The Nature of Ghouls

Ghouls are ugly, big, brutish, and complete and utter dicks.
They also eat people.
And animals.
And ghouls.
Which means they eat dicks, which I suppose is some small comfort.

The city I live in has a serious ghoul problem. The underground is infested with them. Not everywhere, of course. Ghouls don't tend to actually like human civilization. At least, not anymore.

Okay, I'm not going to claim any kind of expertise here, but I'm a journalist and I have talked to ghouls. Yeah, they talk. Usually local languages, too. Like most of the intelligent beasties that roam our world they can appear to be human pretty easily. They aren't that inhuman to begin with. Bigger, sure, and kind of simian, and with rather nasty teeth (all the better to eat you with), but still alarmingly human.

Ghouls have a lot more going on than most people think. Clan structures with long, complicated, and pretty much entirely incorrect history. A long and storied religious history that ties them to the cradle of civilization (they speak Summerian among themselves, if that's a hint).

And, again, they're dicks. Big nasty dicks that take on power plays as a regular occurence.

Also, they stink.

And, into the depths of their malodorous tunnels Burns and I stumbled.
The tunnels under our city are rather more extensive than most people suspect. Natural caves are one thing, but ghouls are remarkable diggers, and the network between those caves they created is like a nine billion scale model of an ant hill.
We crawled through it (stooping low, at the least. Ghouls are big, but tend to go to all fours in their home turf) because the thrift store was wrecked while we were off dealing with Morris, and there was a clear enough trail to the sewers. Ghouls can be sneaky and subtle when they need to be, consummate predators that they are, but they clearly sent in a team of dumb muscle for this one. Didn't think the mortals were worth much bother.
After calling an ambulance to assist, and Hank and our friend Susana LaFay in for help, we followed the trail into the tunnels.

Not going to go into full details of what down in that rank, festering bunghole, but it wasn't pretty. It was violent. Guns were fired, heads were smashed, fangs were soaked in blood, and Burns blew a bunch of shit up.
Whole thing was a mess.

At the end, though, all four of us were alive, and unharmed.
And the ghouls who made the theft were very, very dead. Nice thing about ghouls, they don't come back once they're put down.

It kind of sucks to kill living, thinking beings, even if they are dicks, but... they hurt humans, and you know how I feel about humans.

It's a strange thing about ghouls, too. They're bigger than humans. Meaner. Better hunters. Craftier. Cunning-er. All around better, from any survivalist perspective. I've even seen them regrow limbs over a few months.

But, nevertheless, humans left Sumer and built new empires, and the ghouls just wallow in their holes.

Evolution may be a darn bit more complicated than we think.

The Nature of Spirits

I don't know shit about spirits.

So, Dave Morris, take two.

Burns and I ran into Morris outside a thrift store. The dragon I mentioned earlier decided that we should do a couple things for him. Dragons being what they are, these tasks basically boiled down to finding a magic coin of his. Think there was something fairly awful about the coin, old pieces of silver always make me anxious, due to stories I hear. Nothing substantial, mind you, but people are wary of silver for a lot of reasons, and silver coins doubly so.

But, I figured it wasn't that kind of spooky. Hell, most of those stories about coins are distressingly Christian, and as such probably false. I mean, don't get me wrong, a bit of true faith and a cross goes a long way, but I ain't so sold on fallen angels. Demons are real, of course, but they're just strange monsters with a fair bit of power.

This coin was probably just part off the dragon's hoard. Dragons get mighty protective about their goods, and while the coin was probably magickal I wouldn't put it past a dragon to rip Heaven and Earth asunder to get at a piece of tat that happened to be its.

We followed the trail of the thing. It involved a couple broken fingers and me laughing at the wizard who kept trying to use magick to track it down despite the simplicity of a nut cracker on bone.

The coin had ended up in a thrift store when some jackass accidentally left it in the pocket of a pair of pants he was donating. Yeah, that kind of thing happens. We'd done a quick through of the store, only to find the coin was under lock and key. Apparently the greedy manager had decided he wanted to keep the coin for himself, or at least have it appraised before sale. Sleazebag, but a sensible sleazebag.

We were discussing what we were going to do about it, when Morris returned to us.

He was on a motorcycle, and he looked like trouble. He was wearing his gang tags proudly, and a freaking helmet. Not exactly the image of fearless thug, but, once again, a sensible choice. He took off the helmet as he got off and both Burns and I went tense as startled vipers.
So did Morris.

There was, suffice it to say, a confrontation. Morris and Burns fell almost immediately into a pissing match. The wizard kept taunting the thug, and the thug kept getting closer and closer to pulling a trigger and blowing the wizard's spine out.

I took what I like to think of as a more graceful path. I asked Morris what he wanted with us before I interrupted him last time.

"What?" he said.

"You wanted something," I replied, "And I bet you still do."

