by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. This one starts earlier than our usual fare.
To The NinesThe Eighties. A length of time where innovation seemed at its best, for some. It gave us personal computers, for one. It gave us role-playing games. It gave us Scion… and powers. And, some times, things got mixed in unexpected ways.
Take Gabriel Maxberry, for instance. Star athlete in high school, and on his way to the same in college, he had already met the women his age, in general and in particular.
One of them, Alice, was a real beauty who was also starting to become a proficient singer already. One Saturday evening, she invited him home – because her parents weren't there, and she thought they could get some intimacy.
Her parents were absent, but her younger brother Jacob was there… and he had brought his friends too. Knowing that she couldn't start anything intimate without the threat of having the preteens spy on her, she wanted to leave with Gabriel so that they would go to see a movie in his car.
But Gabriel was intrigued by the way the youngsters were playing, speaking about attacks, defence, strategy and tactics… the jock in him was starting to get interested. And, seeing this, Alice asked him if he wanted to play.
It was a table-top game, where each player had a character to play, which gained "levels" and abilities as they progressed in the game. Around the table were Jacob but also Nicholas, a timid and well-dressed boy; Perenelle, Nicholas' sister; and Kurt, the game master – the boy had a talent for maths, apparently, given how he managed everyone's ability stats and modifiers to dice rolls (and, at that time, you had different tables for each ability).
Of course, Gabriel was quickly reminded that he was playing with brats instead of doing things with the beautiful Alice, and his initial interest vanished quickly. Not only that, but his pride chafed at being a "player" under a "game master", especially one so young, and he started complaining loudly about this, and about the rules, complaining about both the lack of realism and the lack of supernatural options. Since the players seemed to be used to have rowdy partners, though (they had all Chaotic characters), they took the older jock's abuse… and returned it with interest.
Now, remember that it was the eighties, and that "game" wasn't perceived as having any kind of impact on young players' psyche. You get attached to your character. You start acting like it, and making it act like you. The frontier between make-believe and reality falters.
On Earth Aleph, many stories occurred where the game itself was accused of satanism and banned from puritan societies – as was classic from people who didn't dare face their demons and blamed mere things instead.
When that first game ended, Gabriel wasn't satisfied… but he refused to call it quits, and promised he'd be back for more. The boys were secretly happy to have another player, even if Alice and Perenelle were surprised and a bit anxious at Gabriel's sudden narrowmindedness.
In the meantime, Gabriel read the game books, redid his character sheet a few times to have it look better than the kids' scribbles… and took advantage of this to add a few points here and there – conveniently forgetting Kurt's talent with arithmetic. Faced with the cheating, the game master added precise penalties to the rolls to circumvent the changes brought unlawfully (the players may play chaotically, Kurt was more of a Lawful persona).
Against all odds, Gabriel had grown fond of his character, and he thought him invulnerable. When a series of bad decisions came, topped by a series of bad dice rolls, his character ended up dead in a humiliating fashion. When he heard the young voice asking for his character sheet so that it could be ripped in halves (a practice the boys had agreed on, way before), Gabriel flipped.
"I want to be the game master, now." He demanded, certain that he could pull a revenge on the group, in the like of "rocks fall, everyone dies".
When they refused, he pulled a knife from his pocket and started threatening them (once again, in the eighties, having a pocket knife was something usual among teen boys… even men).
Generally, this kind of teenage drama doesn't yield anything except pain and misery on a local scale. When super-powers happened to be granted to people in dire stress, though, the escalation continued, and things changed dramatically.
When Gabriel snatched Perenelle, closest to him, Nicholas jumped forward… and took a punch to the gut that dropped him an all fours, vomiting his last few meals – mostly bags of chips and soda, the usual among role-playing gamers.
Jacob was the first to trigger, because he was secretly in love with the girl (so secretly that he hadn't fully realized it yet… as boys are wont to do). Seeing Gabriel's arm around Perenelle's neck, the blade starting to dig into it, his distress was answered by an alien entity, and he changed: he became able to act upon the blade he was seeing, making its edge bend in impossible ways. Instead of hurting the girl, it reverted and pierced through the man's hand and wrist.
