The Character History to End All Character Histories: Skye

Contributor: Beth Fallon
Submission: In-Game writing from Skye's character history
LARP system: Endgame / Accelerant
Location: Ayer, USA
Character name: Skye
Years LARPing: Many (Alright, something like 21 years)
Email: efallon AT earthlink DOT net


Endgame is a present-day post-apocalyptic game, which starts with the real world as it is in May 2006, then alternates off from there. This the character history for my player-character "Skye", written from her point of view (and thus contains information which is wildly incorrect, but was real to her at the time).


Some people tell the story of their life from the moment of their birth.  My life, the life I live now, began with my death. I died at around 3PM on Saturday, June 11, 2006. It was a cool, rainy day…I remember well looking up a stirred gray clouds, and the sensation of the raindrops on my face, the only sensation that mattered as I died.

I’d been foolish – scared and hungry, I tried to join some neighbors to make a run to a local market for supplies, and someone had gotten there first.  They’d apparently decided that a homemade bomb was a great way to preserve the store for their own use, and I was killed along with several other people near the front of the crowd. I’d taken shrapnel to the face and chest – some mixture of glass, steel and nails. The left side of my face and scalp was ripped off immediately, my throat was mangled and crushed by a shard of metal from the blast, and my left arm and chest were so much shrapnel-studded hamburger when I went down. The pain was incredible – I still, years later, after everything I have gone through, wake from nightmares of my death.

I lay there, blood bubbling in my lungs, listening to the screams of the crowd fading as they scattered, and stared at the sky out of my remaining eye. My glasses were gone, shattered, and as I stared into the heart of the growing storm, my sight wavered and darkened.  Time slowed to a crawl, then: the pain was so far away, and the soft touch the raindrops began to fade as well. It was growing dark, and part of me began to let go, float away, and succumb to the calm spreading grayness that had wrapped around me. But my self, my soul, became a single thought, burning like a torch: I Am Not Ready.

I had always been a pretty passionless person – I’d drifted through life, school and work, never really affected by the people or things around me. I was pretty normal – I’d experienced love and hatred, but never anything as real as this thought. It consumed me, devoured the pain I was in, and I finally understood the phrase “setting my soul on fire”.  I was fading fast, but something, somewhere inside had burst to life.

That was when the angel appeared.

As angels go, she wasn’t anything like I imagined.  No white robes and wings.  The person that swam into my vision was hideous, to be blunt. She was old.  No, beyond old – ancient.  Her form was bent over double, her bones warped and crushed into themselves, in unnatural, painful ways. Her skin was a pale bluish-white, and appeared to have loosely wrapped around her body – it was a tormented mess of deep scars, spots, wrinkles and swollen bags of flesh.  She was nearly bald– only a few whips of yellow-white hair still clung tenaciously to her
wrinkled skull, and her mouth was a tangle of yellowed fangs, half missing or broken.

But her eyes…her eyes were the way I knew she was an angel.  Huge and clear, soft and full of love, I gazed up at her eyes from my deathbed on the concrete, and willed myself to be heard: Help Me. I Am Not Ready.  She looked into me for an eternity. She saw past the broken and bloody flesh.  Past my fear, past my weakness, past my humanity.
She Saw Me.

And then, at that moment, I died, staring into her eyes.

It was like falling and flying all at once – my body, the binds that held me, suddenly loosed, and I was free with a snap.  The pain was gone.  All sensation was gone. I felt myself begin to flow away, break apart into the ether, drift from the place and time where I had been. It was over.  But something changed. Dimly, I felt something stir in
the air, like something was drawing a great breath.

NO.

The Power was immense. Where I had been floating weightless and free, I was caught and forced back into a cage of endless pain.  My eye, cloudy and bloody, refocused.  The angel was kneeling over me, her twisted hands pressed deep and hard onto my torso, staring into me.
Raw Power, burning like lightning, flowed from her hands, pouring into every corner of my being.  My flesh began to melt and flow, blood and muscle writhed and snapped over my bones…white-hot agony.  I took one rasping gasp of air, then another. My heart shuddered and twisted in my chest, then began to beat, harder and harder, like caged thunder in my body. I tried to cry out, but managed only a bubbling rasp.

My other eye reformed, and they both began to clear – my vision was sharper than I had ever experienced, even with all the contacts and glasses I had over the years.  I stared up, and she stared back, the Power still flowing out of her.  It’s hard to explain what happened next.  She stared into Me.  I stared into Her.  It sounds hokey, but
our souls touched. Not just touched, but caught and entwined.  I could feel what she was feeling – she shared my agony. I was not alone. And never would be, again.

The Power she used changed something in me.  I was not the person I was before I died. I am something Else, something More.  I have heard the term, Corrupted.  I know what people mean by it.  But the term is wrong, so incredibly wrong.  It makes me so angry when I hear people use it.   I was not made less than human by her touch, not made impure, not defiled.  I was not caught up against my will and cursed by some hostile, alien force. I was healed. Made whole again – more whole than I had ever been before. My spirit found a purpose and a
calling, something I had never experienced before.   I am stronger, braver now. I have skills that I could have never dreamed of.  I am still myself – I am no monster, but I am More.

