Tags
I was at work when I Awoke. One minute, I was a mild-mannered accountant, probably browsing BoardgameGeek rather than actually doing work, and the next, I was Someone else. I Remembered. I was Immortal! But what the heck was I doing here? What was I doing before? Apparently my name had been Yves, living my life in France where I had been a…where I had been an accountant for the shipping industries around the turn of the 19th century. It was then that I heard of Sehimu Thinara, the hidden language of magic.
In the world of Serpent’s Tongue, you are playing “yourself,” only you have been Awakened to find that you are an Immortal who has been reincarnating in different lives since the Tower of Babel. However, in the 1800s, The Speakers (or The Awoken or The Magi, depending on who you talk to) stopped reincarnating, until a bunch of them popped up in 2012 and began coming back. Why? Who knows. That’s the fun of the game, and would probably be introduced slowly by the company and other players.
I don’t remember much of my lives before that, most of them fading in and out like fragments from lost home movies. Shame to think that I’ve been given this amazing gift, yet I was still a boring accountant in the Age of Sail. I suppose it could be worse. I used my knowledge of Sehimu Thinara to stop a lot of evil magic that was plaguing our seaport. My soul magic became like a universal antibiotic, spreading healing where needed. I stayed low, though, trying not to get involved in the politics of the Magi. Those guys were intense. But now here I am, another accountant, but now in America, trying to remember the words and phrases and hand gestures that can put me in touch with my old powers.
I began crafting a codex. I needed a well-loved old book, so I pilfered a copy of Trixie Belden and the Mysterious Visitor from a friend of mine. She has pretty much every Trixie Belden book, so I doubt she would miss it. Or notice right away. I don’t know which. She probably needs help. Either way, a quick muttering of ur’ya’me-sa caused the books words to be hidden to me, so that I may write upon its pages to become my Codex, while the rest of the world would still see Trixie’s face upon the cover.
Though a grown man walking around with a Trixie Belden book at all times may be a bit odd. Eh. I made my choice.
Sehimu Thinara, the language of the game is very VERY well thought out. If you want to see it in action, head over to The pages on it. A lot of the pages are disappearing as the game fades from existence, so it’d be nice if a few kept the knowledge alive. Someone clearly put a LOT of work on this, and I’d hate for it to simply be lost to the internet’s archive. By the way, ur’ya’me-sa means “Do not show” in Sehimu Thinara. See? Actual language. Wacky.
Anyway, your Codex is your “Deck.” This game, at its base, is a CCG. You make a deck of 27 “spells” plus a possible Specialization and one Artifact. The starter box gives you enough cards to make 2 very complete decks. I’ve only added 4 “booster packs,” each adding 12 cards, and I feel I have a large pool to dive into. The other cool thing is every card is also available on the Serpent’s Tongue site, so if I really needed a card for some reason, I could print it out and proxy another card or find some other way to use it.
Again, I would get it now while the site still exists. Purchasing from becomemagi.com may be a bit iffy. I have anecdotal evidence of orders never being fulfilled, but I also have first hand evidence of a 4 booster pack order arriving to me in good and quick order. So buyer beware.
From what I could remember, I knew a lot of spells that affected the eline, the kind of Soul, I guess you could say. I was what they called a Void Speaker. Someone who could cause others negative words to simply disappear. Oh to have that power for television!
I apologize that the high resolution image doesn’t appear to work.
But that Void felt bigger around my own home (outside of Philadelphia). As if there was something out there, purposely hiding itself, or hiding secrets from the Mute (what we call those unable to speak the Tongue). A quick walk through the city has me stumble upon an abandoned industrial plant. From the signs, and seemingly stronger, the smells, this used to be a dog food plant of some kind. Yet it’s something that I don’t think I’ve really ever noticed until now. Nothing new in this world. Often the Mute purposely avoid places where magic and their world collide, as if ignorance was just simply easier.
They’re right, it is.
But I had to know who, or what, was inside. Anything that in touch with the Void could be linked to something I should have my hands on, and something I could learn from.
Or it could be something I should probably not allow have access to that kind of power.
Ducking under the loose chain holding the gate closed, I venture inside.
My codex is ready (I told you, it’s pretty!), my adversary is set, tomorrow, we begin the encounter!
Very Wordy 
Pingback: In a world… | Very Wordy