Gabriel screamed at the sudden and unexpected pain, and stepped back, freeing Perenelle, who ran into her brother's arms. Jacob and Kurt approached the downed Gabriel, not really knowing what to do but still ready to do what was needed to push him away from them and their group. Kurt was inspecting the downed man, his eyes quickly scanning his shape, trying to predict many of the most obvious moves he could attack them with so that he could evade them in advance. The alien presences still hovering around the confrontation saw that as a confirmation of intent, and granted him that power.
The three of them fought. Briefly, but intensely – the table and chairs were unsuspecting collateral victims. Between Kurt's powers of anticipation and Jacob's talent with a blade (which he hadn't learned to leash, yet), Gabriel was soon bleeding from some deep gashes along his torso.
And then, because alien entities had no sense of right and wrong, it granted powers to the wounded man. He had wanted to hurt Perenelle, and she had been removed from his grasp? He would give her his wounds!
Nicholas screamed at seeing his sister being killed simply because wounds appeared on her. He wanted to have her whole again. To rewind time to the moment when she was okay. So he did. And, for a moment, it was perfect.
But that was the moment Alice entered the basement – nightly games weren't her forte, and she had been sleeping in her room. The noise of the battle had woken her up, though. She saw the game in disarray, the destroyed furniture, the blade in her brother's hand… and the blood. Most of which was on Gabriel's shirt. She screamed, and the alien entity "helped" again. The sound became like a physical force, hammering at the people there. And those in the houses around them, too.
"I'm fine!" Gabriel tried to yell, but she would only stop when he opened his shirt, revealing a pristine torso.
"What… happened?" she asked, before blushing at the sight and turning her head. And then she paled, because her scream had affected Nicholas quite badly.
Apparently, the boy had tried to use his power to protect himself from hers, including ideas taken from seeing his character sheet laying nearby. As a result, he looked like a flickering and monochromatic version of himself. And he was quite mad.
"Why did you have to kill Perenelle?" he demanded, his power acting up again and trying to rewind Gabriel back to the moment he was dying.
That didn't work: Gabriel's power shifted the harmful effect back to the person it currently saw as the perfect receiver for those. And Perenelle died. Again. And Nicholas couldn't do anything to save her again, because she was already in the grasp of his power, and he couldn't apply it twice.
Seeing that made Jacob and Kurt realize that Gabriel was functionally immortal. In a rare display of silent communication, a single nod shared between them the idea that they ought to stay alive first, and that their vengeance would wait. In the meantime, they had to accept the situation, including Perenelle's death, placating Nicholas, and allowing Gabriel to take the spot of Game Master… which he promptly renamed Duke, and then King.
Power-hungry, the immortal King also realized that each of them had powers, and he devised some "Live-Action Role Playing" games in which they actually played a character in real life. They had to infiltrate a building. They had to steal things. They had to kill people.
They were five, they were obviously villains, and Gabriel (or King, as he liked to be called) had even started giving them cape names. And not very imaginative ones. Alice was "Screamer". Jacob was "Jack Slash". Nicholas was "Gray Boy". And Kurt was "Harbringer" – apparently, an ability with numbers allowed to study probabilities in real-time, something that allowed the boy to act as a combat Thinker – those with precognition or the ability to quickly calculate all the possibilities flowing around them.
He still lacked a name for the group. Alice had been studying Literature, before they started their killing spree, and had read "Slaughterhouse Five", a controversial book from Vonnegut. Once the idea was mentioned to him, King grabbed it with two hands because, since they were five, it applied quite well.
Of course, it changed when Gabriel had the brilliant idea to approach his old friends. Some mocked him when he was seen hanging around with youngsters. They changed their tune when Jacob started to slice them open, under King's orders.
One after the other, they fell in geysers of blood. And the alien shards nearby got a banquet of trauma. From below the pile, one of them rose up, his body bathed in blood and quite strong. Gabriel approached him and helped him up, only to take a punch to the chest, from a Brute whose fist could pass through concrete. "I dub thee Crimson." King said magnanimously as the crimson man flew from his own blow.
