I have a little bit of news for anyone in the Seattle area! There is going to be a six-month pop up bookstore called Paper Pushers, run by the Seattle Printers' Guild, and they will be carrying a small run of my Infernal Psalms zine! (As well as a non-Ghost zine I made last year, called Pursuivant)
The bookstore will open April 26th and run through November, and can be visited at 1200 5th Ave in downtown Seattle (the former IBM building.) It sounds like there will be lots of other neat zines and art and gifts there, too.
For anyone not local to Seattle though, or who can't make it to the store, I am working on getting things ready to sell my zines online. And for every 13 heraldry I complete for this project, there will be a new Infernal Psalms issue.
So, a while back I did a homebrew background I called a functionary, for that quintessential pen-pusher of a character. And one of the bonds I spitballed was ‘Nobody has seen more people hurt because of numbers on a piece of paper than I have.’ And I was looking at the Phantom Rogue today, because I really like the literally haunted subclasses, and the thought merged back with that line from that background I wrote a year ago. Someone haunted, to the extent of a genuine supernatural connection to death, by the deaths that result from numbers on a piece of paper.
So. Let’s build a character on a theme of guilt. A functionary, a fussy little paper pusher, whose numbers led to a lot of death, and who for once had to witness it, and who walked away scarred and haunted by the experience.
I was thinking about war or maybe torture, but I didn’t want … I wasn’t going for the size and malice and obliviousness of that. Something smaller. Meaner. Messier. I wanted her to be genuinely innocent, genuinely ignorant, not of one vast conspiracy but of everyday mundane misuse. So. Cost-cutting. An industrial accident. Let’s go for wealth and numbers and the lives cost by it. I decided on a mine collapse. And a murder. And one haunted pen-pusher who now carries a big knife, and is determined that if people die for her actions now, they’ll die in person, by her actual hands, and without the shield of numbers that she can pretend don’t mean lives.
A rogue. A phantom rogue. A haunted subclass for a life dictated by guilt. Rue Horineth.
[Note: I kind of want to work out a similar vibe for a character in PF2e, using the bookkeeper background, the rogue class, and possibly the exorcist or ghost hunter archetype?]
Ideal: If death is going to be the result of your actions, then you should look at it. You should face it, face what you’ve done, and refuse to look away. Only when you can look your ghosts in the eye and admit what you’ve done to them will the scales be somewhat balanced.
Bond: I try to keep track of the survivors of the mine collapse. I wrote to some of them, afterwards, trying to apologise. Some of them, for reasons I will never understand, have written back. There’s a few towns I do frequent, as much as I can, and a few taverns who’ll keep letters for me.
Flaw: Guilt. I am haunted by the thousand cutbacks and demands and measures that my quotas put in place and which I never saw as anything but manipulating numbers on a sheet, I’m haunted by the mine collapse that resulted from them and the horrors that I saw on site that day, I’m literally haunted, at least I believe I am, by the spirits of the miners killed that day, and last but not least I am haunted by the lord and master that I (possibly?) murdered in my fit of madness and grief following the collapse. I don’t remember committing the murder, and it’s possible that the ghosts I’d seen from the corner of my eye for weeks beforehand possessed me to do the deed and get their vengeance, but it’s equally possible that I murdered him myself, and that I’m only telling myself I was possessed to distance myself, yet again, from the blood, not ink, that coats my hands.
Personality: Originally, Rue was a rather fussy and, shall we say, rigid personality, who liked tweaking and playing with things within very set boundaries. Numbers were her game, and she enjoyed, to the limited extent that she enjoyed much of anything, arranging things so that the numbers lined up and did pleasing things.
This personality has … changed, at least somewhat, as a result of horror, trauma and guilt. Her numbers, as a result of her narrow-minded focus and ignorance of the actual lives they were attached to, resulted in mass death in a mine collapse, and Rue believes herself to be quite literally haunted by those deaths. As well as the later murder that resulted from them. Several years on the run and drinking to try and drown out the ghosts have resulted in a more erratic and occasionally aggressive mien. And yet, despite that, Rue’s soul is orderly at heart. She still does her best to keep things, if not quite orderly, then at least well-arranged.
Description: Rue is, quite simply, the single most forgettable-looking person in creation. A slight, androgenous non-entity with sandy brown hair and a pair of spectacles, she was quite used to being seen as simply an adjunct or vehicle for the various ledgers and pieces of paper she carried around, a clipboard with some arms and legs and a surprisingly pleasant voice attached. Hard living and hard drinking in the years since have changed her appearance slightly, but not enough to draw any actual attention. It tends to be her behaviour that does that.
