Aye/Orun Enhancers: Things Fall Apart & The Centre Cannot Hold

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The next two Aye/Orun Enhancers we are profiling are called Things Fall Apart & The Centre Cannot Hold. The card names are lifted directly from the opening stanza of William Butler Yeats’ famous poem The Second Coming. Not coincidentally, Things Fall Apart was previously chosen by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe to be the title of his well-regarded English-language novel dealing with the clash between colonialism and traditional African culture.

  

 

The cards themselves are pretty straightforward. Things Fall Apart is a reaction that cancels an action modifier, and The Centre Cannot Hold is an action modifier that cancels a reaction. We know that some people dislike cancellation cards, but we felt that these minion cards, as opposed to out-of-turn Masters like Direct Intervention and Dark Influences, are better suited to the task.

Cards requiring three or more Aye or Orun should be quite useful so we wanted to provide some strong incentives to use the them and try out the Aye/Orun Accelerators in Champions of Cagn.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
—William Butler Yeats (The Second Coming, 1919)

 

PCK Laibon Set Preview: Piero Ghiberti and Guiding Spirit (W5D5)

Piero Ghiberti (male): The Ghiberti are a canonical bloodline of the Giovanni that ultimately ended up in Africa. The Group 3 Giovanni already had a 3-cap and 9-cap, so we decided to give them a solid 6-cap to help bridge Groups 2–4.

Piero’s special, like those we gave to vampires in the other minor legacies, focuses narrowly on Laibon. In this case, we also wanted to encourage the Giovanni signature discipline, Necromancy. This may encourage Shambling Hordes decks, but Piero intentionally has Necromancy at inferior, so Methuselahs will have to make smart decisions whether to include him or not.

Guiding Spirit (Wraith): As previously stated, one of our main goals for this set was to provide alternate ways outside the Master phase for Laibon to acquire Orun and Aye. With a single successful action, Guiding Spirit provides this ability for several turns, but only once per turn. Laibon can have multiple Guiding Spirits if they choose to gain Orun and Aye even faster.

We designed this card to provide a greater benefit as the employer’s capacity increased to encourage use of large vampires. Plus, the Orun and Aye cards each have this clause: “Burn this card if this Laibon has more Orun and Aye than his or her capacity.” A Guiding Spirit can help a Laibon quickly reach their maximum spirituality, or regain it once lost or squandered.

PCK Laibon Set Preview: Ghalyela and Oba (W5D3)

Ghalyela (“dear, precious”, female): Ghalyela is a standard 7-capacity vampire. Jessica led the way. Lord Vauxhall followed. We have whole-heartedly embraced the idea of 4x superior disciplines for 7-caps.

Since Ghalyela is slated for Group 3, we checked to see how she might also help out under-performing strategies or clans from Group 2. There are plenty of vampires with CEL/PRE and FOR/PRE, so we looked to see who could benefit from a vampire with CEL/FOR. We thought she would have cross-over potential with the G2–4 Assamites, in particular Tegyrius and the Viziers, so we gave her superior Quietus.

Oba: It is known that the Laibon are weak politically. We wanted to create a card that helped them gain influence in this part of V:TES.

Oba is the Yoruba word for “king”. We devised its effect much like a king may grant favors to others who assist in furthering his goals. Note that only other titled vampires benefit from this laibon’s largesse.

PCK Laibon Set Preview: Lutalo and Soul Washer (W5D2)

Lutalo (“warrior”, male): LUTALO-NADO! Enough said!

Soul Washer: In a previous post, we mentioned the Akan men honored as Soul Washers. Here is our representation of these spiritual guardians as protectors of the regal legacy of the Guruhi.

We wanted to push the envelope with our card design concepts and assigned the slave trait to an ally. Previously only Gargoyles (and Toy, the oddball Samedi) had this trait. For a clan with light access to stealth, we thought a slave ally might be a worthy addition. Perhaps your Guruhi could summon an army of warriors, and then bleed your prey out with a gleaming, gold-plated horde using Dream World.

PCK Laibon Set Preview: Perikles and Obayifo, Evil-Bringer (W4D5)

Perikles: Here is our Shango (Laibon Assamite). Perikles has quite a few discipline points—the same breakdown as Maskini. However, as a Group 3 Assamite with superior Abombwe, there are few opportunities for synergy with other Laibon. Still, he is the smallest capacity Assamite in Group 2–3 with superior in-clan disciplines.

Obayifo, Evil-Bringer (Mage): These vampire-like creatures from Ashanti folklore are evil incarnate. They are obsessed with food, remotely kill children by draining their blood, and can even wither crops by sucking life from the land.

Clearly tied to the spirit world, we made it possible only for Laibon with a strong affinity to their Orun to be able to recruit these odious witch doctors.

PCK Laibon Set Preview: Lakshmi and Dream-Sensation (W2D5)

Lakshmi (“prosperity”, female): Here is our second Laibon from a minor legacy. For the traditionally independent clans with associated Laibon legacies, we reached back into Group 3, specifically targeting their needs. Some people consider G2/3 to be “full”, but we carefully considered our decisions for these 4 vampires before expanding Group 3.

Looking at the low-mid cap Followers of Set in G2/3, there are none at 5-capacity with two disciplines at superior and only one at 6-cap! We remedied this with Lakshmi. We gave her Animalism out of clan, common with Laibon, to work with Aisha and Hesha Ruhadze. Her special requires another Laibon and her disciplines don’t meld well with them, but Mozambique Allure can easily be used to have other Setites join the Children of Damballah.

