gifted blood

[reyesmarconi]

when you want to launder money and you set up front businesses, the amount of business you actually do is irrelevant. what’s essential is that you report the earnings for tax reasons. the IRS doesn’t actually check how many cars are on your parking lot or your store hours.

of course, you’ll need a front where it’ll be easy to lie about the business you’re doing. this is why all the criminals love to go for the service industry. cash transactions are to be expected in things like these and nobody can’t really say how many people you’ve serviced since, at the end of a meal, they’re gone. think of coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants. the same is true for car washes. nobody can really say how many cars you’ve washed unless they go searching for the answer.

another good choice is having transactions with huge ranges of overhead – think of mattress stores or frame stores. you can plausibly get a good mattress or frame for like a 100 bucks – but you could also be getting some custom made, “ergonomic” mattresses that can easily go for a few thousand dollars. having a range like that makes it harder to detect irregularities because of the legitimately high variability in the transactions.

to this effect, the marconi family technically owns (and this just peppered throughout new york city): mattress and furnitore stores, warehouses, flower shops, car washes, italian food restaurants, bakeries, coffeehouses, bars, a construction company and (possibly most interestingly) the ethel barrymore theatre in broadway. perhaps with the exception of the theatre (which handles money legitimate income), it all acts as one complex network for money laundering.

[reyesmarconi]

the marconi family.

The largest island of the Mediterranean Sea has never been conquered as a whole – in fact, it’s always been handled as a fragmanted process. Over time, Sicily has been Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Arab, and more, all before falling to Italian hands and becoming the largest region of the modern western state. Before then, many of the aforementioned cultures co-existed for centuries at a time, oftentimes overlapping and fighting among themselves for land and resources. Conflict has always been a key element of the island’s history, and its location has allowed for a diverse magical background. Sicily has served as the background for many myths, and the supposed home for several gods and monsters.

Some of such monsters are the Laestrygonians. Their name was derived from the Greek words laisêion, “raw hide” or “skin” and trygaô, “to gather,” and could be translated to Skin-reapers. A tribe of cannibalistic giants, their biggest claim to fame in recorded myth was their encounter with Odysseus on his travels, and it was by far one of the most catastrophic events he had to dealt with. The hero Odysseus came upon their lands when the storm winds had driven him far from the island of Aeolus. The giants ate many of Odysseus’ men and destroyed eleven of his twelve ships; Odysseus’ ship was spared because it was hidden in a cove.

Much like the other race of Giants described by the Greeks, the Cyclopes, the Laestrygonians have a godly origin. Considered the children of Poseidon and Gaia, they had taken to southeast Sicily as their territory. They had built a city, and called it Telepylos. Their sizes varied between ten and twenty feet, and had a largely humanoid appearance. They showed a special connection to nature, particularly the sea (Telepylos was a port city), and although brutal and punitive in nature, they were also quite intelligent, and demonstrated a formidable sense of self-preservation. Which is why, as the tides started to change and Rome started to conquer Greece, rather than fall at the hands of their own hubris, they began to adapt. Thus began a bloodline, an ancient bloodline that has switched names many times through history but has consistently remained a staple of the Sicilian landscape. For the last five centuries the bloodline has called themselves the Marconi, patronymic form of the name of one of the family’s most prominent leaders at the time.

By this point in history, the lineage was vastly different, since the giants had seen fit to mingle with mortals (as well as occasionally nature spirits). They had turned almost normal in size, and although they retained some of their essential skills (the strength, durability, and connection with the tides as well as certain psychic abilities), they had become more human than god. They had achieved an inconspicuous appearance, perhaps strategically so, while retaining their otherwordly edge that allowed them to go toe to toe with similar groups (particularly vampires and werewolves.)

They were also more spread out. They had grown huge in numbers. Though focused on their beloved island, they could also be found inland and well outside Italy. They became big players in the cultural and political landscape of the regions. They were inventors, artists, and leaders – and sure enough, they were criminals too (all too often, they found entertainment in playing both lawmaker and lawbreaker at the same time). They amassed wealth and power, and unlike other many other supernatural bloodlines, their intention was never to achieve supremacy over others. The Marconi were never out to conquer the world, Europe, or even Italy. They established a territory (Trinacria, and a few other select regions,) and were willing to form alliances with other powerful families. Those few ambitious groups that tried to seize their territory or betray them in any way were gruesomely dealt with and made an example for everyone else to see.

Nowadays, the Marconi find their jurisdiction expanded over to the new continent. They’re one of the oldest supernatural clans, and as such they are part of all relevant organizations looking to oversee underground activity. The main padrone, for the last century, has been Giancarlo Marconi. They’re concentrated in Palermo, nowadays, and they basically run the island.

RULES, CUSTOMS, AND TRADITIONS

The Marconi haven’t grown in linear fashion. As such, depending on geographic location, some descendants will behave and think differently. Their powers will also manifest differently (not always the same powers) and they will not necessarily wield the Marconi surname. By blood law, however, they must heed to the head family located in Sicily and to the padrone.

They’re remarkably adaptable and accommodating, as far as old clans go, always willing to modernize in order to remain on top of things. The few traditions they do keep, though, have been present for millennia, and aren’t going away any time soon.

When in their territory, If you represent a similar organization (if you’re royalty, or another type of authority), it is required for you to show your respect to the local Marconi boss by making your presence known to them, or to the padrone directly if you’re of similar standing. If you’re an unafilliated supernatural creature, this is not necessary.

Respect is greatly valued, and agreements and commitments must always be upheld. The Marconis are sticklers for the rules, unless they deem those rules unfair. If you make a deal with them, or form an alliance, they will honor it and similarly expect you to honor it. Neglect to do so, and expect to be eaten.

On the topic of eating, man-eating practices vary depending on location.  The practice of blood drinking remains widespread, but some have decided to stop eating flesh for sustenance (merely doing it in ritualistic occasions, and as a form of punishment).

Religious practices also vary, but mostly stick to a fusion of hellenism and roman catholicism (adoption of christianism being just one of the many compromises they have.)

TRAITS

All descendants of the Laestrygonians have three abilities in common: longer lifespan, enhanced strength, and enhanced durability. They’re incredibly resilient creatures. If they play their cards right, they can live for many centuries.

Psychic Abilities: some may develop an acute sense of observation that may cross into skills like clairvoyance and telepathy.

Earth Manipulation: their connection to Earth may occasionally take this form. Like other races of Giants, the Laestrygonians were considered earth-made, and some thought that when they died they became volcanoes and mountains.

Water Manipulation: a similar case as the above, they are descendants of Poseidon and may grow strong when in close proximity to the sea or large bodies of water, and they may be able to control it.

Skin theft: one of the rarest of abilities that can be found, a Marconi may be able to shapeshift into something they have killed. Unlike other forms of shapeshifting, a killing is required in order to steal the other creature’s skin.

WEAKNESSES

Mortality: the giant-blooded can be killed, for they are still mortal.. It is difficult but not impossible to do so and it’s their main weakness. The only thing you have to do is make sure their hearts stop beating.

They may also be vulnerable to powerful magic/sorcery.

[reyesmarconi]

* LOCATION SERIES: THOR’S RESIDENCES.

as the god of clouds, thor is scarcely at home and instead, he’s always out and about either seeking adventure or on call for his skillset by gods and worshippers alike. this being said, he has a number of established homes both in asgard and in midgard that he frequents and could be found at whenever necessary.

