Apparently the POTUS said that he personally thinks gay folks should be able to get married. He demurred about enforcing this legally, digging up the corpse of federalism for a riot shield, but whatever.

The point is that my fellow Christians are freaking out about it.

(Negatively. On the flip side, progressives are freaking out about it positively, which doesn’t make any sense either. This was just a “hey, whatcha think?” moment blown out of proportion for fundraising purposes, and who really thought that his previous opposition to gay marriage was anything but political gaming?)

And my fellow Christians shouldn’t freak out about it.

There are several issues here:

(1) It’s kind of a stretch to refer to same sex marriage as marriage. Folks have a point when they say the term has indicated hetero (though not necessarily monogamous) legal unions for a reeeeeal long time, usually tinged with religious significance as well.

So I get that criticism. But not when it’s paired with the contention that governments should define marriage. Because . . .

(2) There’s no reason for governments to be involved in the marriage business at all. For the religious component, there are churches and synagogues and mosques and sacred groves or whatever. For the legal component, there’s this thing called a contract. Combine the two, and what do you know? Marriage. Abraham didn’t have a government “sanctify” his marriage to Sarah. It was still a real marriage.

Sure, if gay people want to consider themselves married, Christians can look at that and say, “Nope, that’s not the real thing.” And that’s correct. It’s not. Marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. Gay marriages, necessarily involving serious sin, are therefore a big offense to Christians. I find them offensive. I don’t like them and wish they wouldn’t happen. However . . .

(3) Christians shouldn’t use the sword of the state to enforce their preferences on their neighbors. This is a big problem. Right now, Christians are saying, “Hey, we get these benefits, and you, gay neighbor, shouldn’t have them, and I want to make it a law that you can’t! Now why do keep on saying you don’t like Christians and don’t want to come to church with me?”

(4) And gay folks: what’s so great about the government saying you’re “married?”

If the issue is a contractual one (e.g., assignment of federal health benefits to dependents), then that’s the issue. Lobby for a revision of those rules, allowing an assignment of benefits to an individual of the beneficiary’s choosing. Saying we have to have government marriage in order to get insurance is a non sequitur. And, plus, who cares what the government thinks about you or says about your relationships anyway?

If the issue is religious or legal, there are liberal churches, liberal synagogues, etc. that can service you. If the issue is contractual, hire a lawyer to draw up a contract.

Summary

Let’s just get the feds (and the states) out of the marriage business entirely.

You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. http://esv.to/James5.6

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. http://esv.to/Matt5.38-41

1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. http://esv.to/Rom13.1-2

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. http://esv.to/2Cor10.3-4

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. http://esv.to/Matt26.52

1. The religious, non-state character of pre-monarchical Israel

You’ll look in vain for anything like a modern state in the Torah. It’s not there. There’s no executive branch. Yahweh is king. In fact, wanting a king (or political head, however constituted) is a sin. And wanting a king is synecdochal for wanting a government, a state. The people of God are a society not of this world. We are sojourners like Abraham, and our land is not in this age: Palestine is a picture.

2. The irrelevance of democratic objection

People frequently say “Oh, they shouldn’t have asked for a king, as if that was the problem. It’s not. The point is that, by asking for political leadership, they evidenced an abandonment of theocratic leadership. It’s the same way today when Christians want to use the sword against their neighbors rather than leaving the sword in the hand of the true king to use as he wishes and in his time.

3. Understanding Judges

Further objections to Christian anarchism use the chaos in the book of Judges to bolster their arguments. I use the text of Judges itself to show the flaws in those arguments. Briefly, the author of Judges uses particular anti-faith crises in Judges to show that the people had rejected God as king and the chaos that brings, culminating ultimately with his complete rejection in 1 samuel 8 and leading to the expulsion of the people from the Land and, more ultimately, the destruction of the temple in AD 70. The period of the judges was largely peaceful, with long periods of “rest” between the recorded episodes. The same can’t be said for the period of the kings.

