This is a session recap for a Kult: Divinity Lost roleplaying campaign. Jessy Button is played by my wife, who also does the art, and I am the game master.
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| The ring burns like fire when Jessy places it on her finger and a burning sensation spreads through her entire body. She cannot hope to control the power flowing from the ring, and the raw sensation of it incapacitates her in an instant. Jessy collapses onto the floor beside the bleeding, dying old hag possessed by her grandmother. Angela watches from her eyes, delighted as Jessy is forced to recognize a suffering unlike anything she’s felt before, or even imagined. Through the ring, her mind is invaded by another, something once a woman but now barely human.1 In a few fleeting moments, Jessy relives a lifetime of hurt. Nothing could have prepared her for it. Lashes, burns, restraints and darkness, punishments so surreal that her own soul feels torn to bits, each piece wound and bound like silver thread then tortured again. Vomit rises in her throat and chokes her, a half century of unrelenting agony taking over every thought and emotion. That suffering lives in the ring, but Jessy can sense that the woman who knew it is still out there somewhere, alive. The pain has eroded her thoughts, her name, her entire soul, yet somehow she lives on. |
1
Keep It Together Failure
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All there is to do is scream. Pain, anger, fear, a shrill shriek off the top of Jessy’s lungs to get everything out. Leave her alone! Make it stop! Go away! The pain only ramps up and becomes more real, Jessy’s joints seizing up and her flesh cracking. Her once-healed wounds open up again with immediate festering rot, bones shatter like ice, and her brain leaks out onto the carpet as melted bubbling ooze. Then, it is all gone at once. No, not gone. Hidden in the ring. Jessy can still sense it, now that she can separate her own body, beaten but whole, from the woman whose tattered soul sought a moment’s escape through her. The ache is still there and Jessy is drained of all her energy. She can barely keep her eyes open, watching Angela laughing at her through the dying Agatha’s toothless mouth.
“How do you like her?” – Angela
Through lidded eyes, Jessy understands the expression in the elder’s face: she knows the same pain that isn’t their own. She demands an explanation, wheezing out questions at her grandmother. Who was that? Angela croaks out that Jessy must carry that suffering with her, that wish for a death that will never ever come. Defiant and naïve, Jessy refuses to accept Angela’s nonsense and argues that she’ll find a way to get away from it. The only way, of course, is to return the ring to her grandmother. This, too, she refuses. Jessy will keep the ring, she will use it, and she will cut herself away from the suffering woman, no matter her ties to the ring. The light fades from Angela’s golden brown eyes bulging out of Agatha’s withered face. Both of the old women die before Jessy, bleeding out while whispering over and over, “you foolish child”. Angela seems amused by Jessy’s delusional approach to the truth, laughing as the machinery of death rips her away.
| Time passes. How much, Jessy cannot say, but eventually reality returns to her. Outside the door, people are screaming and running. There’s banging on doors and walls, things breaking and inhuman growling from the things hunting through the corridors. All she can do is lay still and hope to survive until the chaos dies down. Gunshots break up the horror, loud and frightening but in the very least normal. Jessy is roughly pulled to her feet, knees wobbly, and stands face to face with a familiar uniform. The police officer Ellis O’Donovan looks furious. She asks only one question: What did Jessy do? Jessy, of course, deflects and demands to know what has happened. Unsurprisingly, the sergeant tells her nothing. She understands that Jessy has a deal with someone and so much as it irks her, it would be best if Jessy left immediately and thought nothing more of this. When she again tries to pressure Ellis for information, Jessy steps out on very thin ice. The small woman’s hand easily grabs Jessy’s shaved head, fat and slimy fingers seizing it in a death grip as Ellis lifts her off the ground. Empty white globes lurk right behind the facade of Ellis’ cold face as she locks eyes with the beaten brat. Jessy has a deal, and one thing to do. Other than that, Ellis recommends for Jessy’s own sake that she keeps a low god damn profile. Shut up, and honor your promise. Ellis is clearly unhappy to give Jessy even this chance, and when she spits out for Ellis let her down, the short police officer loses her last, fragile bit of patience. Ellis hurls Jessy across the room as if she weighed nothing, a ragdoll to do with as she pleases. Jessy crashes2 face first into a wall and the world goes black. |
2
Endure Injury Failure
