Phylactery

The wizard who raped you is dead. The salacious details of his death, which the interplanar tabloids are circulating throughout the multiverse with perverse intensity, bring you no solace. He was never brought to justice, never forced to face a tribunal of archmages and answer for his crimes, never disgraced and defrocked. His staff, and all the power and prestige it signified, both actual and ceremonial, remained unbroken to the end. But even that isn’t the root cause of your sleeplessness, the conjurer of your night sweats, or the summoner of the demon that perches beside your bed and whispers incantations and dirty words to you as you lay paralyzed. No, the thing that fucking gets you is knowing that your rapist will live again.

Wizards of great power can transgress even the rules of death (and the bastard was nothing if not transgressive) by binding their souls to an item of intense personal importance, using arcane runes and magic script to bridge the infinite distance between being and not. They can write themselves back into existence, even after their hand falls eternally still. You are sure of this. Certain. As long as his phylactery exists, he will return, and he will molest again.

Luckily, you were close enough to him to know his habits and to guess his schemes. You know where he’s hidden his soul: in the voluminous tome where he recorded all his hoodoo knowledge. His book of spells. It must be destroyed.

You band together with a party of his other victims and set out for his towering sanctuary. The door is locked, but he gave each of you a spare key many years ago, before he defiled you, when you were still his wards. You let yourselves in and head directly for the library.

Go to the nearest bookshelf and remove a book at random. Be sure that you don’t know the identity of the book until it’s fully in your hand and it’s too late to reconsider. Sit in a circle with your fellow survivors and open the book.

Flip to any page and read any sentence aloud. Share a story about your time with the wizard inspired by what you just read. Focus on the feeling the words evoke, and not on their context within the larger work. If the words make you feel nostalgia, tell a story about how you used to admire the wizard, his charisma and talent, what drove you to dream of becoming his ward, how blessed you felt when he chose you. If they trigger fear, talk about his mercurial temper, his veiled threats and appeals to his power, how he coerced and manipulated you into decades of silence. If they inspire wonder, describe the awe you experienced as you witnessed one of his most impressive spells, what it felt like to travel between planes of existence for the first time, with your hand in his. If the sentence is romantic, talk about how you were convinced that he loved you, how he told you that you were his soulmate and gave you every reason to believe him, until he brought a new child home. And so on. Once you’ve told your story, pass the book to the person on your left.

If the sentence contains sex, even if the sex is only implied or presented in delicate, evasive language, do not share a story. Instead, go to the top of the page where you found the sentence and read the page in its entirety while everyone else listens in silence. When you finish, pass the book to the person on your left without comment.

Whenever you or one of the other survivors are handed the book, you must make a choice. You can read another sentence and tell its story, as detailed above, or you can suggest that the book be burned. If you suggest that the book be burned, any survivor can counter by saying, “I’m not ready.” If they say this, their wishes must be respected. Open the book. Choose a sentence. Read. Interpret. Pass. Repeat. Continue in this way until someone suggests burning the book and no one asks for more time.

Now you must decide whether or not you will burn the book. Talk about it as a group until you arrive at a consensus. Everyone must agree before you can act. You cannot vote. Majority will not rule. Every voice must be respected. Don’t give up if you find it hard to reach a unanimous decision. Remember what you would be walking away from. This mission is too important to abandon.

If you decide not to burn the book, you must find your closure within it. Open the book again and read a random sentence aloud, as before, but don’t interpret it. Instead, the player to your right will tell you how your life turned out, based on what you read. They’ll narrate a story from your future. They can reveal as much or as little as they wish. They can tell you how you’re going to die, or describe a short mundane moment that explains nothing. You have no control over what they say. You cannot offer input while they speak, and when they finish you must accept your fate without comment. Pass the book to them so they can read and the person to their right can soothsay. Continue until everyone has glimpsed their destiny, then return the book to the shelf and leave the room. Go home and live.

If you decide to burn the book, do it. The method does not matter. Douse it in oil and use a cigarette lighter. Get a book of matches and tear out one page at a time and burn it slow. Preheat the oven to 451 degrees and chuck it inside. Who cares as long as it’s completely destroyed. Even the cover cannot survive. Don’t spare the dust jacket, if it has one.

As the book is consumed, talk about how much better, how much safer the multiverse will be now that the wizard has been destroyed forever. Tell your fellow survivors about your plans for your now unhaunted future. Tell them about your relief. Cry. Scream. Talk over each other. Find catharsis however you can, if you can.

Once the book is reduced to ash, the game is over, but your ordeal is not. Set a timer for one hour. Return to your spot in the circle, but leave your character behind. Talk about why you decided to annihilate a real book to exorcise the memory of a wizard that doesn’t exist. Did you get that wrapped up in the story? Did you let your character’s thoughts and feelings cloud your judgment? Maybe you never liked that book anyway. Maybe you had to buy it at an inflated price from the university bookstore for some bullshit prerequisite class that you never wanted to take in the first place. Maybe you were reading it when your girlfriend broke up with you. Maybe it evokes painful childhood memories. Maybe its language or style makes you feel self-conscious or inadequate. Maybe you were happy to see it burn.  Or maybe, in the moment, it felt like the story you were telling was more important. Did your narrative eclipse its? Hell, did you just think it would be fun to light something on fire?

Whatever the reason, you have to talk about it for an hour. Feel free to challenge your fellow players if you feel like their explanation is bullshit. Get as combative as you like, but remember you agreed to destroy the book too. When the timer goes off, order some takeout, put on a ’70s exploitation film or play some League of Legends together, and don’t talk about this stupid game ever again.

Regardless of whether or not you burned his book, the wizard is dead and the wizard survives.