Having established his dominance, he directed the Slaughterhouse Six towards new crime sprees… starting with the nerds' frat house. He had never liked those.
However, they weren't without their uses, as nerds triggered just as much as other human beings. One of them was studying entomology, and being thrown through his terrarium got insects mixed with his damaged body. This gave him the ability to spawn more of them… but not to make and/or control a swarm, no: each of them would devour other humans, so that they'd grow in size. And power. But they weren't controlled. "Bradley, I dub thee Breed." King intoned, having recognized the man.
Another, named Rafael, was studying psychology. While Bradley would have expounded upon insectile monsters, Rafael would have countered with the monsters always living in people's mind. Upon the clear understanding that his death was imminent, his mind reacted and allowed him to drive those monsters to the fore, temporarily wrapping people in monstrous shapes. It gave him some time before the Slautherhouse current members caught up with him.
"I'm Psychosoma." Rafael said, when King visibly hesitated upon which "simple" name to give him.
"Welcome to the Slaughterhouse Eight." King ended up saying, trying to get the upper hand again.
"Changing the group's name will become tedious if we continue recruiting anyone we find." Kurt complained, before casually evading a couple reflexive blows from a suddenly angry King – he didn't like when the youngsters spoke out of turn.
"The next one we recruit will replace you, perhaps?" Gabriel taunted with a smirk. He was older, and thus bigger and more "educated", and he knew that, even if it seemed that the boys had gotten powers like he had, he could still apply some psychological bullying if the physical didn't work.
Kurt wasn't phased, though. His mastery of probabilities continued to help him avoid harm… and plan King's defeat with Jacob. From the start, they had wanted to kill him. But while it was more for revenge for Perenelle's murder, at the start, it was quickly turning into a game.
Prevented from playing their table-top thing again, they had translated some of its concepts in real life, including their chaotic characters' habits. Jack became more flamboyant in his demeanour, while Kurt played the silent assassin type. He hadn't played that often, though, occupied as he had been in managing the games.
Seeing them adopt their character's habits, and finding a use in forcing people to behave in a certain way, King tried to have more game sessions to further advance his control of the group. Some worked. Most didn't, because hardened killers preferred to knock the table rather than accept defeat at what, for most of them, looked like a mere game of dice.
Their slaughter spree met another killer when they came face-to-face with a thin woman in the middle of a cloud of poison. King came forward, his habits of mingling in crowds having made sure he had enough pasties to endure poison for a while. Even one which caused brain damage and organ failure. When the woman noticed that the man didn't die, she was surprised, and accepted to be induced into the group of killers.
The Slaughterhouse Nine.
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A Hard LimitWhatever King tried afterwards, though, he couldn't make the counter reach ten or more.
With their last inclusion, Nyx, the Slaughterhouse Nine had attracted the attention of Cauldron, a powerful group that granted powers to people… sometimes with side effects (in the future, the parahumans with these visible changes would be called Case 53s).
And Cauldron's aims included keeping as many parahumans alive for the final fight against Scion, especially if their powers were powerful. However, when said parahumans upset the balance by killing too many other parahumans, the gloves went off.
The first to go was Nicholas, who had completely assumed the habits of his chaotic evil priest character: in his range, he always played with his time fields, trapping capes and civilians alike. Sometime, it was just in their normal activities. When he had time to spare, he'd engineer a timely (and messy) death so that the time loop would show it repeatedly, the person inside going mad at being killed repeatedly.
With his power over time, it didn't matter if he was as squishy as they came: he'd resurrect immediately and target his killer with his abilities.
The only way to deal with him permanently, apparently (beside being Jack Slash and piloting the unsteady and murderous boy), was to use a Trump ability to remove his power. And, at that time, Cauldron knew one, named Ciara and who liked to be called Glaistig Uaine. With a simple touch, she collected the alien shard's imprint on a parahuman, severing his link with their power with an immediately fatal side-effect.