He hesitated then, but I won him over by calling Burns a shithead.

"Yeah, I want something," he said, "I want the helmet."

Here's where we get to what Hank is. Hank isn't human either. At least, not completely. It's complicated, and the subject of its own post, but I'll tell you now that it has to do with ghosts and legend. His helmet, an old conquistador's helmet, gives him super powers. Super strength and speed and bullets bouncing off his perfectly sculpted chest.

"Not happening," I said, "Wouldn't work for you anyways." Pretty sure that's true, actually, but I'm not entirely sure how much of the power is in the helmet and how much is Hank.

"Then no deal."

"Why do you want the power?"

"Power. Control. It's time my gang was what it used to be."

His gang used to be a simple operation. They sold drugs. They had turf fights. They kept to themselves.

These days... that wasn't true. Their leader had made some kind of deal with spirits, dark spirits with crazy urges. Not ghosts, mind you. Spirits are more primal and simple then that, and so much more dangerous. Spirits get all tied up with magickal concepts and energies. There are death spirits and knowledge spirits and life spirits and its all a crazy mess.

The bastards that Morris's boss had were spirits of violence and blood. Nasty fucks. Give no shits whatsoever about collateral damage... Hell, they kind of like it.

Apparently, Morris wasn't having any of that. He wanted to get things back to how they were. To do that, he wanted magick power to stand up to his boss. Only magick he knew involved spirits, and the helmet Hank was wearing when he beat Morris's boss upside the head with his own motorcycle.

"There are other kinds of power," I assured him, "I can get you in touch with a dragon. You serve him and he'll give you all the power you want."

He shook his head, "No. Not putting myself in anyone's power."

I shrugged, "Then you're not getting magick. All power puts you in something's power. The helmet would put you under its power like any other. You sacrifice to make things right."

He shrugged, "I can sacrifice, but I ain't going to be some dragon's bitch."

Sensible enough. He didn't want anything interfering with his mortal power, if such a thing exists. Control of the gang, of the city, that mattered more than his soul.

"I do know someone..." I said, "She might be able to help. If you want to work with spirits."

That someone is one of the finest lesbian-tantric-sex-priests I have ever met.
Also, one of only three, the other two being her off and on again partners.
Basically she uses sex to harness spirits of lust, sex, union, etc. Seems innocent enough, but the kind of power they can grant is often... unexpected. Lust spirits control magnetism and gravity, for example. Laws of attraction.

"Fuck spirits," he said.

Somehow, I managed not to laugh. "Think about it, Dave. You want to make a power play, and that requires power. Your best bet is to have as much power on your side as possible. You know I have my own power, strength and connections. You know that Hank has his helmet, and we've got this fucker," I pointed at Burns, who still had a gun so far in his back I thought a kidney might pop loose, "To shoot his magick about. Now, all that plus the power of a dragon or some spirits, that's got to be better than just you, alone, with the helmet, and me and the wiz after you for spilling our friend's blood.
"You understand loyalty, don'cha, Dave?"

Dave thought about it for what seemed like ages.
Then he put the gun away.

He tried to negotiate for other things, like the wizard's staff, and we eventually pointed out a handful of genuinely magickal artifacts in the thrift store, but apparently he didn't care. Sensible yet again, because he probably couldn't work out how to use them. Three faces know I couldn't, after all.

So, we walked away.

My friend wasn't all that willing to teach a punk like that. Right fucking mess. I mean, aside from her reservations of teaching men her magick (it means sleeping with them, after all) she just didn't want someone in a gang with that kind of power.

"He's already got access to spirits," I said, "Just a matter of time before he learns how to use them. Or takes up with the dragon. I'd just rather he learn it from someone who knows what she's doing, and can teach him right. Otherwise he's either going to be eaten alive, or let loose all kinds of Hell on the world.
"So, for everyone's sake, teach him better."

She frowned and furrowed her brow in a way that makes her just adorable, and said: "I'll think about it. Maybe a trial basis..."

"I'll keep him informed."

Like I said, I don't know shit about spirits, so I don't have much more to say.

The Nature of Dragons

Those of you playing along at home have probably figured out by now that it wasn't really a dragon that Mark and I had to go meet. It was something dragonlike in the key qualities (immeasurably magickally powerful, physically potent enough to consider us insects, older than dirt and smarter than a supercomputer), but I'd be an idiot to say what it actually was. Too easy to connect the dots.

That said, don't mistake me for an instant: Dragons are real. The qualities of power, nature and behavior that I am going to ascribe to this fictional individual are completely true of those real world giant lizards out there. Hand to gods.

When I lie in my personal stories about what I faced to keep things muddled, I'm never muddling the nature of the actual named beasties. That would defeat the point.

So, we went to meet the dragon.

