More Ways to Get Sick!

Base Rules:
When you contract a disease, whether from the environment, an enemy, or spoiled food, it infects a random slot of inventory (never a slot with mutations, usually a physical slot). Put a D by the infected slot. You know when you’re infected with something, just not what unless you've had that disease before.
Each interval, make a Constitution save or the number of slots that disease takes up doubles (eg: 1->2->4->8), infecting random slots not infected with the same disease. If the disease ever infects an inventory slot that has something in it, you suffer its Symptoms, and if it infects all your slots without killing you, you must Save vs Con or die unless otherwise specified. If you’re infected by more than one disease, use the symptoms for the worse one.
You can stave off the worst effects of a disease, its spread, or even reverse the progress of some diseases by giving in to the disease’s Urges. (You don't have to follow a disease's Urge, you'll just want to.)
 If the disease can be reversed, you can make a Con save to reverse it one Interval after you've succeeded on a Con save to stop its spread.
Some diseases are infectious. Some are not. Infectious diseases are spread by close proximity (3 in 6 chance per day), by combat (2 in 6, 4 in 6 if you killed a diseased creature) and are always spread by contact.
Diseases can be cured by magic, medicine, downtime, and very rarely exorcism. Some of them have no cure.

This post pairs deliciously, like fine cheese and wine - no, more like blood and mosquitoes - with Lexi's Plaguezerker, as part of a sick collaboration! Disease names also courtesy of Lexi!

Katerina Kirillova

Diseases (d20):

1. The Plague (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: Large black buboes, chills, weakness,, and gangrene of the extremities. Save vs Con with a penalty equal to the number of slots infected or die in 1d4 days.

2. Malaria (Interval: Weekly, Inventory: Physical, Infections)
Symptoms: Fever, Save vs Con when you eat or vomit up food, Save vs Con after intense exertion or have muscle spasms.

3. Smallpox (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: High fever, pustules all over the body, hard coughing. Save vs Con or die in 2d4 days.

4. Leprosy (Interval: Weekly, Inventory: Physical)
Symptoms: Gradual numbness in affected areas, skin rash. Save vs Con or lose 1d4 digits, exploding on a 4. If you’re out of digits, you start losing limbs. Does not kill.

5. Rabies (Interval: Weekly, Inventory: Physical)
Symptoms: No immediate symptoms. Save vs Con or die in 1d4 weeks. A week before death, you become murderously aggressive, infectious, and develop a fear of water, refusing to drink.

6. Cholera (Interval: Exploration Turn, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: Immediate, unstoppable diarrhea. If you can’t get clean water, you die in 1d4 hours. Reversible.
Urge: Drink water and rest to avoid getting sicker. 2 rations worth of water an hour to prevent the spread, 4 rations of water an hour allows you to make Con saves to reverse the spread with advantage.

7. Influenza (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: Fever, chills, soreness, fatigue, sneezing, runny nose. Reversable.
Urge: Rest to avoid getting sicker. If you rest uninterrupted for 1d4 days, you may make Con saves to reverse the spread with advantage.

8. Tuberculosis (Interval: Weekly, Inventory: Physical)
Symptoms: Roll a d10 every Interval. On a 1, you become infectious, die in 1d4 weeks, and until then, you cough bloody phlegm.

9. Ebola (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: Exactly like influenza. Save vs Con or die in 1d8 days, bleeding heavily from your orifices in the last day.

10. Prions (Interval: Monthly, Inventory: Flip a coin. Mental on heads, Physical on tails.)
Symptoms: 1d6 random symptoms. (see table below) Save vs Death or die in 1d4 weeks.

11. Mummy Rot (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Physical)
Symptoms: Skin darkens and peels away in papery strips. Dust falls from joints. Save vs Con or lose 1 limb a day until you die.
Urge: Obey a mummy’s direct orders.

12. Cordyceps (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: A fungal growth begins to emerge from a random facial orifice, growing upwards. Save vs Con or die in 1d4 hours.
Urge: Find large gatherings of people. Take dead flesh and stack it into spiraling piles and twisted lines. Babble.

13. Contagious Murder (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Mental, Infectious)
Symptoms: You begin envisioning your comrade’s most likely form of death in the next day. Save vs Will or kill them, spreading the disease to all who witness you kill them.