4. Premonarchical Israel as type of the Church

Premonarchical Israel is a type, of which the Church (in its idealized and schematic and becoming form) is the antitype: a group of people not from here with their own non-human king, who care for each other as themselves, and who conquer the land. However, the church conquers not by the sword but by persuasion and love, and the land the church conquers is the whole earth, not just Palestine. Just as a Jew wouldn’t have gone to Pharaoh to judge between him and his brother, the Christian doesn’t go to the state to judge between him and his brother. We have a separate, voluntary legal system, based on love, forgiveness, and the acceptance of being wronged. When Christians make the pro-state move, they enslave themselves and their neighbors.

I wrote this (wow, back in 2007) for LewRockwell.com. The article on their site is here. This is in preparation for a more serious treatment of the text.

The passage is here: I Samuel 8.

RAMAH – Serious political change is brewing in the Israelite town of Ramah.

Ever since Moses and Joshua led them into Palestine, the tribes have conspicuously lacked any semblance of an executive branch. The official line is that Yahweh is king.

The closest approximation to a central executive figure in Israel is the high-priest Samuel, whose decisions, while not legally binding, are almost universally respected among the descendants of Abraham.

Most assumed that, upon the aging seer’s death, the mantle would pass to one of his sons. But, after their involvement in a series of scandals, the twelve tribes have been rocked with a succession crisis.

The solution, a growing number of influential clan heads are saying, is for Samuel to anoint a king before he dies. This would not only resolve the crisis of succession but also relieve the tribes of the political peculiarity that has characterized them ever since their conquest of Canaan.

Some foreigners have been heard to doubt whether the Israelites have any government at all. To many of the land’s inhabitants, it’s a sensitive point.

“Look at garden-girdled Babylon,” said Bar-Enlil from his seat among the elders at the gate of Ramah. “Do its inhabitants have to fear for anything? No. And we all know it’s not their gods that protect them. It’s their king. If we could get a king like that, not only would we sleep safer in our homes at night – my wife has a panic attack whenever I mention the Moabites – but he could beautify our cities and create jobs. They have a world-wonder over there, and what do we have? Freedom? That’s just a word.”

Shamash of Jerusalem, still brushing the dust of travel from his robe, pronounced a decided opinion on the matter.

“We’ve got to start thinking seriously about tribal security. Sure, we might have to give up some privileges; sure, taxes might increase; sure, we might lose some of our liberties. I admit that. We all know that going in. But those extra shekels and privileges aren’t going to mean anything when the king of the Philistines puts his yoke on us.”

Enki-baal, another prominent man of Ramah, came over to us to express a legal concern. “The kings of the gentiles – they’re not just military commanders. They also provide an absolutely necessary judicial function: when a case has been appealed several times, either because the lower judges feel the matter too difficult for them or because the community has found the judgment unsatisfactory, the king serves as the final judge. If you don’t have that – and we don’t – then the law is really of no effect; there’s no legal certainty.”

We asked Enki-baal to provide us a few examples of the deleterious effects of this legal uncertainty. Unfortunately, however, he said that the pressure of the request had driven all of them (and he assured us that there were many) from his mind.

Before we could secure any more interviews, we saw the prophet Samuel himself walk down from his hillside home and take a position before the city gates. Everyone was silent in preparation for his speech; and, when he began, he simply repeated his established platform.

“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.

“He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work.

“He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

As one might expect, the climate of political opinion was unfavorable to Samuel’s oration. The speech was uncomfortably extreme; his equation of taxation and slavery was considered particularly shocking. Bar-Enlil, who had been hopeful of a change in Samuel’s views, confided to us his deep disappointment.

“It’s disheartening to see a person cling to such obviously outmoded views. Times have changed, after all. The new enemies of this nation are more irrational in their hatred than was any previous foe. We must always have our ideals, of course; but a king is simply a necessity now.”

The elders let Samuel depart to his home with a pitying respect; and, when he was out of sight, Shamash of Jerusalem rose up before the gate to speak what was evidently the general sentiment.

