I've just started playing a Kult: Divinity Lost campaign - the first time playing this way instead of pre-written adventures. We're playing a game set in London in late 2022, in a slightly altered reality where a completely effective covid vaccine means the pandemic is over. We began with a session 0, establishing lines and veils, discussing themes we enjoy, and creating characters. Here's mine.
I'm Isabella May. Izzy to my friends. Well, to people who aren't clients.
My life wasn't supposed to be this way. Everything was figured out for me, from before I was even born. GCSEs, A-levels, a first or a good 2.1 from one of the top universities, a successful career with a consultancy firm.
I got as far as the three As at A-level. Then at eighteen I ran away and joined a cult.
That's where I made my first ever real friend. My roommate, Lily Rose Webb. She was twenty, which seemed very mature to me, and seemed to have everything figured out. She passionately believed in the cult's mission, and she made me believe too. She taught me to live, to be free, without having everything planned out for me.
The worst day of my life was when I woke up and she was gone. Her bunk was empty. It looked like it hadn't even been slept it. When I looked for her possessions, they were gone too. I remember running around grabbing people, asking what had happened and where she had gone, and getting nothing but blank looks in return. It seemed like nobody even remembered that Lily even existed, except for me.
I was done with the cult after that, but leaving wasn't so easy. The leader still had uses for me. It wasn't until a police raid destroyed everything that I was finally free.
I thought about joining the police after that. I still had my A-levels after all, and I thought maybe I could work my way up, and then maybe I'd have the resources to try to find out what happened to Lily. But there was a background check, which brought my past activities with the cult to light. It was made clear that I was not police material. I decided to go private instead.
It could all have been different, of course. I could have stood up to my parents, and chosen a university course I actually cared about. I could have spent my life doing something better than trailing cheating partners. But I didn't. I joined a cult, whose leader gave me false hope, then forced me into breaking the law and rejecting anyone who could have helped me, and finally took away my only friend.
I've had my little place in Camden for a while now. It's not particularly nice. I'm not sure it's technically in Camden, for that matter. But it's mine, and that's something I can be proud of. I built my career on my own terms, and I've supporting myself with it for over ten years now. And I even made a friend.
He lives in the flat opposite mine and he calls himself Raven Sanguine, although it wasn't too hard to find out his real name is Steven Brooks. To be honest I think he's a bit of a poser, but he's got a good heart. We'd been pretty much ignoring each other until one day he caught me singing along with the music I was listening to and found we had something in common. Black metal, emo, old school goth. The only thing that really makes me feel alive.
If I'm having a good day, and I'm not working, I put in some time on my ongoing investigation into what happened to Lily. If it's a bad day, I can't make myself do anything more than sit in Beatrice's coffee shop and people watch. If it's a really bad day, Raven drops by to keep me company. He seems to think there's something romantic about my bad days. I like him well enough to pretend to listen when he reads me the poetry that I apparently inspire.
He also helps me forget about my biggest fear. Being alone. I've got no family besides my parents, who I haven't spoken to since the day I left home, and I don't exactly make friends easily. I have a lot of recurring nightmares, but the worst one is the one where I'm back in my room at the cult, and people are collecting up my possessions and talking as if they're just some junk that got dumped here and I never existed.
There's one thing I can't tell even Raven. The case I shouldn't have taken. I felt like there was something off about the man who hired me to find his missing wife, but I was new to the business and desperate for money, so I took the job. I found her, and got paid. But the next time I saw her face it was on the cover of a newspaper. She'd been trying to escape from him, and I helped him find her.
I've been more careful since then. I won't say I've never made another mistake, but I do my best to make sure I never hurt anyone. It's not in me to intentionally cause harm.
There's two people from the cult I'm still in contact with. Nathan was in security, and he's the one who got me out: a suggestion one night that I shouldn't be there the next morning, and the next morning was the police raid. I've not seen much of him since then, but I've helped him out with some police trouble. Mary I barely knew back then, but her whole family were in the cult and she's had a tough time since it all ended. She knows her way around the homeless community well enough to give me some good leads.
So that's me. Isabella May, PI. Maybe one day I'll solve the one case that matters.
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