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Jessy comes to on a couch in the retirement home’s lobby. Dead bodies must have been removed, but the chaos is still written onto every broken chair and lamp, the blood still staining the counter, and black holes in the walls from both bullets and other, less comprehensible things. Whatever Angela did with the ring for the short time she had it, it caused complete mayhem. The place is swarming with cops, medics, and fire fighters, caring for survivors and surveying the damage. Everyone is quiet, save for the constant whimpering and wheezing from the wounded elderly and staff. Jessy slips away from the tense scene unseen as sergeant O’Donovan asked her to. The sun has set by now and though the streets are free of snow, the cold wind is far from welcoming. Jessy calls Tan’s condo, hoping that there will still be people there. Unfortunately, Daisy picks up. She is all too pleased to inform Jessy that they were just leaving, so there will be no one to let her in. Tan won’t be home until tomorrow. Jessy hangs up immediately and takes an Uber up to her new apartment in Brampton. On the ride there, she flicks through her phone and finally finds her dad’s number. Jessy hasn’t called or texted him for half a year, but she has no one else to ask about her grandmother. She alerts him that she’ll be calling tomorrow, then crashes into her sheetless bed and passes out from exhaustion.
After starting her day with some selfies and eventually dressing herself, Jessy calls her dad Victor Buckle and engages in her least favorite conversation in the last six months. Even Wilma was less annoying than this. Victor thanks Jessica for calling him, remarks that it’s been a while. He spends a minute looking for a place to sit down, evidently busy at work, then offers Jessica his full attention. How has she been? How were her holidays? Is everything okay? Jessy gives only bite-sized answers to any of his questions, aloof above all else and clearly not interested in hearing about the used car her sisters got for Christmas. When she finally gets a turn to talk Jessy asks about her grandmother, a person she never knew. How did she die? What kind of a person was she? Victor is confused as to why Jessica would want to know this stuff, but her explanation of needing medical records works for the moment. He’s just happy to hear from his daughter. Angela died after a long coma of uncertain cause. She would speak even in her unresponsive state, screaming and whispering gibberish. It was a very difficult time, especially for Jessica’s mom Marie, who wasn’t ever the same afterwards. She had her episodes from then on, Jessy finds out, but she must have been afraid to get more doctors involved after everything with her mother. Victor knew something was wrong, of course, but Marie still seemed happy so they never had her diagnosed.
The awkward conversation turns to the ring Jessy inherited when her mother passed. Victor knows that it came from Angela, but that to his memory Marie never wore it. Jessy admits that she likes it and that she’s curious about where it came from. The rest of the phone call is somehow even more stilted, Jessy avoiding any and all personal questions from her dad while she tries to eke out anything else he might know about her grandmother. Angela was a strange woman, very private. Him and Marie didn’t see her very often before her coma. He would have asked Peter, Jessica’s grandfather, but he too is dead now. Victor offers to look up the name of the hospital where Angela was treated before dying. It’s not much, but it will have to do. He finishes by telling Jessica that he loves her and that he hopes she’s well. She goes by Jessy now, she coldly informs her father and ends the phone call on that.
Later in the day, Jessy makes her way back to Tan’s condo. He wouldn’t allow her to bring his research for the summoning ritual outside his home, so once there she locks herself in one of the many bedrooms and begins her studies. The food served at Tan’s place isn’t at the same level as it used to be, James still out of commission. With a plate by her side on the bed, Jessy begins to flip through the pages and pages of notes on all the people in Tan’s flock. Jessy knows she’ll have to read this over many times, especially comparing it to Tan’s other preparations. The ritual involves everyone tied to Tan’s faith, so Jessy and him must know and understand them all for the summoning to work. It is by far the most interesting section to her, so many peoples’ lives and secrets laid out plainly for her to see. Daisy is not only a virgin, but keeps her involvement with Tan a secret from her family with whom she still lives. Carolina is a widow, and Tan appears to be monitoring even her most personal rituals. One thing she notices after finishing reading about the true and frankly nauseating origins of the MyGems app is that Jasmine, the girl possessed during their last ceremony, is conspicuously missing from the text along with Jessy herself.