Dream-Sensation: This card uses “High Orun” to be effective. Though neither the Aye nor Orun concepts is close to being top tier contenders, Orun is slightly stronger, so we gave it a utility card. Dream-Sensation gives an empty vampire in torpor an action to take, so he or she could potentially be rescued with blood on them or then try to leave torpor. The ability is corner-case, but it is one which has a decent chance of being used in any given game. Akunanse, Ishtarri, and Kinyonyi (Ravnos) decks with Fortitude and Daring the Dawn can also design around this card, for example.

Did you figure out the literary inspiration for these last two library cards? Both “Life-Sensation” and “Dream-Sensation” come from Joseph Conrad’s classic short novel, Heart of Darkness, which deals with colonial imperialism and racism in Africa during the nineteenth century. Here is his famous paragraph:

“Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone…”

Ishtar and the Underworld

The Ishtarri are one of the four major laibon legacies. They claim to be descendents of the Assyrian goddess Ishtar, who ruled the spheres of fertility, war, love and sex. Ancient Assyria was part of Mesopotamia in present day northern Iraq. Thus, the Ishtarri are the only laibon legacy which did not originate in Africa.

The Ishtarri also maintain closer ties with the mortal world than all the other legacies. Some claim that Ishtar is also known as Arikel who is the founder of clan Toreador. Both Ishtarri and Toreador share a weakness for beauty or sensuality and are often overcome by obsessive compulsive desires.

One of the chief myths of Ishtar was the story of her descent into the Underworld, which has several parallels with the familiar Greek tale of the Rape of Persephone. Ishtar decided to visit her sister, Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld. When she left the surface of the world, all sexual activity ceased.

It was well-known that Ishtar derived some of her awesome power from her beautiful clothing and jewelry. Ereshkigal was suspicious of Ishtar’s motives and directed the gatekeeper to refuse entry to Ishtar unless she discarded one article of clothing at each of the seven gates. At each gate, Ishtar shed one more piece of clothing until she passed through the final gate completely naked and vulnerable. Ereshkigal took no chances and afflicted Ishtar with sixty diseases and she fell dead.

After some time, the gods became concerned (it is a matter of debate whether they were concerned about Ishtar’s well-being or the lack of sexual activity) and sent a being known as Asu-shu-namir to demand that Ereshkigal hand over the “waters of life” on behalf of the great gods. Ereshkigal resisted, but was ultimately compelled to deliver the waters of life to Asu-shu-namir who promptly sprinkled them on Ishtar, bringing her back from the dead. As Ishtar and Asu-shu-namir returned to the surface, she collected all of her seven raiments and became once again powerful and awe-inspiring.

Anansi Captures Osebo in a Pitfall Trap

The Ashanti people of present day Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire have a rich folk history. Anansi the Spider is a central character in many of these tales.

As Anansi wandered the world, he heard many stories and was fascinated by them. But the Sky God, Nyame owned them all. Anansi went to the Sky God and asked how he could buy all the stories. Others had come before to Nyame with the same request, but the price would be costly. The Sky God sent Anansi on a quest to bring three spirits to him: Mmoboro the Hornet, Onini the Python, and Osebo the Leopard.

Anansi found a dry, hollow gourd with a hole in it. He then splashed himself with water. He took more to the tree where Mmoboro the Hornet stayed and splashed him with water too. Then he tricked the hornets to fly into the dry and safe gourd, then plugged the hole with a stopper.

Anansi then took a long bamboo pole and found Onini the Python. Anansi said that he and his wife argued about whether Onini was longer than the pole. Anansi set the pole on the ground and had Onini stretch out next to it. Then he quickly bound Onini to the pole and captured him.

Finally, Anansi dug a deep pitfall trap near Osebo’s home. As Osebo prowled at night, he fell into the pit. The next morning, Anansi walked by the pit and Osebo pleaded for help to escape. Anansi secretly bent down a tree and tied a rope to the top. Then he dropped the other end of the rope to Osebo and told him to tie it to his tail. Osebo did so in desperation. Anansi released the snare, and Osebo was flung upside down hanging from the tree. Anansi then bound Osebo, killed him and skinned him.

Anansi returned to the Sky God and showed him the trophies. Nyame was so impressed that he gave the stories to Anansi. And that is how Anansi the Wise Spider, through cleverness and not strength or riches, became owner of all the tales.

 

 

Ere ibeji

In the Yoruba culture, twins are very important. For genetic reasons, this tribe has the highest dizygotic twinning rate in the world (4.4% of all maternities). However, a high childhood  mortality rate has contributed to a special belief system regarding the spirutality and souls of twins.

The word “ibeji” means twin in the Yoruba language. If one or both twins from a pair die as children, a traditional priest commissions a wood carver to create a figure which will become a vessel for their souls. These figures are called “ere ibeji”, literally “two-born sacred image.”

Parents, particularly mothers, are required to take special care of these figures. Ere ibeji are bathed, fed, clothed and caressed as if they were alive. While ere ibeji honor the young, their representations are sculpted as adults. The carvings often feature exaggerated genitals or breasts, and the scars of life’s lessons. Ere ibeji form a material and spiritual link between twins once they have departed for the afterlife.

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Soul Washer

In ancient Akan tradition, powerful kings recruited men who shared their birthdays to become Soul Washers, or spiritual bodyguards. To this day, men of high status are awarded this honor in present day Ghana to protect the Asantehene, or titular ruler of the (sub-national) Ashanti Empire.

Each Soul Washer wears a detailed, inscribed golden disk or badge, also known as an akrafokonmu, to ward against evil directed toward him and his liege. They don elaborate golden helms which signify their special place in society.