And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 01

In mythology, Zephyr was the Greek God of the gentle wind of the west and the interceder between our World, the world of the living, and the Underworld. Zephyr also brought the fresh wind that brought the gentle spring rains that awakened nature every spring. That sums up the majority of my own work as well.

The idea of an Underworld is technically accurate but very misleading. Ours is just one plane of existence and some of the residents of other planes aren't especially good guests when they visit. There is no creature too nasty and wicked but what some idiot minor magician won't try to summon one (or ten) to either try to kill their spouse or business partner, or just to impress some friends at a dinner party.

Artificement is a tricky but very useful (and lucrative) skill. It allows me to channel and store magical energies into nominally magical items for future use by "Sensitives". That's folks rated a BMA score of between a 0.1 and a 1.9, the vast overwhelming majority of our magical community, encompassing hundreds of millions of people. This allows them a very finite and task specific use of minor magic. There are tens of thousands of commercial applications and products in this genre and most of the really skilled Artificers go into corporate service.

I've received offers to work for some of the local Arc-Tec companies but I hate wearing a suit and tie and having a boss, and prefer to remain out on my own. Magic is always uncertain, so the smarter mages bulk up as much as possible with Arc-Tec gadgets so that they always have a surprise or two hidden up their sleeve.

Making Artifices is an ideal occupation for a self-employed private Adept. One can never carry too many protection gadgets… it's saved my life more than once. Who cares if your betters look down up on you if just one item helps save your life the next time you walk out your front door. Artifices that are produced by Adepts are more commonly called magical gadgets or 'gizmos', and are held in extreme distain by Wizards… but they get to make Artifacts… Artifices on steroids.

Artifacts are insanely time consuming and expensive to make, but are extremely powerful items… and highly regulated by the BMA. Made by Wizards for Wizards, or very rich Sensitives or Adepts that can pay for an appropriate government license for the item.

Banishment is pretty straight forward skill, the primary means of dealing with unruly "Visitors" - beings, creatures and entities from planes and worlds of reality other than our own. You just need to know the right words to say and be able to channel enough power into your command to make the offending object go away… preferably back from whence it came from originally.

In the old days, "Visitors" used to be taxonomically classified into several big and over generalized family trees like demons, devils, troll-kind, ghosts, elementals, etc., but it wasn't terribly accurate, based more upon physical appearance rather than original Plane of origin. Not every ten foot red skinned critter with horns and a forked tail comes from Hell. Actually, "Hell", in the classical sense is a bit of a misnomer as well, but that's a theological discussion for another day. In any case, the new 'politically correct' terminology is Visitors. One size fits all.

Banishment is my bread and butter and probably makes up for two-thirds of my business. I'm pretty good at – and you'd be surprised how many nasty things there are that have outstayed their welcome and that need a good firm shove to go back home.

My last specialty, Protections, is also fairly self explanatory. I can set protective wards that can discourage entry onto a property by thieves and other unfriendly types of people. I can also provide self-protection Artifices for Sensitive clients or even play personal bodyguard for a limited, but expensive period of time.

There is a lot of corporate competition in this field so because of the absurd fees I charge I don't get quite as much of this sort of business as I would like. The work is usually easy… unless you get a client that is being stalked by greater powered Visitors. Then the boredom can quickly become a few minutes of sheer stark terror.

I also have limited Location, Manipulation and very Minor Translocation skills, but not enough to become BMA Certified. Just as well, Location is the primary tool of the divorce and missing persons Private Adepts, and I don't usually do that sort of work anyway.

With Manipulation I can perform (with great effort) a minor modification to the physical form of something, for example turning a silver coin into a small silver throwing dart. Material content, relative size and mass must remain about the same. A handy trick when entertaining at a dinner, or your kid nephew's birthday party. No, I cannot turn bad guys into cockroaches and step on them, or transform my older sister's cooking into anything remotely edible. That would require Wizard level magic indeed.

Translocation is a very tricky skill that is normally only found among Wizards. With it I can make a very small or light object disappear from one place and reappear in another. This is very hard work for me and I have only a very limited range of just a few feet, unless I'm extremely close to a Ley Line to draw power from. It can be a life-saver though. Making a gun, knife or forbidden magical tome disappear out of the hands of my foe and into mine has saved my life more than once. It's not flashy like Levitation or Teleportation, but it more than gets the job done.

As my late Aunt Millie used to say, "Be grateful for the tools you have and learn to use them to their utmost rather than bitch and complain about the powers and skills that other have."