14. Magepox (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Mental, Infectious)
Symptoms: Your skin begins to dry out and painfully separate into paper-thin layers very suitable to be torn off and written on. If you die, you collapse into a mess resembling a large pile of discolored paper.
Urge: Peel off your flaking skin. Anyone who touches the skin or reads what you write on it must Save vs Con or contract Magepox.

15. Goblin Plague (Interval: Exploration Turn, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: Goblins are drawn to you, 1 goblin for every slot infected. If you’re a goblin, look over here.  Not lethal.

16. Red Death (Interval: Minute, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: You bleed from all orifices for 1 damage per slot infected/combat round. Incredibly lethal, incredibly rare. Almost never natural.

17. Vampirism (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Physical, Infectious)
Symptoms: You take 1d4 damage when exposed to sunlight per combat round, silver and consecrated weapons deal critical damage to you, you cast no shadow and no reflection, and you can turn into a small rat, bat, or toad. You can eat anything but can only survive off blood. 1 regular person has 4 rations of blood in them. If someone gives you permission to feed, you can do it without infecting them for 1d4 damage. This disease does not kill you.
Urge: Drink blood whenever possible. If you ever take this blood without asking, you can turn into a wolf and merge with darkness, but you can no longer cross running water or enter a home without being invited in.

18. Eyeball Spores (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Mental)
Symptoms: Your eyeballs slowly divide like cells. (1 division/day) This is incredibly painful and gives you a cumulative -1 to anything involving sight for every eyeball that buds off you. These eyeballs have small tentacles to crawl away and will eventually grow into beholders with a strange tolerance for you. This disease is not lethal.

19. Sanity (Interval: Daily, Inventory: Both)
Symptoms: You gradually begin to hear the words of people playing a game. It’s easy enough to ignore, but what they’re talking about is eerily similar to whatever you’re doing, and listening to them automatically progresses the disease one stage but allows you to get insights into the world. When you’re fully infected, Save vs Will. If you fail, you go stark raving mad. If you succeed, you become an NPC who’s conveniently forgotten what they heard.

20. Goldipox (Interval: Weekly, Inventory: Physical)
Symptoms: Any money on your person degrades one step: gold to silver, silver to copper, copper to dirt. Offloading degraded money onto others infects them.
Urge: Get your hands on as much money as possible. If you ever collect 1000 gold coins or one flawless diamond, those items turn into dirt, but you’re cured.

Monica Delgado

Random Symptoms (d20):

1. Fever
2. Chills
3. Shaking
4. Uncontrollable laughter
5. Mild bleeding from orifices
6. Headache
7. Fatigue
8. Sneezing
9. Diarrhea
10. Vomiting
11. Sore throat
12. Compulsion
13. Phobia
14. Philia
15. Itching
16. Rash
17. Licking lips
18. Jaundice
19. Bruising
20. Weird pee

Design Notes:

Three goals here. One was to create impactful rules, which is why the common cold isn't on this list, and why the duration for almost all of these diseases is daily. The duration between "getting worse" is geared towards a party crawling through a dungeon or hexcrawling through the wilderness. Obviously, with campaigns that have longer time measurements, (e.g: if one day was one exploration turn) these diseases are more lethal. Feel free to scale anything about the effects and durations that you want, that's supposed to be flexible.

Another goal was to bolt disease onto an already existing system instead of creating a completely disassociated system. By linking disease to physical inventory, I'm trying to create another reason to track inventory. If carrying all that loot makes you sicker, (or at least feel the effects of your sickness) will you chance it, or will you dump it in exchange for survival? 

Another goal was to do disease without linking it to ability score damage. I suppose it's because players are bad at keeping track of penalties, but the same argument can be made against my system. I'd like to argue that having disease as a concrete inventory "infection" instead of "you have syphilis, make 1 save a day" places it more in the players minds. If you have a high score, are you really going to miss one or two points? Well, yes, but only in situations where those points could've made a difference. Unless a disease does a lot of ability score damage, sometimes its effects can be easy to forget when you have to keep track of loot, hirelings, light, spells, HP, and other party members! But if disease is directly linked to loot, which is gold, which is XP, then your players have a reason to care.

I also think that different symptoms help differentiate a disease in a way more interesting than math.