History: A reasonably well-educated and neat young woman with a talent for numbers, Rue eventually gained a position among the staff of a very wealthy lord whose lands happened to control several of the most profitable silver mines in the kingdom. Most profitable, and most dangerous. Not that Rue knew particularly much about that. Her job was to collate and tabulate and project numbers, and to inform her lord when those numbers were doing things that were pleasing, and when they were doing things that were less pleasing. And, importantly, to send correspondence to the sources of said numbers informing them when they were less than pleasing, and suggesting various means to make them more pleasing again. It was a job, it has to be said, that she did enjoy.
Until.
Every so often, the lord would go on an inspection of his various mines, to personally examine them and put the fear of, well, himself into the foremen, and also to be seen overseeing his work and the lifeblood of his lands. On one occasion, he took Rue and her numbers of the tour, in an effort to use her and her ledger as a blunt instrument to terrorise several of the more struggling mines into turning more profit. This was Rue’s first experience of the realities of the mines. Oh, not in them, she wasn’t going into the actual tunnels or anything, but it was her first seeing the people attached to her numbers, the conditions they lived and worked in on the surface, and the stretched, worried faces that her numbers were being used to bludgeon. All of which left a sour taste, yes, and perhaps some seeds of doubt, but it wasn’t until they reached a mine she had been corresponding with for some time, a mine she had advised, strenuously, that they needed to improve their numbers, that the lesson sank home permanently.
Because, in the middle of the inspection, and the harried, earnest explanations of all the measures they’d taken to cut expenditures, one of the tunnels in the mine collapsed, leading to an exodus for the surface and the knowledge that more than two dozen miners were trapped or dead below ground. While Rue was in shock, a tiny, forgettable figure with a book lost in the sea of suddenly moving bodies, bloodied bodies, as miners poured out onto the surface, she witnessed, up close and personal, the horrors her numbers had led to, and the callousness of the lord who immediately wished the problem ignored or taken elsewhere.
Rue stayed, while her lord left. She was even, to an extent, helpful, her organisational instinct useful even through her shock as triage took place and two separate rescue attempts were staged, and then abandoned. She stayed. She was there when twenty one lives were declared lost beyond reach. She was there as a mining camp mourned their lost compatriots.
She walked away, finally, haunted by the experience.
She did go back to work. She attempted, for nearly three months, to simply go back to work. But it became apparent that Rue had not walked out of that mining camp intact. And, possibly, that she had not walked out of that mining camp alone. She began to suffer notions. That there were figures out of the corner of her eye. That her ink, occasionally, would turn red-brown in her pens and her ledgers and on her hands. That something had come back with her. Something angry. Something that wanted the man that caused it all, that demanded it all, that dismissed it so casually afterwards, to suffer. And that wanted her, who had been his tool, to suffer also.
Two months and eighteen days after the mine collapse, Rue ‘woke up’ in her lord’s study with a body and a dagger on the floor, and her bloodied hands writing a neat summation in her ledger.
Was it the ghosts of the collapsed mine, who possessed her to wreak their vengeance? Or was it her, out of madness and guilt and rage, and she only blacked it out from the persistent weakness that would see her shy away, behind numbers and ink, and hide from the blood that coats her hands?
She ran. Whatever happened that morning, no one witnessed it. No one heard it. No one appeared to know, until the body was discovered later that day, that a man had died in that room, or that Rue was possibly responsible for it. She is a wanted woman, but she is also a forgettable woman, and not a single person in the lord’s household could describe her much beyond ‘mousy, female, with spectacles, sort of brownish?’. But he was a very wealthy man, and very wealthy people don’t take it well when one of their own is murdered. So Rue is a wanted woman.
And there is, she can’t help but think, when the alcohol doesn’t dent it fast enough, a particular sort of savagery about the fact that she is hunted for the one death she committed with her own hands, but no one bats an eye at the twenty one she murdered with her numbers.
And the ghosts, even still, keep following her. She feels them, their presence. Sometimes the ink in her well still runs reddish-brown. Sometimes things whisper in her ear. Sometimes they even help. Did she appease them with her murder? They’re certainly happy enough to help with more of it. But at least she’s trying to look now. To kill with her own hands. To acknowledge the blood. Not square it away, blots of ink on a page. At least … at least now she knows. At least now she looks.
