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Tho much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now the strength that in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Tennyson, "UIlysses"
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Editor's Remarks
It's been ten years since Trail. Yes, I know, this isn't a shock to anyone with a 'net connection or a life, but it's disturbing. So much has changed in the world. We have vid phones and friendly technology, elevator AIs (Don't even get me started on that topic!) ..... It's a brave new world, right? That's what the media is saying. "Look at how far we've come in ten years!" they trumpet. The key word is they. Not us, they. The humans.
No, this is not an anti-humans rant. The gods know we get enough of those already. And yes, the world has changed in ten years. But ..... is it better? The Quarterly is still anonymous, the world is still anti-monster. Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. Most of us live in ghettos now, or have trouble finding jobs. Gotta like having to reveal your not human at job interviews, don't you? People run away so fast it's not funny. Really, it's not. The humans have banded together, against us. Against the supernatural and magic and wonder.
There are fanatics on both sides. Sometimes moderates can be fanatical, too. We don't have any fences anymore, folks. Not to sit on. It's one side or the other in this issue. Maybe that's the scary part. We're either for or against humanity. The time to hide was gone when Cecil, Faline, Rei, Simon, Yuki, and the others outted us all. (Yes, there were more weres than Faline there!) Whether she was right, or wrong, it's been done. And enough people want her dead for it, or would of the Summerland was accessible.
For what? She was possibly insane - in which case, her pack mates should have killed her. But her pack wasn't the most sane either, nor were they educated in were ways. When Faline left Trail for a time was when the people went on their killing spree. Simon - their youngest pack member, we think - was still there. He killed a lot of the people of Trail then when they went after weres, perhaps more than Faline did. But we never hear about that. We accept his insanity, but not hers. Everyone makes mistakes. Hers was perhaps seeing good where none existed. It's not a mistake that can be made now.
- The Editor
Here lies Jan Smith, wife of Thomas Smith, Marble Cutter. This monument was erected by her husband as a tribute to her memory and a specimen of his work. Monuments of this same style are two hundred and fifty dollars.
- Gravestone Inscription
Working 9 to 5
Holding down a steady job can be hard, especially if you're not human. Most humans won't hire you and most were jobs are only available in "super natural sanctioned areas." That’s PC for ghetto. So what is a decent respecting were to do, besides joining a gang of 7/11 thieves? Invent jobs. Get educated! Currently, universities and colleges are not segregated. Deal with the snubbing of others and learn. And, for the sake of the gods, try and get a job in the human world. It doesn't matter why: just do it. Don't be stuck inside the little boxes they wish to shove us into.
So work. Get a job, get out of the den and mingle with the herd. (No eating, though, not when you're working.) Even if you don't need money, do it to force humans to meet us, to know us. Its harder to kill a monster when you know her name and she's been over to dinner a time or two. It's more than just work, its about survival. Trail changed the stakes but it's still the same game. And we need educations to play it, as we always do. We need to understand them to know when they will strike.
When the next holocaust comes, they might know who we are but we don't have to be in ghettos waiting to be slaughtered. We're were. And by all the gods, we won't go down with a fight!
The Earth is a witch and the men still burn her.
- Charlie Murphy
Poetry Corner I
A Lament
There is blood floating on the deep sea,
Black as the heart of humanity.
Death walks the lands with his red cross-bow,
On his neck hangs a were-albatross.
We that are left have nowhere to go,
Our lonely graves are covered in moss.
How can we claim to be Lords of Life
When all the worlds are filled with strife?
All that is is part of all that will be,
Most deaths last for eternity.
The Lords of Life have been stricken low:
The world has become our albatross
And the might of the Lords of Death grows.
But life and death are balance, not loss.
All that is death can be found in life
But that is no excuse for this strife.