The inventory argument only holds up as long as inventory matters, which I think it should. If you run games without good inventory systems (5e comes to mind) or don't like inventory (which is fine) ability score damage may work better for you. But for a more OSR mindset, where what you're carrying and how much you can carry matters, I think disease should be tangible, infectious, and scary.

Disease also gives some weight to downtime. Most players use it to recover from wounds, buy things/gain XP from spending money, and the like. But having disease recovery as a viable option gives downtime a bit more purpose, even if that purpose is just removing a negative condition. 

Don't forget to infect hirelings and pack animals too. Animals are plague vectors.

This also gives a different cast to things that remove disease or cure all diseases. If progression is important to a mechanic, anything that instantly solves that mechanic, ignoring its usual progression, should be at least rare.  I'd advise modifying spells that cure diseases into spells that give a saving throw to halt or reverse a disease's progression.

I considered including mechanics to cure disease in this post but most of those were either a long list of "X thing that requires money/exploration/time to find" or "here's another subsystem!" My recommendation is adapting any subsystem you have for preparing food to preparing cures. Just requires different ingredients. I'll probably write my own, but for now I wanted to focus on presenting a challenge. Y'all solve challenges in OSR games, right?

P&P: Rails and Slime - Session 3

Find the previous chapter here!

The cast:
Skitters the tiefling thief.
Ixcuina the tiefling radiomancer.
Werd the human soldier.
Itzapal the ashanti veteran.
Ton, the NPC ashanti soldier.
Tot, the NPC berkins soldier.
Huehue, the NPC ashanti soldier.

The setting: A train bound for the urban battleground of Palenque, a Mayan city. The train consists of 7 cars (from front to back): The conductor/engine, 3 troop transports, 1 officer's quarters, and 2 cargo cars at the end. Conductor's car is #1, the first troop transport #2, etc.

After performing a crude pseudoautopsy on a tridog that might not have been completely dead, the gang decided to split up. Skitters, Werd, and Itzapal went to investigate the top of the engine. After climbing atop the cars, Skitters noted that the wind had picked up considerably. The gang pried open the emergency hatch, noting some resistance from some unidentified goop caking the hatch.

Meanwhile, Ix suggested that the strange tridogs should probably be moved out of a potential engagement. A captain agreed and ordered several soldiers to carry the tridogs to the cargo cars, and out the tridogs went. Ix then located the small wizard who soaked him earlier, and asked for assistance. The child came along willingly, and revealed that they had splashed him with a defoliant earlier because Ix looked green. Ix remained noncommittal.

The gang, with Ix and the child watching from the second car, opened the hatch. As they did so, they rapped on the surface of the train...and something tapped back, matching the intensity of the impacts. When they opened the hatch, they discovered the conductor's hand still affixed to the controls. Unfortunately, those hands trailed off into glistening streaks of slime that wound their way towards the back of the train, where a large, amorphous mass pulsed. Iz and Werd tapped their rifles on the side of the train to distract various grubs meandering about inside. Skitters reached down with his rifle and knocked the controls to half speed.

Ix asks the child what they can do. The kid says they can alter their shape and make potions obey them, adding an ominous comment about an "accident". Ix sighs and asks what happened, and the child narrates how they accidentally turned their brother into a fish monster while playing with a ball.

A moment of silence.

Ix hears some gunshots towards the back of the train.

Iztapal, Skitters, and Werd pull out all their available lantern fuel and, with the help of some twine and rope, lash the flasks into a large bundle, planning to swing the lit bundle through the opened hatch and smash it against the ceiling. Skitters dangles the makeshift molotov off the side of the train, gently swinging it back and forth to build up momentum, and then lobs the smoking bundle neatly into the hatch, where it smashes against the ceiling with a tinkling noise. A blaze of light erupts from the hatch and the party hears a greasy crackling noise that smells like dog bacon.

Itzapal descends and rallies the loud, uncoordinated soldiers in the car, making a stirring speech and outlining a plan of action.

Except nobody volunteers to help her.

The captain then mentions that hazard pay is awarded for especially dangerous combat activities, and people start talking. Some lots are drawn, and three soldiers present themselves to Itzapal: Tot, a timid berkins, Ton, a bulky ashanti, and Huehue, a voluble ashanti, Ton's sister. Iz sends off a couple soldiers (with approval of the captain) to investigate the gunshots. The soldiers return and report that the captain's quarters are locked and unresponsive.