ASGARD.

in the lore, thor is ascribed three dwellings – þrúðheimr / thrudheim, or the world of might and strength, which is mentioned as his realm or kingdom (grímnismál, 4), bilskirnir, or lightning-crack, which is specified to be the name of his hall or mansion (also mentioned in grímnismál), and Þrúðvangr / thrudvang, or power-field, which could be interpreted as a different name for thrudheim, yet i chose to view as just a different location within the realm (pictured above).  

as always with norse myth, not much is mentioned about any of these places. thus i choose to take some creative freedoms with their descriptions and specifications. however, according to the norse myths by heilan yvette grimes, thor was born actually in midgard/verland (the land of men) with his mother jord (noteworthy for being the personification of the earth, and a jotunn). he was quick to grow and soon jord realized she could not manage him. at just a few months old he was able to lift and kick off the ten loads of bearskin piled on his cradle to keep him warm, a worthy feat for a grown man and inimaginable for an infant. all around, he apparently got on her nerves a lot (according to etter robert james, he was all around a handful, throwing massive and destructive fits, pulling at his parents hair and ears and being a little shit all the time, basically), so she sent him to the giants vingnir and hlora to be raised as their foster son in jotunheim, the reason why sometimes thor is referred to as vingthor and hlorridi.

one small detour: in the endnotes to his translation of the völsungasaga, jesse l. byock explains: “fosterage was a norse custom of having a child raised in another household in order to extend kinship bonds or to form political alliances”. since we have to assume that the giant-asgardian conflict was still alive and well while thor was growing up, it’s good to keep this in mind for later reference – maybe not for this post, but in general.

thrudheim.

upon his return to asgard, and after killing a rock giant that threatened the aesir, thor was rewarded with some lands upon which he built a estate, and that estate was called thrudheim. in stanza 4 of grímnismál it is described as “a land [that] is holy, which i see situated near the aesir and elves”. not much else is stated about the kingdom. some believe that in the afterlife worshippers of thor may end up in it, but unlike what you may think, not many of these worshippers are warriors. those tend to go to valhalla (the hall of odin) or folkvang (the hall of freya). instead, thor’s hall tends to receive the common folk, peasants, farmers and workers of the land, and only a certain type of those who die in battle (primarily the “thralls”, as in the servants and slaves, as opposed to the noble warriors, who will go to odin’s hall). this much is mentioned in hárbarðsljóð, where odin (disguised as a ferryman) openly mocks thor with this fact during a verbal spat.

so, knowing the population it will have, we can guess that the kingdom counts with many of the amenities of a large, tightly packed farming city. i’d also envision it surrounded by farms and crop fields, specially wheat fields considering that sif, thor’s wife and an earth goddess, would be living with him. it’s these fields what i would call thrudvang and what would give thrudheim the appearance of being washed in gold – on top of, of course, the gleaming strikes of lightning that would be frequently seen in the cloudy skies. it’s likely the kingdom plays a big role in asgard as a hub for agriculture and livestock farming – i.e much of the food (and some of the mead) the gods eat and drink comes from thrudheim. the harvests would be always bountiful and perfect, thanks to the kind weather and generous soil endowed to the realm by thor and sif respectively.  there would be crops and flora of all kinds, as it’s a very lush place, but it must be mentioned particularly the presence of oak forests due to their significance in thor’s worship, as well as other plants and produce: the ash, the hazel, the birch, the rowan (also due to sif), the thistle, garlic, onion, houseleek, leek, vervain, burdock, hawthorn, the blackthorn, bramble, holly, nettle, and the rose, all of which have special properties and meaning in the cult of thor. (may be topic for a different post)

bilskirnir.

the massive hall was built for thor also around the same time as thrudheim was established as his estate. grimnismál, stanza 24, has odin reveal the following vision as he catalogs the dwellings of the gods: “five hundred rooms and forty / there are, i think, under the arches of bilskírnir / of those halls which i know to be roofed / my son’s is the biggest.” in gylfaginning, when he introduces thor, snorri has hár say that thor has a kingdom and a hall called bilskírnir with 540 rooms, which is the greatest of buildings, equal only to the one in valhalla. in skáldskaparmál snorri says that “owner of Bilskírnir” is a valid thor kenning, and in fact “prince of bilskirnir” is attested in the skaldic corpus. the meaning of the name is unclear, but it seems to be either “suddenly illuminated (by lightning)” or “everlasting.” according to heilan yvette grimes, in bilskirnir, thor’s fallen worshippers “guaffed mead and banqueted on enormous meals, and practiced their warrior skills in preparation for the last fateful battle.” in regards to appearance grimes also noted that the outside of bilskirnir was studded with shields and glowed red in contrast with the inside which was a gleaming purple.

it’s a gigantic “mansion”, but more than that, it’s tall enough to reach the skies, as apparently thor frequently shoots lightnings from the top floor. it’s also here specifically where he’s said to live with his wife and children.

MIDGARD.

palafito in ologá, venezuela.

ologá, in contrast to the realm of thrudheim, is a tiny settlement where less than 50 families reside in stilt houses, or palafitos, which are houses raised on piles over the surface of the soil or bodies of water. it’s located south of maracaibo, 1m over the water level, and it’s a community of fishermen. it’s sustained mainly by said fishing but also by tourism, as it’s from its palafitos that the world-famous catatumbo lightning can be comfortably seen and photographed. (you can click in their names for some nice galleries featuring catatumbo and ologá)

thor feels a natural connection to the place, given its peculiar atmospheric conditions which make it so predisposed to thunderstorm activity and lightning (which occurs during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per day and up to 280 times per hour). he has a natural pull to it, drawing special strength from the perpetual storm, which sent him to the small town sometime around the mid 50s and made him build his own stilt house there, keeping in mind his size and height, something that quickly made him the object of curiosity from the locals. he made his most used human persona, dario belmonte, be born here, and he became a very active figure in the town as a fisherman, builder, and healer and all around friend to everybody. it got to the point that eventually he pretty much confessed (more or less) his status as a god to the entire town, as there was no other way to explain his lack of aging and magical abilities. to this day, they continue to keep his secret, and he visits them sporadically every few years to make sure they’re doing well.

his palafito is not more lavish than any of the other houses in the settlement and it’s made from the same materials. it’s a two room house and anyone else is free to use it whenever he isn’t here – he usually leaves it to his neighbors so they can rent it to tourists.  

in his post-ragnarok verse thor, who was meant to die after his battle with the midgard serpent, ends up coming back to “life” in the depths of the maracaibo lake during one of the loudest thunderstorms the townsfolk had ever witnessed. he’s found floating unconscious by a couple fishermen in the morning and taken to the house of one of the older citizens, who recognizes him. he’s nursed back to health and it’s from this point onwards that thor begins his arc exploring what is left of midgard.

farm in sweet grass county, montana.

located in the outskirts of big timber, montana, thor counts with a 4 bedroom farmhouse with a barn and 4 horse stalls + heated tack shed. next to the house sits a metal shop with concrete floor and overhead door with electricity throughout. the barn and the arena are surrounded by corrals. 40 acres surrounding the house comprise the perimeter, cross fenced as needed. there are 4 wells, one in each of the 120 acre parcels.  

thor established this farm in 1995, and lived in it almost permanently between march of that same year and november of 2007. he didn’t live alone, however; he invited his brother tyr – who was then living in kentucky – to live with him so they could be close to one another. almost simultaneously thor made tyr the part owner of the estate. in the farm they keep up to four horses, a dozen of chickens and six goats (which he keeps for milk), and a variety of crops cycled in and out depending on the season (carrots, beets, potatoes, green peas, sweet peas, broccoli, corn, and more). they also have two dogs, two huskies by the names brynjar and einar that freely roam the property, as well as tyr’s three cats.

after 2007, thor still technically continues to live there, but he travels more frequently.

PHOTO CREDITS. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4.

[reyesmarconi]

LOCATION: THE LIBRARY OF BABEL.