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H.L. Mencken
Weres & Religion
The world has changed a lot in the past decade. That is obvious. And religion has also. Who knows, the pope might decide that we're not demons tomorrow! But, to be serious, there is a battle going on in the world religions, trying to understand what we are and our status within them. Are we the djinn of Islam, the demons of Christianity, the carrots of Discordianism? (For myself, I doubt we are the carrots. I think we're the apricots.) It's a big debate, and one that even non-religious were often follow. It also means a lot, and not just to us. When the pope declared the Indians human, he saved many lives. It wouldn't be the same with us - we're not human - but even so. It would bridge some gaps. And that is what matters.
Most weres tend to favour "pagan" religions and wiccan beliefs, new age or otherwise. Some prefer to use magic and claim there are no gods. It's all up to us. Who knows? One were comedian suggested that since weres have three forms we have three souls and one of us is worth three human conversions to a religion. What scares me is that some people might believe that. We have powers humans don't, but if we warred, they would win. The cockroach will outlast humanity, humanity would outlast us. And religion mattes to them, perhaps even more so than it does to us.
This isn't to say that human religions have been all anti-were. Many Jewish sects have spoken out against the ghettoising of weres and vamps and said that it is just a holocaust waiting to happen. They might get ignored, but history will know they said it. Not all humans are against us, and when their religions begin to deal with us, to accept us ... then we'll begin to fit into their cultures. We aren't human. We can't be human. But just maybe we can get accepted.
Lastly, a key component of religion is forgiveness. Maybe its time we forgave humans for the purges. And ourselves, perhaps, for being what we are. And maybe its time we moved beyond Trail. What's done is done is done. And done. If we can't forgive, let's at least pretend to forget. It's time to move on.
You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete the monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."
- George Bernard Shaw
Poetry Corner II
Jungles
In the middle of the dark jungle of lights
A howling rises, shattering the still night.
Lights howl their mad song back and the chase is on!
You leap through the black jungle, first here then gone,
But your delusions slowly fall and crumble:
This jungle wishes to make the hunters humble.
Pain flies from many mouths, stabbing deep within.
Words heap their scorn while silver weapons cut skin.
The police close in, old hunters come to feast;
More shots are fired, and you’re - finally - deceased.
And here you’d thought nature’s green jungle was bad:
The cities one watches you die - and is glad.
Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them.
- Octavio Perez
Mythology 101
Myths are important. For one thing, they help people understand the world and figure out a place in it, striding the place between fact and fiction, dream and reality. But what myth truly does is show answers. 2 + 2 = 4 is a nice truth, to be sure. But myth shows us that 2 + 2 = 5 is an even better one. Furthermore, “myths are things that never happened but always are,” as Sallustius once said. What are we getting at here? Simply this: while myths may contain some truths, they are not all the truth.
A human who tries to repel most vampires with garlic or sunlight will be surely disappointed. While the sun weakens vampires, few of them ever burst into flames. Likewise, few weres are compelled to change form by the moon or repelled by wolfsbane. Religious symbols only affect vampires susceptible to that faith and as for running water ... well, vampires are vain. How do you think they have baths without it? But vampires tend to be territorial, so the myth has some basis in fact. Most vampires prefer to sleep during the day, so its not too surprising people thought they were undead. Weres cam be hurt by silver, but a silver cross in front of one just makes us wary of the silver, not the symbol.
Basically, weres, take everything about the world said about us with a grain of salt. Some of the myths are true some of the time, but none are ever true all of the time. Or, to put it another way, look before you leap. Look long and hard: some abysses look pretty tempting until you enter them, and only a fool storms hell with a can of gasoline. Rely on yourselves to win battles, not on myths.
But the world has wondrously changed, Granny,
since the days when you were young.
It thinks quite different thoughts from then
and speaks with a different tongue.
The fences are broken, the cords are snapped,
that tethered man's heart to home;
He ranges as free as the wind or the waves, and changes
his shore like foam.
- Alfred Austin
Campaign ~ Making Your Monster ~ Powers! ~ PCs ~ The Way The World Is
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