The Haitians call it Voodoo, the Africans, Hoodoo, Cubans, Santeria. In scholarly circles, it is referred to as ‘sympathetic magic’, we Theophidians have dubbed it ‘Akhu’. There are many names for it, but more still are the number of methods. There was a time when True Names were all that one required to work one’s will. However, people these days have such fractured and fragmented souls that such things would carry little weight, even if one could actually manage to piece one together. Instead, our power rests in symbols, representations of objects that hold the essence of that which they mimic. Nearly all practitioners agree that a bit of blood, hair, tissue, fingernail, or some such remnant of the target added to the facsimile all but ensures success. Many reasons are held for this ubiquitous belief, the most modern of which simply claims that they all contain the selfsame common denominator: Deoxyribonucleic acid.

I have devoted every waking hour to this endeavor for the last six days, pausing only to slumber. This night, I set in motion my own death. By my will and my hand, I will cause myself to die, as I have so many times before. It is but a symbolic death, but it will allow me the freedom of movement throughout mortal society that is denied so many of the undead. Most of them must work so perpetually at seeming not to exist at all, but in just a few more hours, all traces of the life I lived in Haiti will come to an end and be replaced by a new one of my own design. A new name, a birth certificate, social security number, passport, job-history, records of holdings, all of the myriad pieces of worthless paper that are required to make the claim that one ever existed at all shall proclaim to anyone who should require them that I am just a man, like countless others.

I have prepared a paste, much like paper mache, made from my spittle and blood, mixed with torn up bits of utility bills, certificates and identification cards of the man who is about to die. To this, I add a generous amount of desert sand from the homeland of the Dark God and build myself an effigy. An offering of myself, to myself.

(2008-07-05 22:23:33 Drexl rolls 10 dice to Percep+Craft(effigy) 7,6,2,8,8, 7,8,1,1,6 (5 successes)

Perfection. The little sand-man is incredibly accurate, right down to the disfiguring scars on the face. Lighting the small propane torch, there is always a small twinge of fear, but it is quickly overcome. (2008-07-05 22:31:13 Drexl rolls 4 dice to Rotschreck (Diff 3) 10,6,9,6 (4 successes) Its blue flame quicly reduces the little man to a pool of red-hot glass. Plucking the angry little fire-ant from its prison with a pair of small tongs, it is plunged directly into the cooling silicon and released as I invoke the pantheon of the Nile. As the liquid cools, the once living ant is now suspended within the the heart of the cold, hard confinement of the system it will inhabit until I choose to release it.

Deep down, the soul understands that it does not belong in a prison of matter. Anything that distracts the soul from such knowledge, tying it to this wretched world must be a trap- and if this existence is a prison, then the gods must be its jailers. To achieve liberation, a soul must shed all the false doctrines, cravings, habits and dogma that serve to blind it, and bind it.

The moment the small block of glass becomes cool to the touch, I shatter the antecedent hyaline cell, releasing its prisoner and crushing it.

(2008-07-05 22:53:23 Drexl rolls 11 dice to Int+Occ(Ghost in the Sys) (Diff 7) 2,10,9,3,2, 10,10,7,4,7, 9,3,10,10,10, 6,5 (10 successes)

I have spent a lifetime as a ‘holy man’ in Haiti, working the will of the Dark God in full public view. That lifetime has now come to an end, its viability depleted. Now I will spend a lifetime out of the limelight, returning to the bosom of Set, more than ample time for my deeds and face to be utterly forgot by the dim-witted and apathetic mortals, that I may once again become a Holy man and begin the cycle anew. I inscribe my new name upon the fresh vessel: Alhmanic Drexler. It is an Americanized version of my original, christian name, meaning Divine Turner. It is a symbol of a symbol which represents a symbol. It is the name that I carried so long ago when my life was devoted to the work of the Holy Inquisition, when I taught people what they truly were, and made them admit it aloud so that they might have absolution. When my daily bread was cruelty and perversity that would make the maddest Roman emperor gag. It is the same work that I do now, and it brings my personal desideratum full-circle, back to the beginning. Are you prepared to confess?