OTHER NAMES: The Central Library / The Total Library / Bränim Y’nch (figurative translation: Centric Larynbith of Zhaogd'endir) / 1:1.61803 / Status: Pocket Universe/Liminal Space

From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels’ autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. (1)

Much like the Tower of Babel represented the efforts of an unified world, the Library of Babel represents the efforts of the nulliverse in the matter of knowledge. A labyrinthal, unreachable* dimension that takes the form of an expansive library, it is Janus’ home world (Zhaogd'endir being an alternative name for Janus) and where he stores all the artifacts and books he’s stolen acquired in his interplanetary travels. Over time (not that time matters in this place) the Library of Babel has become its own “sentient” entity, of sorts, controlled entirely by Janus but mostly given free rein to behave in an apparently chaotic fashion as an extension of energy. It’s its own kind of infinity in this dimension: you will never reach the edge of the library, for it is an eternally rendering landscape. The surroundings, however, will grow more disordered the farther away you get from the central area  – a vaguely defined zone known as the Lobby.

APPEARANCE / ARCHITECTURE / BASIC OUTLINE

The Library is essentially an Eldritch location, and not bound to any basic human-world laws regarding how it looks or how it works.  Bizarrchitecture is a given, and the place is constantly rearranging itself when you’re not looking. There’s a catch, though – depending on your proximity to the Lobby, the looks and the feel of the library might be more or less conventional. The architecture also varies following that principle. Within the inner rings you may expect rows of shelves and book-lined hallways, lounging areas, and familiar organization. Go to a different room or floor, though, and the set up will change: it may turn maze-like, or nonsensical, or take to following geometric patterns such as a grid of smaller, hexagonal rooms. Move farther away – in any direction – and directions may stop having any meaning.

Janus prefers to think of the Library of an ever growing sphere, with the Lobby dead in the middle. Because of this, the Library will take to organizing itself in this fashion when it comes to its levels of familiarity, but being a dimension, it really doesn’t have a shape. There’s no “exterior” to the sphere. In other words: Janus only cares to show other people a bubble-shaped fraction of the Library.

A better way to look at this is to consider the celestial spheres. Instead of the sun sitting at the center as the smallest sphere, you have the lobby. And every other sphere will represent a “ring”, or more precisely a bigger sphere.

LOBBY: if you ever visit the Library, this is likely where you’ll start off. It feels most like a conventional library, with a sitting area preceding shelves of books that line the walls and create several parallel hallways. It is a massive place. The books you find here will always vary, but their rarity will be medium to low. Other floors and rooms will mirror the layouts of famous libraries, not just from earth but from other worlds. A book of your life’s stats (a book that contains everything from how many hours you’ve slept to how many people have thought about you) is somewhere in here.

INNER RINGS: found when delving farther from the lobby, they still strike as familiar.  Things begin to get more maze-like. Surrealist architecture starts to show up. The necronomicon is here.

OUTER RINGS: Space stops following conventional structure, and alien geometries become the norm. Stuff gets messy. At this point, the average human is pretty much not equipped to handle all that is going on. Finding things is also harder than ever (not that it is easy at the lobby, mind you.)

NULL SPACE: this is the space that is either still not developed/yet to expand, or the forbidden corners of the library (places only Janus can visit) and it represents everything beyond the outer rings. At this point the landscape is in fact aggressive toward invaders (in comparison to the outer rings, which are unsafe/hostile, but not aggressive). Weird beings inhabit this area guarding it (without mention the sentient surroundings themselves) and there’s no incentive to ever reach this point. The risk of losing your sanity or dying is just too high.

BABEL TROPES

Great Big Library of Everything: well, that’s a given.

Great Big Book of Everything: it’s around there somewhere.

Big Book of War: a whole room of them, in the lobby.

Reality-Writing Book: several of them, in the outer rings.

Portal Book: somewhere between the lobby and the inner rings. Sometimes they are the only way into unique dimensions.

Tomes of Eldritch Lore: in the lobby.

Chronoscopes: in the lobby.

Spell Books: many in the lobby, with rarer ones on the rings.

Ancient Artifacts: a bunch. Depending on their rarity and danger, they will be anywhere from the lobby to null space.

MacGuffins: a given.

Tomes of Prophecy and Fate: found in the inner rings.

Akashic Records: all that is inside the library.

Magical Library: the library is alive, though not the way you consider things to be alive. It can feel, and do things on purpose, but mostly it behaves in a random fashion. See: Genius Loci.

Bizarrchitecture: found in small degree in the lobby and inner rings, and in greater degree in the outer rings and null space.

Eldritch Location: that’s what it is!

Year Inside Hour Outside: time… doesn’t work here, period. Years inside this library may sometimes represent seconds outside. Sometimes it may be the other way around. It depends on where you are exactly.

STATUS IN THE MULTIVERSE

There’s no other Babel. Only one accounts for the entire Multiverse, making it so it can’t split into multiple timelines. Because of this, it’s well protected by Janus in first instance and other gods and old beings that agree with Janus’ laborious task.

CONTENTS

Everything is in the library, or so Janus claims. The truth is that most average things will show up on their own, but those that don’t, he has to actively look for and acquire.

You will find: books, scrolls, runestones, paintings, sculptures, ancient technology, futuristic technology, computers (of all kinds), clothing, musical instruments, and more. Everything considered worth storing will eventually find its way into the library.

Because of this, sometimes he will employ the assistance of some followers, or hired bounty hunters called Finders. He’s done this for millennia. But if the object in question requires special treatment (or he’s bored), he will look for them himself.

HOW TO VISIT BABEL

*To get to Babel without Janus’ assistance is virtually impossible and it was designed this way. You can only visit Babel with his blessing and getting it is the difficult part. It cannot be forced out of him, and he must give it willingly – so he’s extra careful over who he allows inside. He can “close his doors” to you if you merit punishment, but this is something he doesn’t like to do. He’d rather be extra sure that you’re worthy. It may take thousands upon thousands of years for Janus to reach that conclusion (then again it may take less).

You can reach Babel by accident, in that you may be able to find one of the portal manuscripts or artifacts capable of taking you to Babel that he’s left at random locations, usually ruins, usually after a series of tests and puzzles. It is quite rare, but a god finds ways to entertain himself.

THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

There’s a myth that is well known in many timelines and non-existent in others: Janus was responsible for the definitive burning of the famous library. Julius Caesar’s idiot soldiers had accidentally started the fire that ate a part of the library, no doubt, but this was just the beginning of the mess. Such negligence and disregard (there were also many other little attacks and offenses afterwards that just added fuel to the whole thing, so to speak) for the knowledge stored in those books made janus consider humans unfit to care for them. He couldn’t bear the sight of such destruction, all done because of religious differences and political greed, so a couple of years afterwards (after Ceasar but before Aurelian) there was a second fire that did burn most of the library and left very little of it left. He took the Library of Celsus (back in Anatolia) in a similar fashion too, with a fire during an invasion, and transported them whole into Babel.

He’d never think to destroy the library,  but what he did was equally petty: he set back humanity a few hundred to a thousand years back, technology wise, for their immaturity.

[reyesmarconi]

saul never met his biological parents, but they were never a mystery to him.

berenice reyes, the woman who wound up adopting him when he was a young pup, had known them personally and quite well. enough that cristóbal and omahyra bautista had appointed berenice as saul’s legal guardian in case of tragedy striking. and when that happened – when they both died at the hands of hunters – that is exactly what took place: saul, then a helpless two year old, went to live and grow up around the reyes family.

and berenice told him plenty about his parents, always honest (thoughtfully so – saul came to learn more as he grew older) about who his parents were and what happened to them. saul never wondered how they looked like because berenice had pictures, photo albums where he could practically witness the development of cristóbal and omahyra’s relationship, and their relationship with berenice and the reyes. he never wondered what they did for a living because berenice told him – his mother made ends meet as seamstress and his father worked as a cobbler, and they owned a shop together in bushwick. beyond that, they were both more deeply entangled with the reyes’ more illicit activities as product distributors in the 80s. as it turns out, the bautistas were quite entangled with the reyes, an oddity as they were werewolves and normally, werewolves and werepumas never associated.

as a result of all of this, and berenice always having answers for saul’s young, curious mind – saul never grew up with any complex regarding his status as an orphan. he never considered himself an orphan, feeling the word had a certain tone of victimhood he could never relate to. he keeps a lot of items his parents used to own. he keeps photographs, and jewelry and even his father’s music records. and sure enough, he’s wondered what things would be like if they were alive – but he doesn’t dwell on it. and he considers berenice and emmanuel carlos his parents. he calls them mai and pai.

he doesn’t harbor particular resentment towards hunters either, at least beyond the usual dislike you’d expect. when he turned 19, he came to learn about the hunters’ fates – the reyes personally made sure they paid for their misdeeds.