She healed me, then. Took away the pain. Helped me to my feet, wordlessly. I stood beside her, towering over her tiny, twisted form, and looked around at the scattered corpses, and parts of corpses,around us.  I had died – my life had slipped from me, there on the bloody ground. Part of me still lay on the pavement with the other dead.  I raised my face to the sky. The rain fell. I was alive. I lived, through my angel.

She gave me life. She gave me power. She protected me, taught me, and brought me out of darkness. I never learned her language, and she never spoke a word of mine. Her name was unpronounceable to me, no matter how hard I tried, so I simply called her Mother.  She did not know the word, but could feel my meaning, and was pleased.  Our soul-link never faded – I know now that this is beyond unusual, even for her people.  She and I could not speak, but we could Feel – I knew her emotions, and she mine.  We could hide nothing from each other,
and it made me more honest than I had ever been with anyone else, ever.

We traveled. While we were together, we never saw another of her people – we moved swiftly and quietly, avoiding crowds.  She was hunted – by whom or why, I could never understand.  My best guess now is that she was too old.  Her people thought her a weak link, and so would have destroyed her, to prevent their enemies from gaining her power.   She knew fear, frustration, and exhaustion. She gazed at me, and felt protectiveness, pride, and the ever-present fear – fear for me, perhaps, fear that I would leave her, fear that I would be taken from her.   I could never reassure her, and for that I still sorrow.

I made myself strong – for her, for myself.  Through her guidance I learned a great secret, one that I and everyone before me never grasped fully before – I will share it with you, so that perhaps you can understand.  Life, in and of itself, is a type of power, like gravity, electricity, or heat, and thus can be conducted, wielded, used.  Flesh is no more than a physical manifestation of this power – peptide chains, DNA and protein are simply building blocks, an aspect of Life – and thus is as malleable as play-doh, if you can wield the Power.   She taught me how to raise the Power, how to hold it, how to channel it.  I learned how to heal, how to change, how to destroy.  I will not write out how I do these things – I do not mind telling my story, but some secrets are not meant to be shared.

I was a quick student, but not quick enough.  As we traveled, as she taught me, I could feel her growing weaker, more tired.  The fear hounded her heels, though I never saw anything give chase to us, and it drained her like a seeping wound.  I could not heal her age, could not soothe her fear.  I protected her, made sure she ate and slept and was as comfortable as I could, but it was not enough.  Towards the end I carried her like a child – she was a slight as a bird, all bones and exhaustion.  She stopped eating, would not drink.  She loved me, and loved life fiercely…but she could no longer remain with me.  Her body was frail, her spirit weak.  She was tired. And I could not save her.

I held her close and sang to her as she died. I did not have the power to bring her back from death as she had me, but I would not have done so even if I could.  I was not ready, when I died. She was. And she would never have forgiven me had I trapped her here.  I Felt her leave me, felt the bond between us snap, wither and fade, and I thought I would die of sorrow.  Your heart can really break – never think that is merely a turn of phrase.  But she had wanted me to live, wanted me to go on, and I could not disappoint her.

I buried her beneath an old oak tree, somewhere in the middle of Massachusetts. Oak for wisdom. Oak for eternity. Oak for power.  I kept only her dagger – a strange, twisted blade, brought with her from
wherever she’d come from.  An echo of her essence remains in it…at night, in the stillness, I believe that I can Feel a bit of her within it.  Don’t misunderstand me, her spirit is gone – to heaven, I hope – but the dagger remains, and so I am comforted by it.  It is a blade of Power, though which I can channel Life – drawing it from myself, directing it to others.  I know, intellectually, that any blade that I have bonded to me by blood could do these things – but this one is special, and it is mine.

I wandered alone, in my sorrow, for some time.  Months and years don’t seem to mean much, anymore, so I could not tell you how long.  I have thus far avoided others of her kind – her fear remains with me, though she could never articulate the reasons for her fear.  I have taken on her appearance, though our lessons – my skin is pale, bordering on blue. I bear scars on my forehead and left cheek, in her honor, and to remind me of my death, my missing face. For all my healing powers, my voice has not recovered from the bomb, yet - I can sometimes snap my trachea back into place, but it never lasts more than a few minutes, and hurts terribly - every word bears blood and pain.  I can, with great effort, appear as I used to – I refer to it as “putting on the Masque” – but it exhausts and weakens me to do so, like holding my breath for hours at a time.  When traveling, I wear my real face – I
am stronger, quicker, and more powerful as such.  However, when I know I will be entering heavily populated areas, the weakness is worth being able to pass unmolested.

I am no longer alone – I have friends, now, wanderers, such as myself. One in particular has become my guardian, and seeks to protect me in a rather charming display of chivalry long-dead.  He knows some of my story, and accepts that though I am “warped”, I am no alien monster, and mean him and my friends no harm.  I know I am not a warm and cheerful person, and no longer wholly human, but he accepts me, and I am happy.

We will be traveling, soon. There are several solid confirmations of a stronghold in New Hampshire which is seeking new blood, and I could use the rest for awhile as I grow stronger.  The way is dangerous, though, and I wonder if it will be worth wearing the Masque while traveling – though I don’t want to alienate myself from the community immediately, I would prefer to get there alive.