Had King known of this, he'd have kept Gray Boy around, and tried to recruit Ciara. But Contessa, Cauldron's main Thinker, had established a "Path" (a sequence of actions) so that it would happen far from the group. Besides, King's power might make him immune to Nicholas', but his team mates weren't, and Nicholas had already provoked much anger and resentment when "playing" with them.
Breed was the next to go. The location of the current Slaughterhouse's headquarters apparently leaked to choice persons, there were parahumans with a chip on their shoulder, ready for some old-school revenge killing. Including an incendiary grenade-throwing Hannah (who would be known as Miss Militia, after her time in the Wards).
His powers of persuasion free now that he didn't have Grey Boy to manage, Jack could use them on King to convince the man to split the group and move around a lot, in order to lose their pursuers. The man found himself following a desert road for several days, with only Jack and Kurt as companions. And that's when the two youngsters put their plan to fruition: with no access to hundreds of buffer bodies, only two persons died when they fought King… and won: the motel owner, and Screamer.
Afterwards, Kurt was contacted privately and offered a place within Cauldron, where his powers could be used on a much larger scale. They were too stuck-up to play any of his games, however (in all these years, he hadn't lost the will to play a good game), and he resorted to play them with the prisoners.
Jack was distraught about losing both his sister and his last friend, especially as it meant that they wouldn't play their game again. Together, at least. However, his mind already unhinged, he took King's place as group leader and continued to move them around.
And, when they weren't actively killing, he had them spend their time playing his other favourite game.
Role-playing.
When Jacob and his friends had been normal kids, they had chosen to play chaotic evil characters, "bad guys", for the heck of it. They had been on the verge of the very excesses the game had been accused of. And then King had taken that a level beyond. Having had "experience" at acting in a chaotic evil way, they had successfully fooled the young adult.
However, doing so, they had fooled themselves as well.
Now that Jack Slash was whatever remained of Jacob's identity, he would not play the same sort of character – role-playing, as a game, allowed people to play something they were not. Otherwise, the game is called "Real Life".
And so was the new irony: now that Jack headed a group of chaotic evil parahumans, when they sat to play, they mostly played lawful goody-two-shoes.
Some played chivalrous knights and compassionate priests, the iconic members of every heroic story – Nyx had such a character, unknowingly mimicking her twin sister who was doing the same at the other end of the country.
Others took their inspiration around them, choosing to play-act as heroes from the Protectorate roster. Jack had to work to shoe-horn their abilities into the game, of course, but he was willing to do so for a very real reason: playing heroes gave them insight about how the forces of law and order would react to them and their killings.
And playing their nominees for recruitment helped determine how the process would go, too.
In addition to these character types, as years crept by, supplements were sold that increased the options to be chosen by players. And the chaotic players liked to play all of them – if you search thought the "thanks" section of those books, you'll sometimes find their names among the people who beta-tested the ideas.
Even if they mostly played heroic characters, some of their chosen options were clearly geared towards evil, at least in appearance. Such as the use of insects, for instance. Or a character specializing in dealing pain (to himself and others) with whips. Or an orc sorcerer specializing in arson, with fire-resistance rings worn as ear piercings – that one will be Burnscar, much later.
In fact, Mimi will often play characters with the same theme, and play them in the same manner: she will play-act herself, something that will displease Jack greatly – by then, the man will be used to having players do character much different than their real selves.
On the other hand, he will be interested, too: her way of playing will give him many indications about how she will act in real life. Such as choosing not to recruit Labyrinth, visiting her like an old friend instead (a concept he had long since forgotten).
He'll leave her be, though, knowing that despite this small act of mutiny, she will be keyed up enough to put fire to the area as soon as heroes will arrive.
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To be continued… after another heel-face turn, perhaps?Author's Notes: Another one with ties to old-school table-top role-playing games. Having lived through the 80s, I noticed both the game and the hysteria around it. Reflected that the psychological issues bandied about at that time could mesh well with the formation of the Slaughterhouse. Wrote it.