[reyesmarconi]

IMMORTALITY

Given that he is an entity for whom space and time wields absolutely no meaning, Janus is unburdened by the possibility of death. He’s equipped with a regenerative factor that allows him to survive conventional injuries, and when facing anything more extreme – such as, for example, complete disintegration – he’s able to respawn/resurrect without much effort. He doesn’t age, doesn’t need to breathe, doesn’t get sick and his ingestion of food is largely recreational, though it does play a part in keeping things running smoothly from a physiological angle in his humanoid form. Why have organs if you won’t use them? That’s just wasteful, dude.

SPACETIME TELEPORTATION

Janus’s most distinctive power inherited from his primordial father is his ability to travel across the multiverse, hopping between dimensions as often as he voyages from one side of the continuum to the opposite into completely different or even bizarre dominions or planes of existence. Unless a greater force blocks passage into a particular dimension, Janus’ power has no limits and all axis of reality and unreality are available for him to engage.

He’s met multiple versions of the same person, even at different life stages, for he can go back and forth across the spectrum of time as well. Minor parallel dimensions are constantly sprouting in order to sort out all these incidences.

The ability to reconcile with the concept of infinitude and boundlessness is both a mental and physical job, often called The Consciousness. It happens both inside Babel (on a small cosmic scale) and with the multiverse itself; it’s an ability your average human does not have, just like your average human is not equipped to deal with the true forms of many other primordial beings and cosmic entities.

The mechanism of teleportation is gate or fire based. Janus can create portals into other dimensions, though their properties make it so only he can cross them safely – unless, of course, he’s explicitly projecting his ability so he can take people with him. They can be made out of thin air (“raw”) or they can take the form of gates or doors native to the world he’s in (“designed”). An example of the latter would be crossing an arbitrary entrance (walking into a building by the front door for example) only to wind up at a different universe. His fire-based teleportation is used primarily when taking objects into Babel, burning them with his touch until they become ashes, but he can burn himself or others to teleport too.

FIRE CREATION AND MANIPULATION

Janus has an intimate relationship with fire and energy. He’s immune to its damage, and he can manipulate its shape and size as well as give it a direction in an offensive attack, or he can extinguish it too. The fire he creates is special, for it can thrive in realms without the chemical properties necessary to sustain proper fire, as it is merely his energy given a familiar shape and temperament. It can act like normal fire, or it can be harmless to the touch, in which case it will be used for teleportation purposes and in lesser cases as a healing agent for biological tissues.

SHAPESHIFTING  

1. humanoid form: it’s the shape he uses most often to interact with the world at large, mostly out of custom, as it was the shape he was born in. it greatly emulates a human being on the outside, though he works at a different wavelength than one – his blood is denser and heavier, colored like liquid gold, and his internal organs are all fully functioning, but they are not vital. he’s stronger and faster than it’s normal for a human and physically, he takes after his mortal mother. he’s tall (6′4 / 194 cm) and heavier than he seems (270 lbs / 122 kg).

2. animalistic form: it resembles a great feline, specifically a golden tiger. he developed this form roughly around the same time he began to be associated with the deity of caishen. much like in the case of his humanoid form, it’s bigger and heavier than the normal animal, but it can also get even bigger than his basic size. his energy is more free-flowing in this shape, exuding aura-like out of his body, something he has to will in his human form. it can either look just a bit unusual or extremely abnormal.

3. primordial form: it takes after his father, which is to say, it has no definite shape, for its ruled by the viewer’s perception. it’s his energy given free reign. though he can tap into it anytime, he seldom uses it, for it has a tendency to disturb the general surroundings of the places he’s in (with the exception of babel) and has a correlation with the creation of space/time rifts that “disrupt the peace” of your otherwise slice of life universe if he’s not careful. in other words, he can inadvertently cause probability meltdowns or strange phenomena that otherwise does not occur (like perfect circles and other geometric impossibilities), on top of the customary effects on lesser living forms (insanity for humans, primal fright responses in animals).

BENEDICTION

Janus can bless people by having them drink a drop of his blood. Such blessing may grant the subject with a variety of gifts, usually depending on Janus’ intention – a predilection towards wealth and prosperity, an ease towards acquiring great knowledge, a special access to him and ability to summon him, healing from a certain illness and even a limited biological de-aging, in other words the chance to look and feel younger than you might really be.

Any attempts to use/steal/take Janus’ blood by force due to its desirable properties usually winds up being deadly for the assailant due to the toxicity his blood has otherwise.

CALLING

Janus can telepathically communicate with followers (easily) and non-followers (if he tries very hard)! He can be summoned via prayer as well as some sacrifices, and he’ll more often than not heed your call if you do it properly.

GOLDEN TOUCH + GOLD MANIPULATION

1. The ability to turn things (living or not) to solid gold by manner of physical contact. He seldom uses this power offensively. Instead, he uses it for when he needs money for whatever reason in worlds where precious metals are used as currency or have a high price value (like Earth), or to build things. He can revert the change.

2. By necessity that also means he can control gold and to a lesser degree other metals, although he can’t create them outright the way he can gold (he can create less pure versions of gold and alloys, which by necessity will have other metals added to it, like copper in the case of rose gold). Mostly, he can reshape and mold gold almost effortlessly.

babel-based

Inside Babel (which is, more or less, a habitable extension of Janus’ primordial energy – ergo, an Eldritch location, as well as a liminal space) Janus’ abilities are greatly amplified. This is his home realm, and he has a total control of what happens in it.

OMNISCIENCE

Nobody knows exactly how Babel works except Janus, and nobody knows exactly where everything is except for Janus. He’s the “Man of the Book”, so to speak, and without him Babel is about as easy to explore as a foreign country when you have absolute zero knowledge of the language or the culture.  Finding something in such a vast, infinite, and uncooperative place can only be done with Janus’ aid, who has empathic familiarity of the library and every one of the books in it.

It is limited to Babel, and outside the library, he knows a lot, but he doesn’t know everything.

OMNIPOTENCE

Janus can do anything inside Babel, not limited to the aforementioned list of powers. He can create and reshape and destroy reality in any way just by thinking of it, and he can engineer anything, including sentient life.  

[reyesmarconi]

JANUS + (CURRENT) HUMAN IDS

Unless it’s necessary, or preferable, Janus won’t disclose his identity to human beings while he’s doing business on Earth. Over the centuries he’s made up dozens upon dozens of names, some of which have become locally popular personalities in their own right. There’s probably someone out there that’s pieced together photographs and paintings of him, arguing that he must be proof of time travelers, or vampires, or aliens, or whatever else they prefer to make their case. He’s always considered it quite amusing, so sometimes he will leave a trail on purpose — intentionally mess up with the matrix, so to speak, just for fun.

In our present day (or rather, the period that makes up the 20th and 21st centuries) and all its variables, he will regularly* take up the following names:

Janos / Janus Ming: a Quebec-born art buyer, collector and philanthropist. Considered “eccentric” in the art circles, he’s known to be quite wealthy and enigmatic, with not many actually having seen his face. He’s known to be a fan of up-and-coming, or even obscure artists, and rumor has it that whenever he buys a piece from someone, that artist inevitably finds themselves becoming extremely popular and sought-after, almost as if by magic. He also holds an interest in artwork and archeological artifacts of renown, especially if it holds great historical and cultural significance, though not for collection purposes. Janos keeps a close eye on the art market for these pieces, and is quick to bid on them (usually through intermediaries/agents) when they show up. Then he proceeds to donate all of them to the governments of their respective countries of origin, or other proper organizations. This is his most used alias.