Itzapal files the information away for later and organizes her volunteers into a firing line. She gives a signal, and the transport's door is flung open. Directly ahead, a thing pulses behind a milky, obscured window.

"Fire!"

The window shatters -

"Soldier down! Soldier down!"

- and Itzapal collapses to the ground, stone dead courtesy of massive internal hemorrhaging from her old wounds. Everyone gasps, and her body is quickly moved to the side. Her nonexistent pulse is taken, and almost everyone hushes as her death is announced.

While his comrade drops dead, Ixcuina takes advantage of the shattered window and peers into the engine. A thing like knotted, fleshy ropes with moist orifices adorns the front of the entire engine, with purple grubs crawling in and out of the orifices. It leaks a runny, pink goop from multiple perforations, and Ix takes advantage of its wounded state, draining electrons from a nearby lantern and firing a concentrated blast at the tangled mass, critically dazing it.

Skitters takes advantage of the stun, wrapping a bedroll over the pulsating thing and tearing it off the engine with some meaty snaps. He hoists it up through the emergency hatch, and before it recovers, tosses it off the train. The quivering bundle hits the ground with a thud and unceremoniously rolls to a stop, quickly disappearing in the distance.

Skitters hears a familiar skriii-kreeeeee noise and scampers away from the grubs moving towards him, back to safety. The excitement ended with the party discussing the shocking loss of a comrade.

Tune in soon for Session 4! (Which has already happened. I just need to write it up.)

Notes:
Well, so much for testing the Veteran class. Apparently any chance of instant death the first time Wound Dice are invoked is enough for the (now fired) dice bot to murder a PC. I would say it worked well, but maybe I need to account for the 1.53% chance that any Veteran player will die instantly when invoking their most important class ability. Sigh. Maybe someone else will die and try their hand at the class responsible for 100% of PC deaths so far.
Ixcuina got lucky with his spell because the fleshy thing, despite having no visible light-sensing organs, nonetheless critically failed its save. His luck probably won't hold forever.

Warlock Patron: Tawantinsuyu Imperial Armories

By Inti and Inca Mancoti, you will bring light to these rich, fertile lands. Your light is glorious, blinding, and brief, but while it burns, how wondrous! Soldiers will fear the golden sun on your breast, shells and bullets will strike off you harmlessly, and you will wreak havoc.

Blind and blast! For Sun and Emperor!

Warlock Patron:

Tawantinsuyu Imperial Armories

Anthony Jones

Main warlock rules here. This warlock is dedicated to Lexi, as thanks for everything she's helped me with.

Starting equipment: A pair of darkened glasses, a beaten gold cup, a spyglass, and a quipu.

Boon: 5 in 6 chance to ignore damage from friendly fire. Self-damage does not count. If unsure, flip a coin. Occasionally, when you touch metal, it flashes.

Favors:
Convert ammunition types to different types - cartridges to bullets, artillery shells to bullets, etc - once a day. Can only do this for ammo you’ve used before.
Set off very flammable materials (oil, gunpowder, alcohol, dry tinder, etc) with a touch.
Dry and oil a metal object by running your hands over it.

Goals: Win conflicts for the holder of your contract, ideally the Tawantinsuyu Imperial Armories. Contract expires upon your permanent death or helping your contract holder to win 5 wars, whichever is sooner.

Obligations (1d8):
Kill 3 x [Debt] enemy creatures.
Assassinate [Debt] enemy commanders.
Ferret out [Debt] enemy agents.
Recover 2 x [Debt] taken weapons or equivalent objects.
Capture 3 x [Debt] war prisoners.
Destroy [Debt] enemy fortifications.
Rescue 2 x [Debt] captives.
Help [Debt] operatives infiltrate enemy territory.

Spells:
Sparks Off Cloaks
R: 0 T: [dice] creatures D: [sum]/target attacks
If an attack would damage you and it was faster than a thrown rock, step the damage dice down [dice] sizes. Step the damage dice of attacks slower than a thrown rock up [dice] sizes. If you cast this spell with 3 or more dice, you may reflect [dice] attacks faster than a thrown rock back at their origin.

