The Other Side[/size] A collaboration between Joker and SDragon, dedicated to Jim Morrison and The Doors
Break on through...
The hitchhiker stood by the side of the road and leveled his thumb, in the calm calculus of reason...
There's a killer on the road...
Out on dawn's highway...
Strange Days[/size]
Did you know we're ruled by TV? This is the end - in this time of political turmoil and social upheaval, there is a reckoning among the young and the dreaming. A time of possibility presents itself... and out there, out on the highway, there's a roadhouse where a band sings the blues... Soldiers with masks fight a war where we're outnumbered five-to-one... The surreal nature of life takes effect, on dawn's highway that stretches from world to world...
The World
Cars. Beaches. Music. Drugs. Protest. Sex. These are the desires, the realities of the world known as Earth to some. The world never sleeps, its cities on fire with the lights of skyscrapers and the sound of taxis. Shamans of towel-toting beach tribes lead the congregation into enlightenment through the grass and the thought - the all-powerful thought. They race naked by its quiet side. Indulgence is the way of the future; there is always another whiskey, always another bar.
Stretching across the landscape, in no particular direction, is the highway of the dawn... where souls are scattered, the victims of a hitchhiker...
The People
Pirates. Soldiers. Murderers. Psychopaths. Cowboys. Journalists. Hippies. Gypsies. Indians. Musicians. Rock stars. Foreigners. Poets. This is the world of the hip, the mad, and the radical. In the background work the cubicle people, the nine-to-five employees of the man. Peace, love, and harmony are found among the rebels, the individuals, the prodigies. It is among them that the world is set into motion... to the end. Revolution is now, in the face of a far off war that dehumanizes and abandons those who have no souls and no homes...
Interesting. Maybe it's cool. Can't yet tell for sure. More please.
Death[/size]
He touched her thigh, and death smiled...
And death took its many forms, for it was everywhere, in everything.
The roar of the crowd before the stage was death, hungry for the rock star to sing his last breath...
The sound of the helicopter flying above the endless jungle was death, waiting to abandon the soldiers without faces in a foreign land...
And the hitchhiker was death, preying upon the trust of the unsuspecting...
"We went forever down the highway, and we found death. There in the lack of landscape we understood that the world worked in perfect harmony, but we were not part of it... forced to view a perfect world with imperfect eyes. Death was not an end, but a realization we were no more..."
An Hour For Magic: The Sorcery of the Acid Generation[/size]
Shamans. Witch-doctors. Voodoo. Fortune-tellers. Prophets. These are the people of the world who know things that are a step above the rest, by accident or acid trip. They know that the world is to be molded to their touch. Those who work magic in these strange days are ready...
I am the lizard king, I can do anything.[/size]
Curses and Invocations[/size]
Sex
The power of desire - the desire of the flesh, and of pleasure - has never been more powerful. Through one's own desire he or she learns to manipulate the desires of others with their bodies... and becomes the ultimate. There is no end to the power of sex, except in old age...
Music
The sound of the guitar, the bass, the drums, the voice - all resonating together is the power to control the masses. With a song, an empire of peace and happiness can be sown, and a revolution can begin. Every strike of the string vibrates with the inner harmony of the world... and shakes the foundations with every dystopian note.
Drugs
Drugs lend a supernatural hand to the mortal world, for in the warping of the mind one can find new enlightenment. The easiest way to commune with the spirits is when the mind is at its most vulnerable, yet most understanding. When the shaman is in his peyote trance, things become as they really are.
Divination
Palm-reading, astrology, Ouija boards, prophecies - the fortune-teller, gypsy, hermit, and visionary have never been so much in the spotlight. The magic of seeing into the future, of knowing, and warning is the topic of the now, because the world is on fire, and those who know must fan the flames.
"In Los Angeles there was a sailor. He stood on the street corner at night as the lights sped by, speaking to a woman so beautiful and so bright. He asked if he could take her home, to which she smiled, and then they walked off into the wilderness. He asked her if she'd die for him, to which she began a lament..."
All-hail the American Night...[/size]
I think I may avoid posting any actual material. I might post the occasional quote or two, arranged in such a way that it might come off as setting material, and who knows? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It is, after all, partly my creation.
When the music's over...
I will, however, use this thread for my feedback, my comments, my thoughts. All, of course, as official as anything else, maybe even a bit more so.
I'll tell you a story of whiskey and mystics and men...
I trust this Joker to weave what he can, how he can. This is, after all, partly his creation. Together, we will build a new world, or maybe one as old as time and death. I trust that together, we can do this.
and We'll erect a different steeple...
