Episode: 5.12

--- Aiden ---

He wasn’t entirely sure Ember believed him about metaphorically and metaphysically bitch-slapping the Cheshire, but at the very least she’d taken it as a joke and the snort of laughter he’d gotten out of her had definitely lightened the dark mood that had clung to them since they found each other again.

(Jericho and Ozzy were always better with kids…)

He rubbed at the back of his neck, wondering if there was someway to distract her from whatever thoughts were swirling in her head, because while he could handle the silence himself, he couldn’t handle it when the other person was being quiet due to being in a mood.

(Almost wish I had a way to get her curiosity going again, I’d rather have the chatter box than the depressed twelve-year-old…)

After a moment, he remembered something.

(Oh, right, almost forgot about that…)

He reached into his vest and pulled out a book, that probably shouldn’t have fit inside of his pocket, before tossing it to Ember. “Catch.”

She just barely managed to keep from fumbling the fairly large book, before glaring at him.

“What is this?” She frowned looking at the book cover of a silver gauntlet holding a blue flame over a black background with silvery text at the bottom reading Arcane Arcana.

“That, right there, is one of the original books Arcane used to help new Arcane find their way to the association, as well as explaining the basics of the Arcane magic system.” He explained before shrugging. “Saw it when I was looking for you and figured if it could help people who didn’t believe in magic figure out magic, it should be able to help you.”

Actually, he’d found it in the bookstore exit he’d used when leaving the underground market and figured if he tossed it her way it’d fill her curiosity without him having to answer two dozen questions every hour.

“Huh…” Ember hummed, before opening the book to a random page and attempting to read it as she walked.

(Right, definitely an Arcane.) He couldn’t help but chuckle as he fell back just enough, that he could steer her away from any possible collisions, the same way he did whenever Amelia got caught up in one of her tech manuals, or pet decided to try and walk and watch her shows on her phone at the same time, or how his sister sometimes got when she…

(…)

Something halfway between a laugh and a sigh escaped him.

(You know, I just realized the women in my life are worryingly lacking in a dangerous mix of both self-preservation and common sense…)

“Hey, hold up.” Ember frowned, slowing to a halt.

“Yeah?” Stopping just a step ahead of her as he looked back at her. “Is something wrong?”

Ember looked up at him and then down at her book before reading. “To establish your character’s starting affinities, roll three D6s, for your primary two for your secondary and one for your tertiary affinity.”

“Huh, I guess they didn’t go full skill point for character creation until Deviant’s Masquerade.” He hadn’t known that.

Ember gave him another glare. “Is this a tabletop RPG manual?”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded, a little confused.

Ember took a deep breath before visibly restraining herself. “I thought this was some kind of Arcane handbook on magic!”

“It is.”

“It’s a game!” She practically shouted.

It took him a moment longer than it probably should’ve for him to realize the problem, at which point he slapped a hand to his face. “You’re completely new to the Masquerade.”

“Yeah…” Ember admitted slowly. “We established that earlier.”

“No, what I mean is…” He sighed, before running his hand down his face. “Okay, so, time for yet another history lesson apparently.”

“Okay…” Ember nodded, with a hesitant look.

“So, quick question before I get too deep into this, you know what the Arcane Association is right?” Because if she didn’t, he was going to her school and burning the place down for incompetence and failure to educate.

“That’s the international Arcane group, the one that all other Arcane answer to?” Ember answered, though her tone of voice told her she didn’t completely trust her answer.

(Which is probably a good thing given what how little her school has apparently taught her about the Masquerade.)

“Okay, close enough for now.” He told her, not willing to dive into a second history lesson on top of his current one. “So, magic has always been around in one form or another even though people haven’t always known about it.”

“I thought the Arcane popped up around the time of the rift-riots in the nineties.” Ember cut in, with another set of her little misconceptions.

“The riots were in the late nineties, early two-thousands.” He corrected her idly, before moving onto the main topic. “And no, that’s just when they started going out in public with their powers. Hell, the government didn’t even admit to Deviants being a thing for a few more years after that, even though just about every city-dweller had seen at least one Deviant fight by then.”

“Huh…” Ember hummed thoughtfully, not even bothering to argue the possibility that the government was willing to cover up something.

(She really is as paranoid as Jericho…)

He wanted to shake his head at the idea, but at the same time with the shit he knew, he felt like buying her ice cream for being quite possibly the smartest kid he knew. Instead, given how curious the kid was, he gestured to a nearby portable bench the Market left out for those customers who’d grown tired of walking around, so that he could continue the lesson.

“Anyway, since magic has never been publicly acknowledged until recently, every so often there’s an event that causes magic to nearly die out in a country. For America, this near-extinction event was world war two, the Korean war, and the Vietnam wars all being so close together, combined with a few other events such as a lot of Deviant deaths during the prohibition when the mobs would either kill or recruit any Deviant they could find.”

“How do you know about all of that?” Ember cut in, yet again with more of her questions.

“Know an old man, who was a Deviant who fought in Vietnam, and know a Deadman who lived and died during prohibition.” He explained easily enough, before giving her a wry grin as he gestured to her book. “It’s also in that book under world history.”

Ember blinked, before flipping through the book and finding the section he was talking about. Giving him plenty of time to put out his current cigarette and light another without receiving one of her judgmental glares.

(Thinking about it I probably should check in with old man Sam and Bones, see how those two are holding up.)

“So, it is.” She eventually remarked before closing the book.

