Before i start here, i just want to note that I've been published over at two minutes to midnight (the current entry). Go read! I'll still be here when you get back.
Of course, after I uploaded yesterday's entry and went home, I discovered why I was such a nasty moodswingy overwhelmed stressball yesterday.
PMS. I've got it, bad. I get all of these hormones flooding into my body every once in a while (according to my Palm IIIx aka The Brain, it's about every 68 days), and because I'm never expecting it I feel like I'm suddenly pissy at the whole world for no really good reason. All I want is to be left alone. It's a feeling of overwhelm, of being suddenly unable to cope with anything, of setbacks being tragedies and tragedies taking on the whole world.
Once I figure out what's happening, of course, I can cope with it by sleeping. A lot. I go into hibernation mode till the hormones are out of my system, which generally takes about two days.
I went home yesterday and took a three-hour nap, and then got to bed by 10 and slept very deeply until 5 am, when I stumbled out of bed and attempted to make myself ready to face the day. Now I'm eating dry roasted soynuts and drinking what seems like gallons and gallons of water.
And I managed last night's gaming session without a script or more than a vague idea of what I wanted to happen. It went over reasonably well, which I was relieved by, considering that I was spinning this story out of my head as it occurred to me. It was mostly setup for next week, in which Big Scary Things requiring everyone to think on their feet are going to happen. I should write up some notes today, because I did a few little setpieces that will come in handy later.
The story of Lux Aeterna so far:
Painted in broad strokes, the story takes place back just before the WTO conference in Seattle in 1999. The players have gathered with their friend Elena at the Speakeasy Cafe. They're talking, when suddenly she gives them an odd look and asks them what they would say if she told them they were all immortal.
It's at this point that all hell breaks loose. A tall, ugly man wearing a trenchcoat comes in and starts threatening Elena. She rises to confront him. He pulls out a sword that looks, for lack of a better explanation, alive. And attacks her.
There's a flurry of bullets from the suited men who have just pulled out automatic weapons and started shooting. Elena begins to sing what seems to be, impossibly, a pair of songs woven together—and loses it. One flat note, then another, and finally the whole thing shreds and sends out a ripple that twists the building supports into unusability. The players are trapped in a collapsing building. Two of them are hurt and one, well...the wound *looks* fatal....
They get some help in rescuing themselves and meet up with a couple of people who are pretty helpful, who fill them in on the fact that they are, indeed, immortal and give them a basic grounding in the new facts of their existence. (These people are Susan Grey, an old character of mine, and Stuart Bierce, who at one time was played by my friend D.) What Susan and Stuart want is for the players to do them a favor in the form of contacting the Court of Desire about a group called the Apocrypha that's planning on using the WTO as an excuse to try out a new immortal-specific weapon they call the Confessional. If nobody can stop the coming badness, at lest they might warn everyone to get out of the way.
So three of them went to see Llyr, who's a middleweight in the court of Desire, a classically beautiful vampire with a snake himsati (each immortal has two forms, a human form and an animal/plant/elemental form known as the himsati). He's got an entourage of young girls and some very nasty habits. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he is helpful, as he tells them where Lilith (the top of the Court of Desire in the area) can be found and gives them a necklace to use as a safe-passage token.
There is, of course, a lot of other stuff going on. There's the Gabriel fellow, who's something like a triple or quadruple agent, and there's something about this Maura chick. And who were those two ravens? What role are the Curs going to play? And who, exactly, is Lilith and is she going to be interested in what the players have to say? The players have been helpfully sticking to the main story, but there's going to be a point in the near future when they get to choose which branch of the story they'd like to follow.
It's kind of like writing a book, only the players get to influence everything that's going on. I'm enjoying myself.
I decided to treat myself and bought a couple of books and CDs from Amazon. I'm starting to make a dent in my wish list, though it's going to take a while at the rate I'm going. I bought Tarin's book (Tarin is a woman I knew for a while in Iowa City--a friend of a friend situation. She's an amazing writer, and up there with the people I want to be like if I grow up.), The One-Armed Queen, Curve's album "Cuckoo", and Vivaldi's Gloria.And later this week, there will be a cardboard box arriving at work just for me, with stuff in it that I want. It's almost like Christmas, and the small children in me are quite excited by the prospect.
STUFF!
Good stuff I found today, courtesy Catherine:The Fifth Commandment is absolutely amazing. Unflinching writing about something that, had it happened to me, would probably have completely eaten me alive with guilt.
Vonnie's Madhouse is written by a woman is a wonderful writer and happens to be poly. Hot damn!