The dragon, like most supernatural nigh-on-to-gods (and gods, for that matter) in big cities, has an office building he likes to meet in. Not the dank and secluded caves of some of the more traditional beasties, but perfect for any monster who can wear human skin and smile pleasantly.
He also has a secretary who I swear must be some sort of living statue. It's not that she's shown any supernatural abilities, or even looks strange, she is just so emotionless she must be a robot. Or a sociopath, I suppose. I can't stand sociopaths. All the malevolence of monsters, with all the frailty of humans.
Sad, really.

We were taken up to the dragon by elevator. An elevator operated manually by some unseen creatures to make sure our wizard didn't fuck it up, the way Wizard's do. Apparently magick and science hate each other so much that magic fries any circuits it can get in to. The number of phones that have spontaneously been burnt out in Mark's presence has to rival the population of most African nations.

The elevator let us out in an enormous office. No hallway, no doors, just one big office with fancy carpet that could probably have saved a human from a seven story drop it was so plush. The dragon wasn't facing us. His son, the twerp that Mark had pissed off, was standing there, glaring at us, but all we could see of the big old monster was the back of a tall-ass leather chair behind a desk that probably cost more cash than I could get by selling every house I've ever lived in to a gullible foreigner who hadn't worked out the exchange rate and owed me a favor.

The chair swiveled, and my hackles and I decided to take a big step away from the wizard in case he was to be incinerated on the spot.

What we saw in the chair was a dragon. It looked human, but that couldn't really hide it. Not fully. You could smell the power in the room. At least, I could; I've been told humans tend to feel it where their hairs meet their skin instead, but it's the same phenomenon. It sat there in the body of a calm, collected white-male-human skin, in a clean and pressed white-shirt in a white-collar job in an ivory-white tower. The modern king in a modern tower. He didn't smile. That was a relief. I've seen Kur smile, and even in human skin it's all serpentine aggression.

Here we come to the rub of things:
Dragons don't understand power. They can't, because they've only ever had one side of it. Sure, maybe a young dragon gets bullied around by bigger dragons, but any dragon who survives to adulthood bullied back, and bullied either harder or smarter. They don't have to claw their way to the top on a mound of corpses, because the sky is only a flap of the wings away, and that doesn't even limit them. They can step into the realms beyond, the places where they're born, and there's just about nothing that can stop them. Humans frequently worship them as gods, because they are as powerful as gods. They are mighty, they are massive, and they are unrestrained. They have never known what it is to have something more powerful bearing down on you. A dragon does not fear you, cannot fear you, because it is a dragon, and always has been.

Smart dragons understand that they are not invulnerable. You can crush ants all day long, but a swarm can still kill you. But, being vulnerable is not the same as being subservient. Dragons demand obedience because they wield power, because they are power. They cannot be otherwise.

That's why they can't understand insolence, or disobedience, or resentment. A dragon has never had to stand silent and wait to be addressed for fear of having its flesh seared from bone. A dragon is the one doing the searing.
They may be vastly intelligent, but there is no way for them to learn humility or to understand what it means to have power over another. The concepts are of no use to a ten ton reptile.

This makes them terrifying.

Anyone who actually understands power recognizes the nature of a two way street, the possibility of losing power, the hatred they will breed in others. Dragons just don't grok all that. They wield power without concern for consequence, without need for concern. They have never found their limits, and they probably never will. They act because they are amused, or bored, or hungry. Power is a trinket to them, not the flesh and blood that it is to the rest of us.

This makes dragons unpredictable and very, very hard to manipulate. You can stroke their egos, but chances are the dragon's concern is at absolute zero, the point at which all fucks freeze and shatter apart. You can offer them something they want, a service or gift, and their greed may find that enough (dragons are, invariably, greedy), but they might also decide they don't need you to get what they want and kill you anyways. or use magick to rip the information you have out of your mind. There are no rules to use to bargain with them.

So, when a creature that cannot understand defiance is flipped off by an overly defiant, insolent, and frankly just plain rude pyromaniac wizard, all you can do is step back and flinch.

Kur didn't disintegrate the wizard.

Like I said, unpredictable.

And, while they may not understand power, dragons do understand value, its the only thing they really care about. A wizard, one who belongs to the White Council no less, is a very, very valuable commodity. One worth some investment, perhaps even an investment of bruised pride.

That said, it was a bitch and a half talking Kur into any real understanding. Value is one thing, use another. A valuable thing is of no use if you can't command it. Eventually a talked Kur into marking the wizard in such a way that he could peer into the wizards mind, exert influence over him. The wizard had to drink Kur's blood. Very vampiric, but it seemed to change him. His power, his nature... but not his attitude.

Since I opened my big mouth to try and save the miserable little speller, it fell to me to be his guardian as well. Not as an insult to me, but simply because I could be of use that way. Again, Kur isn't even capable of understanding the frustration and resent such an asinine assignment brings with it.