“Not going to keep reading?” He asked, hoping she wouldn’t pick up on his reluctance to continue his third history lesson of the day, because while he didn’t mind answering her questions, he also didn’t see a point in giving her those answers when she could figure them out for herself, with the book in her hands.

“But you were explaining all of this, and you were doing it better than my history teacher at school.” Ember told him, as his hopes proved just a little too true.

(It says bad things when the Mal addict who kills things that make him angry is a better teacher, than her actual schoolteachers…)

“Right, fine…” He sighed, leaning back against the bench. “Okay, so after the Vietnam draft and everything else, American Arcane culture was borderline dead. Now a few years after Vietnam however someone had an idea that would have massive ripple on culture both Deviant and non. Any ideas what it was?”

Ember thought about it for a moment. “Computers?”

He couldn’t help but give her an unimpressed look, before tapping two fingers against the book in her lap.

“RPGs?” Ember corrected herself a little bashfully.

“Right.” He nodded, seeing no point in embarrassing the kid. “So, anyway, once RPGs became popular enough, with kids, teenagers, and young adults all playing, a few of those players got really into the roleplaying part. Acting out all of the magic and mystical BS of the more magical classes. Now for most of them, this did nothing, but if you were to pretend to cast magic while not knowing you actually could cast magic…”

“You’d end up actually casting magic.” Ember realized.

“Not all the time, but enough to realize something was there.” He confirmed, flicking a bit of ash from his cigarette. “Now, once those people figured out they had magic, they started burning through all the tabletop games and fantasy books they could find, trying to find out what was real and what wasn’t. And once they had enough worked out, they started piecing together their own spell books from torn and spliced RPG handbooks, and notebook pages. In fact…”

He picked up the Arcane RPG book and began flipping through pages until he found some that showed what he was looking for, “Once they finally started making these books, they made the whole spliced notebook thing a part of their aesthetic for the games.”

“Okay,” Ember nodded, with a thoughtful look. “But that doesn’t explain why they released all of this as an RPG rather than as an actual book or manual.”

“Back then, all the old spell books were either made of things that were complete hokey or that no one actually knew how to use, so no one actually trusted them as valid sources of information.”

Ember looked at them then the book and back again, a confused expression never leaving her face. “But they trusted RPGs?”

“Sorry to tell you, but Arcane are all nerds.” He told her, ruffling her hair just to annoy her.

Ember swatted his hand away and glared at him. “There has to be more to it than that.”

He shrugged. “Well, the whole splicing RPGs thing worked for most of them to figure out the basics of magic. So, they must’ve figured that if they made an actual RPG, when people finally got to their game, they’d realize most of it was the real deal rather than a bunch of made-up shit that was either hit or miss.”

He watched her consider that for a moment as she stared at the book in her lap, before flipping through a few pages, not really reading them, but getting an idea for what was actually in the book.

Seeing the kid was once more distracted, he inhaled the last fourth of his cigarette before putting it out and replacing it with another one.

“Hey, since it’s probably not covered in here, when exactly did the Arcane Association take over introducing the Arcane to magic?” Ember asked, not even bothering to look up from the book.

“Look at the company name.” He told her puffing on his cigarette.

This time Ember actually looked up from her book and blinked at him. “Huh?”

“The company name for the guys who made the game.” He clarified.

Ember frowned before flipping to the first page where the publishing information was, and blinked. “Huh. So, the Arcane Association were the guys who made the Arcanum?”

“Close.” He nodded. “They formed between the first and second editions of the game, when they started using game conventions to scout out the real Arcane. At which point they felt the group needed a professional name so they could all work together as a seemingly legitimate company.”

“Huh. So, the Arcane Association started out as a game company?”

“Not quite, the Arcane Association has actually been a government recognized educational organization since… the late seventies, early eighties.” He guessed at the year, having never bothered to actually read the little gold plaque at the nearby Arcane college giving the dates for the entire organization.

“They, they started out as a, a school?” Ember asked incredulously.

“Well, yeah,” He laughed, finding it funny that that somehow broke her suspension of disbelief to his little history lesson. “I mean, they knew if they opened a school for magic, any Arcane they found would join in a heartbeat.”

“How could they know that?!” Ember practically shouted, “Wouldn’t they have thought it was a scam or something?”

(Well, ignoring the fact that the eighties were a much simpler time…)

“Well, they only needed people to give them a chance to prove themselves, and they got it because of one, beautiful little trait of magic.” He teased, knowing she’d take the bait.

“What?” Ember asked tilting her head curiously, (like a kitten.)

He smirked, wondering if she’d realize once he told her what he was about to tell her. “It makes all Arcane, good or bad, curious as kittens without survival instincts.”

Ember gave him a flat stare, picking up on the fact that he thought the same of her. “Really, now.”

“Well, like I said, the re-discovery of magic was largely because, a bunch of Arcane were curious about magic once they realized it was real.”

“Of course, they were, it was their… their special ability. Of course, they’d want to figure out how it worked.” Ember rationalized.

“Rather than fearing the possibility of summoning the demons I make a living killing?” He pointed out with a raised brow. “The same demons virtually every fantasy story out there says be careful of summoning. The same ones Arcane still summon to this day, even after they have been recorded killing other Arcane.”

“Well…” Ember stalled for a moment before shrugging. “There’s, uh, there’s no accounting for idiocy?”

He snorted, because even if it was a half-assed excuse it still rang true. “At least, those idiots were smart enough to remove themselves from the gene pool.”