish, with words in nearly random sequence (cf.
"I feel stupid and contagious" only more so) to invoke a mood (a rather
graphically sexual mood) rather than to convey information.

You start;  the word she just sang was "Slade"!  (No, you realize in a moment
it was just "...bodies laid...").  And again in the next line -- did she sing
                     ^^^^^^
"welcome"?  (no, it was "...ises swell, coming...").
                                  ^^^^^^^^^

The song ends.  The singer pushes hair out of her eyes.  "Yeah, thanks," she
mutters in the mike to a keening, moaning hum that you guess passes for
applause among those too tragically hip to clap.  "That was for you.  You
know who you are." The band starts the next song.


After a time, you begin to think that your first impression wasn't wrong
about that girl's age.  A lot of the patrons, perhaps as many as a quarter,
are under 21 (sixteen is probably the lower limit with the exception of a
few infants in mothers' arms);  this place is just asking for a raid.
Almost as this occurs to you, you stumble over a half-step built into the
floor, and realize that many of the teens have just happened to congregate
in this slightly raised area;  you feel abruptly out of place and awkwardly
conspicuous standing on the slight platform with them, and step down.  The
scent of clove cigarettes grows heavier.  You look in the direction of the
door and see a burly guy (in black T shirt and pants, natch) who wasn't
there when you came in, and who is checking the IDs of the two young men
just entering.  Immediately on their heels a cop saunters in, nods to the
bouncer, descends the stairs, and proceeds to walk slowly through the crowd
looking around with his patented cop's penetrating/casual glare (you catch
his eye, though normally you can avoid cops' attention, but he just
registers your face like everyone else's and continues on).  He walks up to
the bar and exchanges a word with the bartender, then leaves.  He was
pressing through the crowd in the club for perhaps five minutes, and you
would lay odds he didn't come within ten feet nor set eyes on the face of a
single underage patron, though he saw almost everyone who wasn't.  A moment
after the cop leaves, the "bouncer" walks back down the stairs and rejoins
the crowd.  A couple, neither of whom are more than 18, walk in the door a
minute later.


At some point late in the evening, a person in the middle of the open floor
suddenly finds himself isolated;  he is encircled by several goths with an
arm's length between him and anyone else.  You realize as this happens that
he doesn't fit at all;  though dressed appropriately, he is clearly _not_
right;  he does not belong.  Like computer animation overlaid on normal
film, he is cold and dead pretending to be alive, instead of warm and alive
pretending to be dead.  You see a clear expression of panic on his face for
a moment as his sudden isolation registers with him.  Then there are several
seconds where no successive strobe image bears any relationship to the
preceding (there is one image that involves someone hanging suspended in the
air as though he were being thrown;  another features someone's mouth open
with a clear shot of Dracula-style fangs -- those *must* be fake, right?  --
and yet another has someone being dragged helplessly off to a corner, though
again this happens so fast that it might not be what really happened.)

Most people around you ignore the scene completely, and though there are
some looks of grim amusement, there are none of alarm.  Seized by
curiousity, you move closer to the corner to investigate.

Your first thought would be to call what's going on in the corner a
gang-bang, but no one's shedding any clothes or moving in any obviously
sexual fashion.  It's more like jackals feeding at a corpse, or piglets
climbing over themselves to suckle their mother.  There is a single luridly
bright flash of red blood -- which you realize you saw none of during the
scuffle on the dance floor -- illuminated in midair by a strobe flash.  A
splashed droplet lands on your lips;  you feel a rush of exhiliration,
excitement and power.

After perhaps thirty seconds the four assaulters, two male and two female,
get up and melt back into the crowd, leaving the staring, terrified young
man sprawled in the booth for a moment.  He stands up, knocking over the
table as he does so, and completely vanishes between flashes of the strobe.


There are people in the corner of your eye who aren't there when you turn,
more and more often as the evening goes on.  When the band takes a
five-minute break, conversations start up, and no fewer than four times
during the break random pieces of multiple conversations at the edge of your
hearing string together to form "Welcome, Slade" in ways similar to the
band's lyrics.

- -=-=-=-=-

(If I feel motivated to do so, I might write up the conversation that
followed, where Slade talked to "the club" by speaking to no one in
particular and listening to the random hum of conversation for an answer.)

al
- ---
    Al Petterson calsci!al@gvgpsa.gvg.tek.com or aamp@alumni.caltech.edu