Jael Huang: an assistant librarian and researcher. Graduated top of his class, he most often works in academia, but he’ll also work at libraries or freelance.

Laurent Fournier: a travel writer and author of 12 travel books, 4 of which have gone best seller. Not a fan of the term “foodie”. Still referred to as that anyways.

Lawrence Kao: a professor at the University of Cambridge with focuses on European and Chinese archeology. This ID was used most during the first half of the 20th century. Lawrence supposedly died during an expedition, though his body was never found. Nowadays he prefers to play the part of Lawrence’s grandson, also named after him, a skilled freelance archeologist in his own merit.

There’s both truthful and false elements to these identities, which is what makes them so peculiar. Although Janus certainly made up a lot of things as he went along using these names, he also genuinely worked under them. What he actually did or didn’t do isn’t really what matters to him.

*there’s of course personas he makes up on the spot when the situation calls for it. He’s impersonated all types of people.

[reyesmarconi]

* on janus’ godhood, and what it meant for his humanity and his relationship with the earth.

“i come from wartime. how it burned me. / i was born aflame, i believe. a sun / so intentional. a sun in repose, a sun / in continuous sunset, sinking into the ground.” (1)

though janus came from the union between a great old god and a human woman, janus does not consider himself a demigod/semideus, even if it’s the most accurate word for what he is. perhaps at the beginning, when he was still figuring himself out, he took more warmly to the idea, but as his skills developed, his ambition grew, and his aspiration to become a proper god was born. not wanting to live in anyone’s shadow (regardless of whether the shadow existed or not) janus set out to become god pure or for the most part, independent from any other deity including his father, and he was determined to achieve this, even if meant dissociating himself from humanity and the aspects that made him “human”.

“you used to be alive, now you’re almost mythic.” (2)

this was a partially conscious, partially unconscious decision. it all started as a light disregard that, over the span of centuries, amplified into full blown contempt toward mankind. it was no doubts connected to deeply-rooted feelings of social isolation (that existed well before he even became aware of his divine background) and the growing distance he felt toward mortals due to their (as he perceived it) willing ignorance. in other words, as janus grew more secure in his otherness, he began to hate the arrogance of humans, their bloodlust, and the sheer self-absorption that pushed them into killing in general, but in particular that made them kill enlightenment, and how information itself was weaponized or even completely discarded in favor of deliberate lies.

it was around this time that janus found himself shaped into the harshest version of himself, yet, a punitive being that set fire to whole libraries (alongside with their invaders) in response to unmeasured conflict (as it happened in alexandria), and a callous deity who pushed humanity back hundreds of years more than once as means of retribution. when he didn’t manage to do this before humans got to it (like it happened with the siege of Baghdad), he took to unleashing calamities upon them. being already the god of knowledge and patron of artists and scientists, janus became also the protector of rebels, of rogues, and agitators and intellectual revolutionaries. he became the thief god, that would destine you to a life of (economic and intellectual) ruin if you did something he disapproved of. if he didn’t outright kill you or drive you mad, that is.

he was also less patient in his artifact finding efforts in other worlds. though he still preferred to outwit other gods and monsters, he was also quicker to kill them if he found them to be too uncooperative.

i am a drop of gold–i am molten matter returned from the core of the earth to tell you interior things— (3)

as a god, he set out to demand blood. if you aspired to a higher understanding of the world and the things in it, you had to give up parts of yourself. like odin gouging out his own eye, janus demanded fingers, tongues, and even whole limbs and yes, eyes, and when he wasn’t satisfied enough with carnal sacrifices, he demanded bits of people’s minds, too. similar exchanges happened over wealth. making pacts with him was not unlike making deals with the “devil” or fae, because they came at a great cost. he became known as a god of truth, an ironic thing since he wasn’t able to discern lies/truth outright, and instead happened to often know more than his adversaries (be it mortals or other gods and monsters), which helped him detect attempts at deceiving him. eventually, since he was rumored to be able to know when you lied to him (even though he couldn’t), the fear of lying to him made people be overly honest with him, which retroactively (for a “brief” period of time) gave him the ability to discern the truth from the lie, all thanks to Belief. if it’s twisty and confusing, that’s because it is.*

also interesting to note that he very rarely used his human shape during this period. as a way to further elevate himself, and set himself apart, he took to his animal shape and it’s why many people that believe in him from this period only see him as a in an animalistic, tiger-like shape (a shape which is associated with deities that initially began as interpretations of him, like caishen and huye, and that later retroactively became their own independent myths).

“i was born in a forest. / i don’t know my name. / i was born on a mountain but changed / my mind. i was born / in the desert.” (1)

“who defined me? my culture, a culture of mercy, a living codex. i am a unique culture of one, from everywhere – i am everyone in the story; I am the story.” (4)

another thing janus did to separate himself from his human background was burying it. no one knows janus’ human name. no one knows exactly when or where he was born, though they can guess it to be somewhere before the birth of christ, in the territory of current taiwan. no one knows what came to be of his mother, though it is true that despite everything he loved her far more than he could ever feel anything toward his father (whom he’s never met, to this day). he took the name of janus, a forgotten roman god, as his go-to identification, but he actually possesses many, many other names that come up depending on the time period or even the universe he inhabits, and it has earned him the title of thousand-named god. he’s operated under the names of other deities, like hermes/mercury, caerus, and apollo, and he’s earned names in other realms of existence, like zhaogd'endir (which is the closest thing to his real cosmic name), iuxuixurh, and l'iach. he still answers to each, and every one of these names, though he’s taken to going by janus unless he needs to further identify himself.

ultimately, despite everything he’s done to set himself apart from mortals and the earth itself, he remains a god defined by his very human origin, and his very human motivations. his desire to build the library of babel, for one, was an escalation from his desire for keeping his mother’s artworks, which were threatened to be destroyed during a regime change/hostile takeover of the city they lived in. this desire, with time, expanded into becoming the main purpose of his existence. with time, he came to understand that he couldn’t actually stop humans (and other lesser beings, for that matter) from doing the things they did (and the times he has experimented with doing, so have backfired), but he can save these items, and he can keep them in a place where they can’t ever be destroyed or misused. from this simple, personal wish, came a cosmic-scale effort that continues on to this day.

indeed, as he grew older, he became much more patient and understanding, and thus less cruel. it took a couple of epiphanies, but the more he ruminated on the things he truly appreciated about humans, the more he deemed his past actions as juvenile acting out. his experiences turned him wise, and he developed a more blithesome and whimsical temperament as a result. he’s warmer now; softer and more open towards things like forgiveness.

it’s important to note he’s still not exactly wholesome: although in hindsight he dislikes how he used to be, he doesn’t regret any of the more questionable things he’s done and bodies he’s burned, and while he will go for more pacifist problem-solving techniques, he can and he will resort for more drastic MO’s if necessary.

tldr: janus used to be a real dick when he was a younger god. and he’s still a dick but not as much.

*basically in the nulliverse, Belief can actively attribute powers to gods they might not otherwise have (it requires believers honestly thinking their gods capable of these feats). Belief can also be used to confere powers to mortals, to a lesser extent. (1) genealogy by camille rankine. (2) songs and stories of the ghouls by alice notley (3) autobiography of red by anne carson (4) culture of one by alice notley

[reyesmarconi]

Joaquín’s original, non-human form resembles a great jaguar, an animal that is quite special in the Mesoamerican cultural landscape, just as much as the puma is for northern and southern regions. Many of Joaquin’s behavioral aspects tie back to this, like how he moves, how he interacts, and how he goes about reaping souls to take with him to the afterlife.