“No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

In Hanukkah World, it’s 167 BC. Antiochus Epiphanes the IV is the ruler of the Seleucid empire. He’s just outlawed the worship of YHWH. You’re a devout and violent Jew. You’re there in the middle of town when his 2-harm gang small 2-armor rolls up to Modiin and orders the priest to sacrifice a pig to Zeus on YHWH’s altar. You know some Hebrews about to get buckwild all up in this history. Hanukkah’s about to exist. Time to purify the Land.

This is basically a few rules variants, a few rules additions, a little character and gear reskinning, one big overall countdown, and one front. It’s a holiday one-shot or a mini-campaign for whenever. (You can even use 3 dreidels instead of 2d6 if you want.) There’s no “first session” since we’ve already established what’s going on and who’s who.

Pardon the sketchy presentation below, but my goal was to think it up and write it out sufficient for a playthrough in one day. And that’s what’s in my next post.

In general, though, you keep most of the playbooks and reskin them all. You make all tech and weapons and armor appropriate to the period. The world’s psychic maelstrom becomes the spirit world.

The big thing is that there’s an overall countdown. When it gets to midnight, the temple is purified, no matter what. It’s happening. This last segment of the countdown is triggered EITHER when the PCs defeat the five divisions of Antiochus Ephiphanes IV’s (hereafter “IV”) armies and retake Jerusalem OR when all the PCs are martyrs.

Here’s the flow. The goal of the game is to defeat five armies and retake Jerusalem. To have any chance to win a straight up battle with an army, especially in the beginning when your army is 12 people with crap gear, you’ve got to go around “satisfying the needs of the Land.” This part of the game is pretty DitV-y. You roll in, see what’s wrong, and deal with it by your lights.

Each time you satisfy one of the Land’s needs, your army gets +1 holy. Holy is the stat you roll to fight an army battle. Holy rolls ignore the opponent’s size, armor, etc. You rank up Holy like Hx, and your advances let you get a bigger, better equipped army. Repeat.

If people are interested in this idea, I’ll be inclined to flesh it out a bit more. But, from the next post alone, after a couple reads, you should be able to run the game.

HANUKKAH WORLD

The Apocalypse is Antiochus Epiphanes IV’s oppression of Israel.

Hence, barf forth apocalyptica also means to show the misery and oppression of the people

New open your brain question: why are you with the Hammers (the insurgent cell)?

Mark XP when you meet a need of the people or the land.
The needs of the people are vengeance, judgment, and comfort.

When you get to 12:00 harm, you’re at the gates of Sheol. Choose one:
Pass through and die (becoming a martyr if you died fighting Israel’s enemies)
Ask the GM what the thing looks like that saves you, where it carries you, and what it tells you to do. When you wake up, you still show all the marks of the violence that killed(?) you, and some part of you is weird now: your face shines (you have to veil it out of politeness), you’ve got horns, your feet are cloven, your eyes are pieces of coal, your skin is 729 degrees Fahrenheit to the touch, etc.

When you open your brain, you open it to the spirit world.
To open your brain, you must fast and/or meditate for an extended time, make a sacrifice, be at the gates of Sheol, or use divination, forbidden or otherwise. Casting lots and consulting with the high priest are not forbidden.
Using forbidden divination puts you under the curse but is really quick. Just find a witch. I hear there’s one in the wilderness that was Jerusalem. It will work, but whoever or whatever shows up will not be happy with you.

Angels are not babies or hot chicks. They either look like normal people or freaky fire-beings.
When you see an angel’s true form, choose one: fall on your face, run away.

You get a new basic move: take an oath/make a vow: get +1 ongoing to all rolls in pursuance of the object of the oath/vow. Only one oath/vow active at a time. If you do not fulfill it in reasonable time, you suffer a curse: -2 ongoing to all rolls; Heaven rolls a 10+ to interfere with you every time. Persists until atonement is made.

The characters all live in Modiin. They all know each other.