We left the office alive and still breathing because I, and Hank, showed proper deference. Mark was an asshole, but apparently we were deferential enough for him as well.

In summation:
Dragons are power. Tread carefully around them, and never assume they actually understand what the relationships of power truly are. They have enormous blindspots in these things, but those should not be seen as weaknesses, just more reasons to kill you.
Be respectful, show deference, and bargain because your life probably depends on it, and your freedom certainly does.

The Nature of Wizards

So, remember how I said humans aren't very good at being monster?

There is an exception. If you consider wizards human, at least. My makers used to tell me stories of wizards, of how our kind was hunted through the ages by them. Stories that go all the way back to the homeland, and times before history. I grew up with horror stories about wizards in the same way that human children grow up with tales of bogeymen and strigori.

But, stories don't prepare you for reality. I first saw a wizard when I was in my twelfth year. I never got a good look. I was too scared to raise my head even an inch above the corpses of my parent's still-warm flesh. Through mangled limbs and risen dirt, I saw a man who seemed so small, so weak... so human. He couldn't have been more than 5'8". He wore a cloak of grey and wielded a sword of gleaming metal that stunk of magick. But, the whole landscape stunk of magick. The earth itself had risen up to swallow my people whole, and with a word the wizard loosed cutting winds and freezing cold upon us.

I remain to this day lucky that the wizard was too arrogant to check to make sure his handiwork was done. As far as he was concerned, I was just another corpse in the pile.

I learnt that day what my makers tasted like. Their dying blood sustained me for almost a week, but dead blood isn't exactly the most nourishing, and I was left to hunt for myself. Alone.

My makers may not have made the greatest family, and I wish my body retained the scars to prove it, but they taught me much of how to survive in this world. They made me strong.

And a single wizard laid them low.

It's worth understanding that my coven had numbered at least a hundred, as best as I can count. The wizard didn't kill us all at once, but my unit had fourteen when he attacked, and by then we'd already heard rumors that he'd killed dozens of us, and our leader.

I looked, but I never found evidence of another surviving member of my coven.

It's just me.

There's nothing I can type here that will adequately express how strangely mixed my feelings are about that. My makers were brutish, horrible and monstrous in a thousand different ways, but for all their savagery they were wise in a thousand others. If they weren't dead, they'd still be out there feeding on people. Not as many people as most seem to think, but more than my human nature is comfortable with.

If they were still alive I also wouldn't have met my other parents, and learnt what it really meant to be human.

Still... my maker loved me in its own strange way, and I suppose I loved it back.

And, whether the deaths of my kind was an act of good or evil, I saw the work being done. The wizard is a beast of pure destruction, who warps the world around him to death and mutilation. Worse, unlike the beasts that formed me, the wizard claims to be human, to be born of kindness and good intention, while slathering himself in power and blood.

No, the wizard is not human. The proof is plain enough, humans can't become wizards unless they're born to it. Just like every other monster.

Any illusions that they are otherwise should evaporate in the lunacy that is Mark Burns.

After our fateful meeting with Dave, I went out to check a few sources. Hank took a ride on his bike. Mark went back to Hank's townhouse to gather some supplies.

Next time I saw Mark it was in the smoking remains of the half destroyed house, the whole thing reeking of cannabis. Mark explained how he had met a dragon in Hank's home, and that the dragon done the damage.

This turned out to be a lie, of course.

The dragon wasn't a dragon, first of all. He had dragon blood, and a great deal of power, but he was born of mortal woman. Yes, mortal women can fuck dragons, and yes that might explain the popularity of certain specialized of sex toys.

Second of all, Mark had set the fire. I don't call him Burns for nothing.

Yeah, he saw a dragon and decided to fling fire at it. Probably thought it was a human, but he really should have checked on that. You see a stranger in your house, you assume he has something to say and a point to make. It's a power play, just like eating food. Smoking Hank's pot was a part of that, too. Same as Dave grabbing my food.

Difference is, when I decided I'd had enough of Dave, I knew exactly what he was. Mark reached that decision with a complete stranger. Once again, I have more restraint than a wizard, if that is prima facie evidence of pure monstrosity, I don't know what is.

I wanted to kill Mark and give his body to the dragon's daddy. Hank just wanted to hospitalize him for the house, and I think his own daddy's rage got into him for that (jumping ahead, I know).

In the end, human kindness won out, and we dragged his ass down to the dragon-boy's daddy. Once there, the wizard decided the best way to approach a primordial being of ancient magic with insults, foul language and complete disrespect.

Wizard's may claim to be all about incredible power through knowledge, but apparently they're as thick as cement when it comes to basic survival.

In summation:
Wizards are monsters, plain and simple. They have incredible and versatile power, and the self-control of starving pit bulls. Don't trust them, don't deal with them, and if at all possible, don't let them become your responsibility.