I've been experimenting with Matter Projection a lot lately, hoping to someday be able to project out a small protective force field but this hasn't been working out so well. MP is definitely a Wizard-class skill and under most circumstances, I simply can't draw enough juice to hold one for more than a moment. It works at home, Zyphyr Manor, but just barely and not for long enough to be really useful and it isn't of much use anywhere else. Still, I keep practicing, for a couple of minutes each day first thing every morning.

Bless my dear departed Aunt Millie for building her house out near the middle of nowhere (long long before the recent real estate building boom in Austin) and located directly at three crossing Ley Lines, an Air, an Earth and an extremely strong Water one from the underground Edwards Aquifer as well. Finding a place where any pair of Ley Lines cross is a luxury; living under an intersection of three of them is massively delightful overkill. My Aunt left me a decent bit of money too, but it was her house that was the real jewel of her estate.

No one is ever going to skin this bear in his own den… not with massive amount of near Wizard class Wards that I've set up around here. I think that is one reason I hate leaving home to go work on a job… the intoxication of being able to pull down near limitless power just right over my head. I keep having to remind myself that it won't do any good to pull down the equivalent of a million volts of raw power if your personal circuit breaker is only set for 110v.

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A little magic and knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. The big shot Wizards, level 5's and up get proper training and have a few nasty people of their own looking over their shoulder to keep them from summoning invisible demons with a taste for human flesh. It's the stupider minor magicians, 2-4's that either got bored in their training (or avoided it entirely) and then read something on the IntraWeb on some dodgy newsgroup or web site that triggers their creative juices… usually avoiding their limited sense of self-preservation in the process. Then moderate to major level entities get let loose to amuse themselves in our world – usually in nasty and unpleasant ways.

I won't even mention the poor sods that have found some mystical tome that is far beyond their mortal understanding. The world is full of demented printers more than happy to make a few coins by reprinting dubious old magical tomes that ought to have stayed lost (or burned) and forgotten forever. Nowadays anyone with a computer can find thousands of insanely rare and dangerous books in PDF files all over the Web, and there is always a fool or two willing to give them a test drive.

Hell! If you can't find a copy of the Necronomicon, then you're either too stupid for words or you aren't trying very hard! Some damn fool even translated it into Klingon! The last time I did a search, Boogle came up with over 240,000 hits for "Forbidden Magic Tomes".

Probably the next time I go into Best Buy I'll find a CD boxed set for sale of "One Thousand Forbidden Books" all included together, with an easy pronunciation guide for all of those really hard Latin, ancient Chaldean, Egyptian or Phoenician words. I'm almost positive that something similar is already on Home Shopping Network or running somewhere as an infomercial in the wee hours of the morning. There has been far too much weirdness lately, and the meter of my Background Cosmic Weirdness gizmo has been redlined lately very definitely in "Oh Shit – time to take a vacation" territory.

It's me that they call… once the screaming begins to die down hours later. I'm particularly good at banishments and have the knack for dealing with these unruly and unwelcome Visitors. I've never had to deal with a 'name level' Visitor… that's what the government BMA is for, the real "Oh Shit" moments. That's why they get the big bucks and get the nice government health benefits plan.

Usually the majority of the time it's just dealing with some minor nuisance, such as imps, petty Trolls, Poltergeists, and the occasional Satyr or Willow Woman. Ever wonder what your very curious and sexually active teenagers are up to late at night with their friends? No, you probably don't really want to know. The trivial sexual elementals are usually simple to dispel, but sometimes the more creative and perverse teens can summon more powerful Incubi or Succubi, and then things can get a little too hot and heavy. Usually they don't have a prayer of controlling these entities and the dumb kids end up becoming the puppets instead. This can get very ugly.

Last year there was even a brief trend among the adult sexual party circuit of summoning a few of the moderate power sex elementals as part of the entertainment. I had to deal with one case like that last year and once was more than enough. I still remember far too many details revisited in my nightly dreams. Let's just say that unleashed self-willed sex elementals don't respect 'safe words' and continued to sexually torment their victims long after the screaming and blood flow stopped. They liked it here and didn't want to go back home – quietly or otherwise.

I ended up pretty much burning the house to the ground in the resulting firefight, and needed six stitches afterwards. Several other nearby houses got caught in the crossfire and nearly burned down as well. The BMA just about took my license for that one and my clients wanted to sue me for the damages since their insurance wouldn't pay for supernaturally caused damage, but backed down when the publicity concerning their unwholesome business and private affairs emerged.

My employment contract will never guarantee that I'll get your precious little snowflake back alive, in one piece and/or in their original mental condition. I'll just promise to do my best but there are never any guarantees. Shit happens. Payment in cash and all up front please. No returns – no exchanges. Your mileage may vary. Have a nice day!