And while the jaguar often goes for the deep throat-bite, it might occasionally employ a different technique that happens to be unique amongst felines: directly perforating its prey’s skull through the temporal bones until they reach the brain. Seeing as how the animal has a considerable bite force, this isn’t particularly difficult. While Joaquín didn’t need to hunt and kill prey for sustenance in the netherworld, he used this exact method to finish off souls that wouldn’t be allowed further reincarnations.

In his human form, Joaquín replicates the maneuver with a knife. When a person is dead or close to dying, Joaquín penetrates the skull right through the pterion, the point near the ear where the frontal, parietal, temporal, and sphenoid bones join together, and the weakest region of the skull. It is said in aequist worship that it’s through this area that the consciousness most easily escapes the human body.

The knife itself has no magical properties beyond those Joaquín gives it (or Marena, for that matter; the knife acts as an outlet that lets him know, through its hunger, when a soul is apt to be taken). It’s been with him for a few decades (the knife itself comes from Mexico and dates from around the time of the revolution) and its six inch blade remains perfectly sharp.

[reyesmarconi]

fenrir’s human form is a glamour, an ability he inherited from his father, loki, who’s capable of changing shapes. this form is the one he uses to interact with people most frequently if they’re not equipped to deal with his true form. it’s important to note that though he looks like a human, and feels like a human, it will always be a disguise and nothing more, for he was born as a pitch black wolf and that is what he ultimately is. as a result, fenrir does not adhere to concepts most humans and humanoids take for granted. he is completely amoral and does not concern himself with constructs like restraint, laws, and fighting fair. fenrir is driven largely by instincts and gut reactions – if you threaten him, he will fight back. if he’s cornered, he will not hesitate to kill. he relies on his senses to gauge situations and he is always hyperaware of how everything smells and sounds like.

the shape also takes a lot of focus and control on his part to assume, and it may waver at times, especially in moments of great stress – presence of claws, changes in eye color and sharpening of fangs are common ocurrences when fenrir is agitated.

[reyesmarconi]

FENRIR + GODHOOD / WOLFHOOD.

although it is not explicitly expressed in any particular attestation (that i know of), i do chose to view fenrir as a god of wolves – on top of being the norse god of destruction. this due to his status as the most significant, infamous wolf in the mythology, as well as the oldest, fiercest and largest of angrboda’s offspring. keeping this in mind, i choose to view him as the ultimate symbolic representative of what wolves are in norse mythology.

DESTRUCTIVENESS AND WOLF SYMBOLISM

wolves, in northern europe, were subject to an complex treatment:

on one hand: they were a true threat for the average peasant, whose experience with them was that of a beastly predator that threatened their flocks and even the peasants themselves and their children. there’s even the case of the wolfssegner, typically destitute elderly men who made a living in certain germanic tribes selling charms against wolf attacks, or casting malevolent spells that would prompt them. their customers were, naturally, farmers and peasants. throughout the working class and the poor there’s this commonality of viewing wolves as destructive forces, as malevolent. yet, on the other hand, the warrior classes saw the wolf for his might – his power, his wildness, and fierceness – as well as social traits, his capability for pack bonds. wolves were also associated with odin, having two wolves as his pets (geri and freki) and of all berserkers it’s the wolf warriors (the úlfhéðnar) who are sometimes seen as odin’s special warriors. when they’re viewed on this angle they’re seen as noble, brave, loyal, and wise.

as a rule, the pack was seen as a symbol of camaraderie, and it was lone wolves who were the problem. the word for outlaw in northern europe was “wolf’s head”, referring to the bounty on the severed heads of lone wolves who became a problem to settled villages and needed to be exterminated.

well, fenrir didn’t get to be seen as noble, loyal, or wise. in many ways he is the prototypical lone wolf figure – kidnapped by the aesir, torn from his clan and family to keep him from becoming the predicted destructive force he was to become. he was denied a pack, and so ironically it only pushed him further toward rebellion and mayhem; he grows progressively but quickly and as he grows he turns even more of a ravenous threat in the gods’ eyes, forcing the gods to bind him. it’s easy to see the similarities, how commonfolk’s fear of wolves – especially the lone wolf – would be reflected in their deities. as a jotunn, and more specifically a rokkr, fenrir represents nature’s more destructive qualities, a chaotic primordial force that can be interpreted as downright hostile to mankind. yet, seeing him only in a negative light is limiting, in my opinion, everything that fenrir is, and it’s just plain inaccurate, as it is framing fenrir in the absolutist moral framework of christianity. the jotnar are not evil, they’re not demons, they’re merely oppositional to the aesir because of the inherent way their essences and wants (to be amongst nature and accept it as is, good and bad) clash with the aesir’s wants (to tame nature’s useful side for their benefit and fight against its more harmful aspects to protect themselves and mankind). the struggle against fenrir is one of the most elementary examples of this jotnar/aesir conflict.

fenris is, in many ways, jotun essence taken to its furthest point, its ultimate uncompromised end. this means understanding that when we say that the jotnar are, by nature, part of nature… that means also that they partake of the entirety of nature and not just the euphemized happy bits that we like to pretend are what nature “really is”. every part of nature is dangerous and not terribly disposed to privilege humans over any other part. the sea eats people, the fire lays waste to countrysides, the ice storm freezes you, the earth will receive your corpse and fill it with maggots. our planet whirls around a sun that will burn out, in a galaxy that will wind down and disintegrate before it can explode again into life.

to understand these things as not only “not negative” but as awesome, mind‑bending, even beautiful ‑ that’s how we understand jotun nature. it’s terrifying, yes ‑ and there is also a good and benevolent side, but you don’t get only that aimed at you, ever. it’s about accepting the whole package without this secret fingers‑crossed idea that if they just like you enough, the forces of nature will make a special exception for you. and that doesn’t work.

to see Fenris is to see a magnificent creature who must be chained, or he’ll eat the world. it’s seeing the grandeur of a hurricane, an earthquake, a solar flare, and knowing that this too is the hand of the divine… and at the same time knowing that they will do terrible harm. Fenris is what he is, entirely and fully, and he will not compromise himself to be anything else for anyone else… even if he must be bound. are there things about your nature that you would rather be imprisoned than compromise? If not, then perhaps you might not understand Fenris. he embodies our ambivalence toward the universe, which sees us as expendable flecks of dust. … and the only way to get around that is to see from a higher perspective, one that can appreciate the divinity of ambivalences.- X

fenrir is not just an agent of change. he is change itself, the ultimate threat on the status quo of the gods. and because of that, as he brings about ragnarok, he’s an agent of renewal and transformation.

fenrir, like the wolf’s hook cross, is a representation of unchangeable fate. there is an aura of fatality surrounding him that the gods sense, and none more so than odin, because it is primarily his existence which is subject to fenrir’s whim. odin, having heard the prophecies of the volva (fenrir’s own mother, angrboda) knew that his son balder would be slain, that his brother hodur would do this act. that the rökkr forces would break free of their bonds, and destroy the gods. and that finally he, odin, would die within the massive jaws of fenrir.

thus, the binding of fenrir with gleipner is nothing but a postponement of the inevitable. it is merely an instance of the gods, and odin in particular, performing, and realizing, their role. for, although the fate incurred by fenrir may be unavoidable and unchangeable, it does not necessarily mean defeat or resignation. one of the great lessons of the rökkr is that this life is nothing, that there is no integral meaning to it, and that it can all so easily be consumed by fenrir. the purpose of living, then, is to realize this truth, and then to build ones own worth and meaning from existence. - X