Preundetonation
R: [dice] x 30’ T: explosive material D: [dice] rounds
With a gesture, you can either set off or defuse [dice] or less explosives that you can see. If you Test versus Dex, you can set off or defuse fast-moving explosives.

Ferrous Charmer
R: [dice] x 20’ T: ferrous metal D: [sum] rounds
You can attract or repel metal. See the table below for the size and speed of metal you can affect.

1 dice: Knife size at walking speed.
2 dice: Torso at running speed.
3 dice: Human running as fast as a horse.
4 dice: Cart blurring with motion. Can warp the paths of bullets.

Blast Wave
R: 200’ T: 20’ radius D: 0
Objects and people take [sum] damage. For every hard, immovable surface the blast wave overlaps, add [size] to the spell’s damage.

Shape Metal
R: touch T: metallic substance D: variable
You can mold refined metal that you touch like wet clay, sculpting it to your satisfaction. The changes last for [sum] rounds with 1 [dice], [sum] minutes with 2 [dice], [sum] hours with 3 [dice], and are permanent with 4 [dice].

Organs to Grenades
R: touch T: Fresh corpse with [dice] or less HD D: [sum] minutes
You convert [dice] organs of a fresh corpse (no older than [dice] days) into explosives. When you throw the meat nades, you may either set them to detonate on impact or detonate after [dice] or less rounds. Creatures in the radius of the explosives may Save vs Con for half damage.
.
Hand/foot: 1d4 damage, 10 ft. radius
Arm/leg: 2d4 damage, 20 ft. radius
Eye: 1 damage, 5 ft. Can see through the eyes of one damaged creature for the duration of the spell.
Ear: 1 damage, 5 ft. Can hear through the ears of one damaged creature for the duration.
Tongue: 1 damage, 5 ft, can talk with one damaged creature’s tongue for the duration.
Head: Deals 1d6 Stress damage, those who take full damage from the blast gain the contents of 1 random mental inventory slot from the head.

Sunlust
R: 100’ T: [dice] creatures D: [dice] minutes
Creatures you can see that can see sunlight must Save or rush towards it, staying in the sunlight for the duration of the spell. If 4 [dice] are invested, the duration is days instead of minutes. If there is no sunlight visible, the spell fails.

Blood to Gunpowder
R: touch T: unclotted blood D: permanent
You touch up to [dice] buckets of fresh blood from a creature with [dice] or less HD and convert it to dry gunpowder. If this blood is in an open wound, the creature must Save vs Con with advantage or take [sum] damage as its blood turns into gunpowder.

Metal to Light
R: touch T: metallic substance D: [dice] hours
As you hold some metal, you convert part of it to light. This subtracts half an inventory slot per hour from the metallic object. The brightness depends on the [dice] invested: 1 [dice] for a candle, 2 [dice] for a torch, 3 [dice] for a bonfire, and 4 [dice] for daylight brightness. Alternatively, if you cast this spell with 4 [dice], you may choose to instead turn light into metal.
Casting this spell with certain metals has different effects: gold produces sunlight, silver moonlight, mercury a poisonous grey light, occultum octarine light, etc.

Compartmentalize Mixture*
R: touch T: object D: 1hr
Command a mixture of items (a soup, a pile of coins) that weigh no more than [dice]x100lbs to separate into [sum]+1 categories. The separation is slow, and hindered by even the slightest effort. The categories must be clearly defined and identifiable by inspection. For example, you could split a soup into "vegetables" "broth" and "poison", or a pile of coins into "minted during the last century" and "older". You could not, however, split a pile of coins into "handled by Xerphion the Tyrant" and "not handled by Xerphion the Tyrant", as there's no way to tell just by inspecting them. You could not separate "a locked chest" and "its contents", because the items could not flow freely into separate piles.

Teleport to Shooter
R: self T: self D: 0
You may trigger this spell upon taking projectile or firearm damage from a creature trying to kill you. The damage from that attack is reduced by [dice] x 2 and you teleport to a safe spot within [dice] x 10’ of the attacking creature. If you can see your attacker, you can choose where you teleport to.

Solar Flare
R: self T: creatures D: [dice] rounds
Creatures that can see you must Save vs Dex or be blinded by a flash of sunlight.