This looks interesting.
Right now it reminds me of a couple of things:
The Cultists of Ecstasy from Mage: the Ascension
and the writings on chaos magick of Peter J. Karol (Liber Nul and Psychonaut and Liber Chaos are what I'm somewhat familiar with)
both at least suggest the possibilities of sex and drugs as they relate to magick.
Sex, magic, and power have been closely linked throughout history. Think of Tantric sex, or LaVey's "Church of Satan".
Of course, much of this tradition also suggests that there can be a dark side to such hedonistic power. Make of it what you will.
So... is that it or what?
Quote from: Munchausen's MonkeySo... is that it or what?
Far from it, I'm just busy as hell.
A Sense of Reality[/size]
The nature of the utilitarian is to be a utility...
Death has had many forms throughout history representing the unknown... but the sixties are the first time it has been represented by rebellion...
On an old corner in the city of San Diego, the warm night collides with silence. A lion roars at the crosswalk, its chrome glistening red. Two men in camouflage pass by, on their way to a jungle for lunch with a demon. A ghost of the moonlight penetrates the silence, singing its radiance to an audience that begs for dawn...
This is the reality, the world, the Universe. This is the world beyond the lie. Where eagles and demons meet is a bar where a spy sings a song...
All-hail the American Night...
From the alley shuffles Poor Man, hoping for a chance at the fortune that buys a meal. A drunken convoy passes him by, basking him in the light of golden communication.
Out here, a man is not who he is, but who he might be...
Day comes, and soldiers without faces march orderly through the streets. Though they have no visage, their expressions are of hatred - hatred for an enemy that has learned how to kill. They very streets and buildings around them show only disgust, disgust for these soldiers that do not fight...
They'll always remember the songs that were never sung, the stories that were never told...[/i]
The Worlds Within the World and the Mind[/size]
Dawn's Highway
Deserts and darkness harbor the unclaimed lights of the sky. Here is the pathway to anywhere - the coming of age of a nation. Angels and sailors, killers and the diners they stalk, all are together on Dawn's Highway. The road here stretches on forever, down the hall, down the bottle...
The storm clouds dash over the horizon, and into the rain ride monsters of chrome and exhaust fumes, ridden by their leather-clad masters.
Los Angeles
The busy streets weep for the lonely, the depraved, the drunken... Do you hear it? The lights that glow are not powered by electricity, but by freedom and the fury of those who want peace. Somewhere in the heart, a man and a bottle hang from a window, questioning their love's return of affection - although it is not certain which one drives the other to ask...
The hotels are filled with parties, and the movie theatres full of promise. Here the harvest of death is in full season, for what was sown in the spring is now at full blossom. We could build an empire here, where the day never ends.
The Club
The bar stretches on here forever, each stool occupied by an off-duty soldier, a martyr, or a spirit who has lost its way. From the distant stage comes the sound of uncertainty in a voice that faces away from its followers...
The doors here close early in favor of another locale, and this will happen all night... There is always another bar - Come with me, I'll show you...
Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin...[/i]
The road here stretches on forever, down the hall, down the bottle... into darkness... into a newborn awakening.
The Movie Will Begin...[/size]
Like a warm, friendly hand, she gripped him...
The world is a cloud of potential swirling over the desert. Here awaits the master, the hero of the silver screen, who is awaited by all of those who are already gone.
Black and white pictures become reality, even though his morals are gray...
Under the knife of a surgeon a brain squirms, laughing at the secret the system unknowingly saves. Here is victory, among friends, among death, among the pleasures of life - we must worship. I want because you want, but you must always possess more, or the game cannot continue. Until dawn we'll sing for the salesman and strange order of monsters - we welcome you...
If walking sticks could speak, where would their stories take us?
Within a jail we're reaching for death, seeking an answer we've known all along. The needle is prepped, and a swab is made, in the event the procedure is a failure... No one escapes the ghosts that dance through the soul here.
Two girls walk into a hotel room, with a man whose coat is longer than everything but his knife...
"Do you love me?" he says, as she replies "I'll always be true."
We Could Plan a Murder - Or Start a Religion[/size]
Love the TV. Love the things they sell. If Death came to the door, would you smile? You would want a great feast before you go to buy your last purchase... a purchase of lamented idols. There are things about sex only those who have never had it can understand - perhaps its unerring pull. We will buy it, and build a place of worship of its results.
Can you feel the shadow of the drug healing your lament? Do you see the soft fire? Do you believe? Believe in lamenting for an idol, sacrificed on the altar of silence...