Race: Darkvision (60ft), Fey Ancestry (advantage on saves vs charmed, can’t be magically put to sleep), Skill Versatility (2 skills), Languages (Common, Elvish, extra)
Background: Professional Eye (able to gain information about the structure of organisations easily)
Phantom Rogue: Expertise (Stealth, Deception), Sneak Attack (2d6), Thieves Cant, Cunning Action (bonus action to dash/dodge/disengage), Whispers of the Dead (gain one skill/tool proficiency from the ghosts of the dead, lasts until you choose a different one), Wails from the Grave (proficiency bonus times per rest, when you land sneak attack on an enemy, you can roll half your sneak attack dice and deal the result in necrotic damage to another enemy within 30ft of the first)
Equipment: Leather armour, common clothes, rapier, 2 daggers, shortbow, 20 arrows, explorer’s pack, thieves tools, ink pen, bottle of ink, ledger, belt pouch
Ledger: The ledger that Rue carries is the ledger she was carrying the day of the mine inspection and collapse. There’s still white dust and something, a reddish-brown stain, ground into the leather cover of the book. Should it be examined, a person would see that roughly the first third of the ledger is neat and orderly, full of numbers in their proper rows, and analysis of said numbers might find the accounting of a generally profitable but starting to struggle endeavour. After that first block of pages, however, things change. There are several leaves missing, torn away, that reddish brown stain dotting the edges. And then, afterwards … a diary. Of sorts. The ledger is no longer used for its original purpose. Now it documents a mind beginning to bend, and then break, under the strain of guilt and some potentially supernatural happenings. And then, after a neatly blank page with only one thin, shaking sentence and a large reddish stain, it begins to, somewhat, become coherent again. A journal, a diary in truth, not of madness, but of the attempt to recover from madness.
“I’d Rather Go Blind”
Ink and acrylic gouache on Rives BFK
8″ x 8″
Here’s the last of the three drawings I’ll have at Gallery 1988′s Paper Pushers show, which opens April 19th (this Friday!), 7–9pm. If you’re in LA, go see all the beautiful small works on paper by tons of amazing artists! If you’re interested in purchasing any of the pieces, please contact Gallery 1988.
Inspired by the Etta James song of the same name.
“What’s Love Got to Do with It?”
Ink and acrylic gouache on Rives BFK
7″ x 8.75″
One of three drawings I’ll have at this year’s Paper Pushers show at Gallery 1988. The show, which is all small works on paper, opens April 19th. Contact the gallery for purchase inquiries and check out the show if you’re in LA!
Inspired by the Tina Turner song of the same name.
“Ain’t No Way”
Ink and acrylic gouache on Rives BFK
8″ x 8″
You know I love a deckled edge.
Here’s the second of three drawings I’ll have at Gallery 1988′s Paper Pushers show, which showcases small works on paper. The show opens April 19th, so check it out if you’re in LA! For purchase inquiries, please contact Gallery 1988.
Inspired by the Aretha Franklin song of the same name.
“Vessel 1”
Pencil on Fabriano paper
Approx. 6″ x 8″
Here’s one of three drawings I’ll have at the Paper Pushers show at Gallery 1988 later this month.
The show focuses on pencil and/or ink drawings and sketches, all on paper. It’s also a cash and carry show, so you can purchase a piece and take it home the same night! It’s a great chance to acquire affordable originals from a bunch of amazing artists. Work will also be for sale on the gallery website. Check out the show when it opens May 25th!
See for Yourself: The Pentagon's $51 Billion 'Black' Budget | WIRED
See for Yourself: The Pentagon’s $51 Billion ‘Black’ Budget | WIRED
The military keeps a lot of little things secret. It could be the exact range of a jammer, sensitive missile data or the timing of a raid. But the larger context – that jammers and missiles exist, or that our forces conduct raids – is unclassified and even listed in the Pentagon’s budget for all to see.
These secrets are different. Their names are obscured by code words, or simply listed as “cl…
“Vessel 3”
Pencil on Fabriano paper
Approx. 6″ x 8″
Here’s the last of three drawings I’ll have at the Paper Pushers show, which opens May 25th at Gallery 1988. (You can see the other two drawings here).
The show focuses on pencil and/or ink drawings and sketches, all on paper. It’s also a cash and carry show, so you can purchase a piece and take it home the same night! It’s a great chance to acquire affordable originals from a bunch of amazing artists. Work will also be for sale on the gallery website. The show runs from May 25th to June 2nd, so check it out if you can!