Gaze of Inti
R: sight T: [dice] creatures in sunlight D: varies
When you cast this spell, roll all your Credit Dice, and note the time of day and the number of 4’s you roll, and consult the table below. If you roll four 4’s and you cast this spell at noon, for 4 rounds, you achieve perfection.

Morning:
Creatures lose [number of 4’s] levels of exhaustion.
Noon:
Creatures must Save vs Con. If they fail, they take [# of 4’s] x [dice] damage. If they pass, they gain [# of 4’s] MD that last as long as they stay in sunlight.
Afternoon:
Creatures lose up to [# of 4’s] x [dice] HP, which go to creatures of your choice. Save for half.

* - spell from Skerples's excellent List of 100 Orthodox Spells.

Patron’s Gift: If you are killed by an explosion you cause, note how many HD of sentient creatures (except yourself) were killed by that specific explosion. Then roll a d20. If you roll under the number of HD recorded, you return to life intact (if blown apart) and in the nearest safe location.

Design Notes:
These spells are pretty powerful, but also somewhat situational. Lots of them require objects or input to activate, and depending on your campaign world/technology level, not all of these spells are useful. For wizards running around a battlefield, though, any one of these spells could be a lifesaver...or could mean you die in a fiery explosion. Your obligations are also quite lethal.
My favorite spell that I’ve created here is perhaps Teleport to Shooter because of how many uses it has with foes and friends and how wrong it can go. Teleporting into a fortified enemy position with a bleeding wound is always a good idea.
Organs to Grenades sounds like so much fun - I really hope someone uses it soon.
I’m a bit worried about the thematic overlap of these spells - 3 of them have to do with metal, 2 projectiles, and 4 with explosive material (I’m including a favor). I don’t think this warlock is too narrow for my setting, but they certainly will be helpless in a social situation, which is what I intended.

This is also the first warlock patron tailored to my setting! 

Poetry from the Yucatan War

The following two poems address the schism between public opinion and actual experience of the Yucatan Wars currently devastating the Peninsula. Author attributions at the bottom.

Tlachtli Miquini  
(roughly translates as "Ball Court Worthy of Death")

There's a breathless hush in the Court to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bouncing ball and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last girl in.
And it's not for the sake of a paper coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But her captain's hand on her shoulder smote
'Play up! play up! and play the game! '

The stones of the city are sodden red,—
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And Tikal's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolgirl rallies the ranks:
'Play up! play up! and play the game! '

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind—
'Play up! play up! and play the game!

- Recited every tenday by the Agency of War Propaganda from their headquarters in the Excanaltepetl, capitol of the Triple Alliance



Nocuica Atl-Tlachinolli
(roughly translates as "Song of War", taken literally, "Song of Fire-Water")

for my wife

After the storm, after the rain stopped pounding,
We stood in the doorway watching turtles
Swim off lazily across the lagoon’s crest.
We stared through the reed screen,
Our vision altered by the distance
So I thought I saw a mist
Kicked up around their fins when they faded
Like cut-out turtles
Away from us.
The maize was never more blue in that light, more
Scarlet; beyond the pasture
Trees scraped their voices into the wind, branches
Crisscrossed the sky like barbed wire
But you said they were only branches.

Okay. The storm stopped pounding.
I am trying to say this straight: for once
I was sane enough to pause and breathe
Outside my wild plans and after the hard rain
I turned my back on the old curses. I believed
They swung finally away from me ...

But still the branches are wire
And thunder is the pounding mortar,
Still I close my eyes and see the girl
Running from her village, napalm
Stuck to her dress like jelly,
Her hands reaching for the no one
Who waits in waves of heat before her.

So I can keep on living,
So I can stay here beside you,
I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings
Beat inside her until she rises
Above the stinking jungle and her pain
Eases, and your pain, and mine.

But the lie swings back again.
The lie works only as long as it takes to speak
And the girl runs only as far
As the napalm allows
Until her burning tendons and crackling
Muscles draw her up
into that final position

Burning bodies so perfectly assume. Nothing
Can change that; she is burned behind my eyes
And not your good love and not the rain-swept air
And not the jade green
Lagoon unfolding before us can deny it.

- Discovered among the personal effects of Sergeant Tlachinola, sent to his family after a "training accident" with his sidearm.





The first poem is "Vita Lampada", by Sir Henry Newbolt, and the second, "Song of Napalm", by Bruce Weigl.