PATRON OF WOLVES, WARGS, AND WEREWOLVES

fenrir is not a friendly god, and he’s not an easy god to worship. he’s not even a welcoming god. he’s demanding, intense and he can see through the souls of the most hard-hearted individuals, and frighten them. for him, vacuous violence and bloodlust isn’t enough – he demands your sincerity, your raw emotion, your anger; you need to be true to him or he will not bother with you, and in fact might even offend him and make him hostile. humans, in particular, need a specially strong connection to nature (physical nature, and their inner nature) in order to connect with him. and if you do manage that, he can make an unstoppable force out of you. he is, on top of everything else, a god of last resorts and if you’re ever in dire need of protection you can count on him to intervene.

this all being said, humans are not his only believers. they’re not even his main believers, since people tend to turn to more approachable (and relatable) deities like the aesir first. fenrir focuses mainly on wolves, and in midgard it’s not entirely rare for him to be near them, helping them, or using them as emissaries. he focuses on wargs, the norse wolf-like beings that inhabit ironwood alongside the volvas, considering he’s the oldest of them, and his mother reigns over them as chieftess. and he focuses lastly on werewolves.

regardless of a werewolf’s origin, fenrir’s nature is such that most wolves will feel a connection to him. they will feel drawn to fenrir, and perceive his paradoxical otherness/familiarity and his power. however, it’s up to them how they will respond to it. a lot of them do worship him (there might be one or two doomsday cults/packs out there waiting for his reckoning), and there might be sacrifices done his name. but a lot of them, when encountered with his presence, chose to ignore his influence, or even respond defensively. regardless, fenrir does not take this personally. werewolves are just as human as they’re wolves and so they carry an egocentrism that is, in his opinion, wholly theirs. still, it’s not rare for him to occasionally encounter mortally wound werewolves (particularly lone werewolves!) and offer them a chance at survival, or keep them company while they feel alone and heal.

[reyesmarconi]

flor doesnt actually know anything about guatemala beyond what her mother and mother’s friends tell her. her mom was pregnant when she arrived to america and she -flor- was born on american soil. so for all intends and purposes america is her home. she does feel a weird sort of nostalgia for the place when she looks at pictures of her mother and relatives and friends having a good time, and when she listens to music, but she doesn’t miss it, necessarily, because she does not know what it’d been like to live there. and because her mother’s parents were murdered during the war, as well as her mother’s 2 siblings, and her own father. that plus the total history of the civil war, and she cannot fully feel a positive connection to the place. but she does want the best for the country.

more on her: she doesnt know much about her father. she knows his name was felipe. she thinks he was either a farmer or a musician. he likely was both at some point. but, he was also a guerrillero, a member of egp, the guerrilla army of the poor, an active leftist insurgency movement during the guatemalan civil war. once disappearances and assassinations started to become really widespread and systematic against mayan indigenous groups and leftists, felipe helped smuggle groups throughout the country and out of it. he was kidnapped and disappeared. days later what was presumed to be his body was hung from a tree among a bunch of other ones. he’d been tortured, drowned, before being hung. by then flor’s mother carmen was on the road, heading for the border to mexico accompanied by close friends. the plan had been for her to leave first, make it sefely to america accompanied by trusted associates, and then felipe would go. but he was abducted first.

flor does not know the full story of what happened to her father. she does not even know the depth of her mother’s immigration journey, which was also rife with near-death experiences. this is really by design. carmen doesn’t want her worrying about those things. she believes the past is the past. she describes her experiences as hard but doesn’t give many personal specifics. she told flor her father was abducted and was never found, doesnt actually specify that he was factually murdered. she told her she immigrated with the help of felipe’s friends, who happened to be guerrilleros, not that he himself was one. she overall does not paint a rosy picture but she makes it a bit more distant in her descriptions.

when she was old enough, she learned that most of her mother’s side of the family was dead, and that his father’s was unaccounted for but was likely dead as well. she has several godfathers and godmothers, people that immigrated with carmen that she was already close to, or became close to during the travels, but she does not have blood family to speak of.

her mother went thru the rounds as house cleaner, waitress, hotel cleaner, cashier, etc. she also got into selling knitted things. she and flor lived in an apartment with two other women until carmen could afford a slightly better place. by then flor was 5. and she lived there with her mother until she was 22.

[reyesmarconi]

one of fenrir’s alternative names is vánagandr, usually translated to mean “monster of ván”, with ván translated to expectation, or even hope, if we want to get poetic. however, there’s the possibility that gandr also means soul, making fenrir not only the monster of hope but also the soul of hope.

ván is the river that forms from his open jaws when he’s howling in anger/pain because of the sword stuck through his throat, so the hope (to be free, to eat, to exact revenge, et al) literally comes from him. it comes from his mouth. which is why i choose to see hope as one of his domains: he is a being defined by his hunger and his desire.

[reyesmarconi]

is fenrir currently bound? yes. he’s still tied with gleipnir to a boulder. he’s still bleeding through his jaw, still stabbed through his muzzle and feeling a blade against his tongue. he’s “living” in lyngvi, completely on his own, starving but never dying, the amsvartnir still around him, the ván river still flowing from his mouth.

is fenrir currently unbound? yes. fenrir can effortlessly move through all realms including the sky, where he chases after the sun and moon, and including helheim, where he’s called garmr. on earth, he goes by raúl ocasio and pretends to be human, has pretended for quite a few centuries now.

how can these two aspects reconcile? fenrir is more expansive than a single body would allow. it needs to be taken into account that time, for him, does not work in the same way as it does for humans. time for him works closer to how it works for the trickster loki, his father, who’s in a similar position of being bound whilst also being able to roam freely. simply put, fenrir’s essence is split into several fragments, and his soul remains in lyngvi, still tied up and still unable to escape - until ragnarok arrives. only when that happens, will he be able to actually be free and become one.

as for what it entails for fenrir and his capabilities, well, without his core, he’s nowhere near as formidable. he’s being actively restrained, and while he’s powerful still – enough to kill easily and effortlessly dispatch beings that get in the way, including gods – he cannot kill odin and he can’t eat the world whole if he wanted to. moreover, and this is something that should put a lot of things in perspective: fenrir’s in pain at every minute of every hour, and it’s a direct result of the torment his soul’s being put through. on most days he can tolerate this phantom full body pain, but somedays it flares, it peaks like a paroxysmal burst and renders him completely irrational and heated and out of it. it’s this, the torture he’s been undergoing for millennia  now, and the peritraumatic stress that carries along with it, why fenrir is so hypervigilant, so aggressive, so determined to snuff out perceived threats to himself and his authority and why he’s never to be taken lightly – he’s literally always on edge. on the other hand, he’s also grown completely desentisized to any physical violence and injuries – it’s nothing to him.

[reyesmarconi]

João Miguel Francisco Zaga Galhardo alias Frank Zaga. Born in 1970 in  Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, to a freshly established Brazilian mother who worked as a housekeeper, he pretty much modeled himself after the older, meaner boys in his neighborhood in the lack of a proper male figure. Flippant and very friendly, he met Charles when they were in their early twenties in the underground fighting scene. Back then Frank was a bit of a scumbag, a con artist of sorts; he readily participated in the rigging of fights in order to make more money than he would by winning fairly – even if he was very talented. It didn’t much matter if he ended up beaten black and blue, so long as he got paid a lump sum for it.

Things went pretty well until he got involved into different types of scams. By then, his gig was found out, and his best friend and partner in the operation, Tomás Ribeiro, was brutally murdered as a result by the Colombian gang that operated the fighting rings at the time. Frank also had to cough up a considerable amount of money in order to not die as well, leaving him practically destitute.

He was 23 at the time, a year younger than Charles. It was the summer of 1993. The experience rattled him and filled him with inmense regret, and he stopped involving himself in crime altogether. Instead he picked up a string of low paying jobs and a drinking habit.

After half a year of aimlessness, he decided to go to college for an Associate’s Degree in Criminal Justice. Surprising everyone that knew him (he’d always been an underachiever), he also managed to graduate. After training under a private investigator for a couple years, he managed to get his PI license.