On to the more arcane side of the research. Tan has multiple sources, translated in several different ways, describing not only the ritual but the mancipia it is supposed to summon. An entity of perfect beauty, guide and ruler in one who knows all paths to enlightenment and power. Through it, they will discover unlimited wealth and glory. Jessy finds herself pulled in to the ancient texts more than she expected, a strange feeling at the center of her chest as she tries to take it all in. Sacred symbols of Dehu and Mil, repurposed for the ritual, are carefully examined and compared against the heaps of charts and diagrams Tan has produced. Jessy feels eyes on her. She recognizes Angela’s presence, but it is weak. Dying once more must have hurt her. She is somewhere far away, clawing her way towards Jessy for a closer look at the ritual. Whatever her intent, Jessy knows that her grandmother is taking a great interest in this ceremony, and that worries her.
| Hours pass. Sat at the head of the bed and propped up on pillows, she has a multitude of notes spread all around her. She digs through piles of documents, cross-references strange translations with even more absurd justifications for sexual positions throughout the ritual. The ritual’s focal points, which Sol demands she manipulate in secret on the night it all happens, start making sense to her. Something comes over her, and Jessy feels at once as though she recognizes all this, like she’s seen it before3. All this text, she’d studied it in the past. Jessy rifles through papers, the lights have gone out and only candle light illuminates the text, the walls close in. She holds up a paper and the blood sigil on it is fresh. Whether the blood is hers or her mother’s, she cannot say, but with an old, wrinkled hand she places a thumb on it and draws a new line, changing its meaning. This isn’t a ritual of passion, it’s an incantation of death, of the soul, a binding. The symbol isn’t for her mother, it’s for her, and Jessy opens her mouth to speak the words from a memory that’s not her own. All at once, her skull shatters and opens, brain and soul rushing out and replaced by the hateful wind that accompanies Angela’s spirit. Not once but twice did she complete the spell, past and present becoming one. Now, Jessy’s body is hers. |
3
See Through The Illusion Failure
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| From somewhere distant, as if watching herself, Jessy fights for control. Angela’s mind is becoming hers, unfamiliar thoughts and feelings flooding in. Screams, blood, laughter, and dreams of a skyscraper wrought in twisted iron and black glass. Angela gets off the bed and Jessy desperately locks her own knees in place. She is small before this presence, but with all her strength she can at least assert that the body is hers and Angela can’t fucking have it. The two souls sharing a body engage in a screaming match where Jessy’s only goal, only desire, is to come back to herself. She forces Angela to stand still and they both reach for the ring. Angela reads Jessy’s mind as easy as her own and knows what she’s after, to take the ring off hoping it might cut her off from Angela or the other woman. Jessy still senses that agony, and knows that Angela revels in it. When Jessy’s fingers touch the ring, the entire room shreds before her eyes like paper, revealing her childhood home. On the living room couch, she sees herself curled up in a ball and crying with her hands on her head. A prickling sensation spreads over Jessy’s skin as if her whole body has fallen asleep. Her knees hit the bedroom floor, followed by her face. She can move again, though her joints ache with the pain of a body much older than her own. Angela is no longer watching Jessy, but lives somewhere inside of her. A deep fear sets in4. This could happen again at any time. |
4
Haunted Failure |
| Now evening and with Tan’s housekeepers gone for the day, Jessy has little to do but wait for Tan to come home. She texts him that something really bad happened, but there is nothing he can do to be there any sooner. Trying to take her mind off of it all, Jessy picks up her phone to manage her social media. She has messages to respond to, new and old pictures to upload, and a second apology to post about her next YouTube video being delayed once more. Things have been so crazy lately with all the blood and murder.5 As Jessy types it out and hits send, she realizes what she’s done and scrambles to delete it. With unclouded eyes she sees the dozens, hundreds of DMs waiting for her. Jessy scrolls through her Twitter feed, her thoughts on Bottega Veneta’s latest design interrupted by disjointed ramblings and fragmented sentences about holy rituals and encouraging suicide for the weak. Her Instagram looks much the same, though at this point Jessy is panicking so completely that she’s just mass deleting everything from the past several hours. Her Instagram story has her laughing into the camera for minutes on end, while her latest posts show off all her wounds, pulling them open. She has flooded her own account with pictures and videos of her own abuse, of her bloody clothes from various gruesome outings, images she didn’t know existed but have now been put on display for the world. Concerned and angry emails vibrate her phone until she throws it across the lounge and curls up on the couch, screaming and crying. Everything is crumbling. |