Turns out he’s a good fighter, but he’s an even better detective. By his 30s, he’s a bit of a local celebrity, having been responsible for solving the highly-publicized disappearance of 8 year old Arlene Kelly. Other than pretty much the highlight of his career, his regular cases are far more banal, but every so often he will get involved in a case that offers more than meets the eye. It helps that, although he’s a “civilian” now, he’s still fairly well connected and knowleadgable about the crime going on in Queens, and New York City as a whole.

He meets Charles again in 1999. He’s tasked by finding new information regarding the disappearance of Patrick Tessier, a financial manager from Manhattan. Tessier has been dead for like 3 years and there’s been like no leads and no signs that the case is getting solved. Police have bigger things in their plate, so Frank is hired by Tessier’s family as a desperate last ditch effort to get some answers about what happened to him.

He and Charles end up meeting – and recognizing each other – in a bar in Hell’s Kitchen a week after he accepts the case. They talk, they drink, they flirt a little, and Frank ends up dropping Tessier’s name just as an aside. “It’s a lost cause,” he declares. “No body, no witnesses, no suspects. I almost feel bad, taking money from a grieving mother. But she insisted, y'know? Wouldn’t take no from an answer. I told her I’d take a look, but I wouldn’t make no guarantees. If police can’t find a missing rich guy, no one can. S’ how I feel about it, anyway.”

The whole time Charles listened attentively – shrugging and smiling wryly at the right times, Frank didn’t notice anything weird about his behavior. Far as he knew, Charles had always been a quiet, serious type. Even when he smiled, even when he laughed, you could tell he wasn’t an expressive guy.

They end up sleeping together that night. Frank continues to investigate, Charles continues with whatever else he’s doing. But they like each other’s company enough to strike up a friendship.

Eventually Frank does find some interesting things he feels the policemen ignored, or probably chose to ignore as to preserve the dead man’s dignity – guy was a closeted homosexual or at the very least bisexual. Not something Tessier’s mother was very proud of, either, given that she was in blunt denial of the fact – even though Patrick Tessier was a New York bachelor in his thirties with a cushy job and time to spare. He doesn’t know if it had anything to do with his disappearance, but it was interesting nonetheless. After hours digging through his apartment (that the Tessiers still owned), he ended up finding his porn stash, and after some fiddling with the safe, getting well acquaintanced with just what types of “interests” he had.

He was an interesting guy, alright.

Anyway, he doesn’t end up getting anywhere. Whole case is a failure, as he pretty much suspected it’d be, and he tries to only charge for only half the time he spent on the case out of guilt, but Margaret Tessier hears none of it. She pays him and tells him to always keep his son in mind.

So he does. The years past and he still thinks about it. Whenever he’s bored he reviews the case file he built on Patrick and tries to come up with something out of thin air. A new insight or new angle that will help him make sense out of this nothingness. After all, by that point he had built something of a reputation solving impossible cases, and this – despite his own wariness – was a reminder he was still fallible.

In the meantime Charles and Frank grow to be close. Charles even helps him with a few cases. They develop an intimate friendship. Frank gets to hold Cael as a child. He becomes a honorary uncle of sorts.

They’re in their forties by the time Charles confesses what he did to Patrick Tessier.

At first, disbelief. Then, as Charles elaborates, the disbelief gives way to anger, for some reason, and then just demanding to know more.

Charles tells Frank about Tessier’s involvement in many a few deaths, including the death of a close friend of his. All of them sex workers. All of them gay. All of them forgettable deaths in the eyes of the city.

Frank eventually comes to understand it. He never had the full picture, both Patrick and Charles made sure of that; Patrick by being extremely secretive about his relationships, Charles by burying whatever evidence had been left of this side of Tessier’s life.

He comes to understand. With time, he comes to shed whatever empathetic image he had built of Tessier over the years. And he comes to shred his case file.

[reyesmarconi]

between the ages 18 and 24, but most frequently between ages 19 and 23, charles dabbled in sex work. at first, mostly when he was in need of money or saw he could get a direct reward, like food, a place to sleep, or a ride, especially while he was hitchiking. sometimes the transaction was straight forward, sometimes it was not implicitly discussed that there was an exchange being made – this was mostly the case when he was living truck stop to truck stop.

in his mind it just made sense. his biggest concern was running out of money in the middle of nowhere, and he did anything he could to make extra cash. he would offer to work under the table, he would offer to fix things that were broken around the place, and if he didn’t find anything, then he would resort to stealing. he knew how to lockpick doors and he knew how to pickpocket and he would shoplift whenever he could. he also – in the mutant variant of this verse – would hunt for prey or use it to rob people more easily but he preferred to be discrete about his mutation because of the risks (and he didn’t want word of a shapeshifter getting to his father via news or anything of the sort). so if the opportunity presented itself that he could make some money in exchange for sex – then yeah, he took it.

he tried to be safe about it, at least as much as he could. it was the late 80s and the beginning of the 90s and he was a small town kid but he knew what was going on around him. even in rockford he knew of people with hiv, saw the discrimination they were put through. he saw the news on tv and he tried to learn and read as much as he could. in 1987 it came to be known that condoms worked for hiv prevention, and so he lived by those words. he tried to be careful and always wore protection, either for work-related sex or regular sex.  

it was in new york that his tactics shifted slightly. he would go to the piers and eventually would befriend a few of the people working there (including and especially his closest one, love) and he would do his usual thing and offer his service but he would also become a kind of bodyguard for the people there to make sure things go safely; he would tail them (this was magnitudes easier through his mutation) and he would intervene if things got violent and after the act he would walk them home and he would come to help several people out of unsafe situations. he was usually paid a small percentage for the extra protection that he provided. he came to be known for this in these circles.

he did this on top of the underground fighting, and on top of whatever legal work he could find (mechanic work, primarily). and he used this money to help with rent and with clothes and food. it’s around this point that he began to save up money, and as he established himself more as a fighter, he stopped doing as much escorting as he used to and began to get involved in other trades. by the time he was 25 he was no longer doing sex work.

[reyesmarconi]

of all the gods i could associate with charles (and i used to spend decent amounts of time coming up with these assocations for my characters in the past), hephaestus has always been the most fitting one and the one I am most fond of (his board on pinterest is even named after heph!). it was harder to gauge why back then when I wrote charles as younger than he is; you would have expected for the fight/combat aspect of his character to be highlighted, and for him to be some kind of warrior god, rather than me focusing on the craftsmanship aspect, but I’ve always seen that part of him as more important, even if fighting is such a pervasive element of his story. charles has always been a tinkerer, he likes to break things apart to then put them back together because that is how he understands the world around him, and he likes to create and design and engineer. he’s a hands on individual and kinesthetic learner, and that’s all things I associate with heph too, and in turn why I really associate hephaestus with charles. there’s also, of course, the conflictive relationship they’ve got with their parents, and something that helped seal the deal for me too – the seeming status as an outsider among the other gods. from my reading, people (and gods) like to single Hephaestus out for a variety of reasons, from being the ‘ugly’ one to the 'imperfect’ (due to his disability) one to the humiliation he suffered by being thrown off mt olympus (twice), and almost dying (twice), because gods aren’t meant to be or experience any of that. and that’s something that really resonates, and something key to, I guess, my characterization. you can easily interpret Heph as being a bit alienated from the other gods, despite the fact that he works for them so often and so closely. there’s a level of distance, but rather than find resentment in this, hephaestus actively embraces it. I see Hephaestus as perfectly comfortable with his (as others call them) “imperfections”. he does not hide them, he does not shy away from them, and insults in regards to any of them do not faze him. as a result, others either respect him or just try to stay away. and both of those things suit him just fine — he has a reclusive personality and likes to pour his time onto his work, and does not concern himself with the opinions of others. heph doesn’t really give a fuck about what anyone thinks.