5
Haunted Hold spent |
| Her phone is ringing. Three missed calls from Carl. She responds and tries to fend off her very concerned daddy, sniffling out that everything is okay.6 Finally, Carl no longer has the energy to put up with Jessy pushing him away. He is desperate and demands that Jessy tell him what is happening. He saw the pictures, the things she wrote to people who commented… it was disgusting stuff. She needs help and he will give her anything, but at that point Jessy just hangs up the call. Her mind is in too much disarray to even lie to him. There’s nothing she could say that could possibly explain all this. Jessy is collapsed on the floor beside the couch when Tan gets into the apartment later in the night. Still crying, she is still clearing out her various social media accounts of all the insanity. Emails and messages from collaborators and sponsors, and her various boyfriends and girlfriends, are piling up unread. She doesn’t have the energy to even look at them. She tosses her cracked phone onto the couch to show Tan the fallout, then sobs out that something happened while she was studying. There was something wrong with the notes. |
6
Liar Hold spent |
There is no way to calm Jessy down, though Tan certainly tries. She mumbles something about her grandmother, which at least tells Tan something. Jessy doesn’t want to talk about what happened, though, she needs Tan to explain what the fuck is in that research of his. She saw horrible things. When he refuses to take her seriously, Jessy marches off into the bedroom and starts to tear through the stacks of notes on the bed. She saw a sigil, there was blood, and handwriting about human sacrifice to step beyond the boundary of death. None of it is there. Jessy screams in frustration, and Tan eventually steps into the room and ends Jessy’s tantrum with a swift hit to the face. Calm down! A moment’s pause before Jessy, still screaming and crying, goes at him with weak fists against his chest. She has no energy for this, so no matter how much she wants to fight Tan dispatches her to the floor with an unapologetic punch to the stomach. Crumbled into a sobbing little pile, Jessy has to listen to Tan yelling for her to get her shit together. A lot is on the line here, their eternal future will be secured by this ritual, and Tan can’t afford to have her going completely mad just weeks before. No matter what she is going through, they will either beat it together or Jessy will have to work through it and not be a little bitch.
It becomes clear to Jessy, struggling meekly on the floor as Tan lays into her, that he cares leagues more about this summoning than he ever has for her. It feels hypocritical to despise Tan for it, since her own loyalties lay far from him, but Jessy is nothing if not a hypocrit. She calls him out, spouting into his face that this idiotic ritual is his only concern and that if he doesn’t care about helping her then she won’t care about performing it. Tan, with a black look, responds with frustration that she refuses to see the big picture. Summoning the mancipia will resolve whatever problem Jessy is facing. It’ll bring them such vast glories that of course Tan must care about it above her. She will be blessed by it just as well as him. Stubborn, Jessy still refuses and tells Tan that he can’t force her, she won’t stay and be his little servant against her will. Tan responds in a cold voice. “What’s your alternative? You have nothing else now.” He is holding her phone, but punctuates the statement by dropping it in front of her, Jessy’s Story on Instagram still playing a short, repeating clip of Jessy lapping up blood from her arm.
It sinks in. Jessy lets out another ugly sob and looks up at Tan with a tear-streaked face. She’s so tired of all this. She feels helpless, and maybe that’s what Tan wants her to be, but he promises her that after their ceremony, she’ll never feel that way again. Thinking of the coins Sol gifted her and what her final reward will be, she dares believe that maybe it’s true. Shaking as she sits up, Tan helps Jessy onto the bed and is soon back with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Alcohol soothes her nerves for the moment, and Jessy shares with Tan all she can remember of the day’s events. Angela is an enemy, and he if anyone needs to be aware of her. There are things they can do, people to talk to, and as their clothes come off and Jessy’s moans echo throughout the condo, she feels that at least for the moment, she has Tan on her side.
Beyond Elysium 