Front: The Oppression of the Land
Expresses: Hunger (for power)
Agenda/Dark Future: to martyr the Hammers and all their people
Stakes: Will the players be revenged upon Alexander? Will IV die a dog’s death? Will the PCs retake IV’s fortress? Will the Hellenizers be purged from Modiin?
Cast: Antiochus Epiphanes IV, Apollonius & Seron (IV’s first two generals, each with a division), Jason (Hellenizer leader), Alexander (commander of the fortress), Lysias (chancellor of IV) and Gorgias and Ptolemy and Nicanor (his generals, each with a division), Menelaus (apostate high priest)
Threats:
Antiochus Epiphanes IV (Warlord: Dictator).
When IV makes a show of force, he has his subordinates:
Hang uncircumcised babies around their parents necks
Set up a Greek idol on an altar and sacrifices swine to it
Burn the scriptures
Execute Jews for keeping the sabbath, keeping the scriptures, circumcising children
Force Jews to strip naked and wash in the gymnasium
Swoop in to steal supplies to restock his fortress in the City of David
Whatever other destruction-demanding depravity you can imagine
The Five Divisions of IV’s Army (Brutes: Enforcers)
The Hellenizers (Brutes: Cult)
IV’s Fortress (Landscape: Fortress) in the City of David

There’s a countdown to Hanukkah. Increase it by one each time the PCs defeat a general’s army. There are five generals: Apollonius, Seron, Nicanor, Gorgias, and Ptolemy. Apollonius and Seron are the only ones active at first. When they are destroyed, Lysias sends out the remaining three. Increase it the last tick when they take the fortress at Jerusalem. So, it’s like all the segments say “the Hammers defeat a general” except the last one, which says “the Hammers take the City of David.”

The characters are:

The Priest (Hocus)
Your cult is the most faithful (or at least zealous) where you minister

The Seer (Brainer)
All brainer equipment is implanted, not worn. You can gain one piece of new brainer equipment as an advance. It’s not equipment. It’s a supernatural ability.

The Horseman (Driver)
Your car is a horse. Your other car is also a horse (or donkey or camel or wolf).

The Nazir (Gunlugger)
You have vowed not to drink alcohol, touch the human dead, or cut your hair.
Your vow does not count as broken until you violate all three elements.
If you break your vow, you lose all Nazir moves. You can regain them for one fight, after/during which you will die. But your fight will accomplish your intent.
You do 3-harm unarmed. If you pick up an improvised weapon, it does 4-harm; but, at the end of the fight, it reverts to its normal harm.

The Avenger of Blood (Battlebabe)
You are furious, not sexy
You are after someone who killed someone related to you; who?

The Elder (Hardholder)
You are a de facto, popular leader and judge, not a government official.
Your gang is the people who respect you.

The Patriarch (Chopper)
Your gang is your sons, brothers, nephews, cousins, and servants.
You hate at least one of them, and at least one of them hates you.

Your army gains +1 holy when you: satisfy a need of the land

The land needs:
all male Jews to be circumcised (and, if not, exiled or killed)
the execution of rapists, murderers, sabbath-breakers, idolaters, adulterers, sexual deviants, abusers of parents, blasphemers, and kidnappers
idols destroyed and desecrated altars purified
the razing of gymnasia
the expulsion/slaughter of a town’s occupiers

Your army loses -1 holy when:
your army gets out of control
you miss a holy roll

When your army gets out of control, there is sin in the camp.

While there is sin in the camp, you cannot win a battle vs a general’s army.

To remove sin in the camp, atonement must be made. This usually involves the execution of the involved parties, maybe even their whole family. Open your brain to see what you’ll have to do. On a miss, someone you really don’t want to be involved is involved and/or you have to go way further than you would want.

When you army gains +4 holy, immediately reset to +1 holy and advance the army:
They gain souls
They get better equipment (weapons or armor, pick one, up to 2-armor and 2-harm max)
You get +1 ongoing to restrain them from a particular vulnerability

When you fight one of the general’s armies straight up, once the battle starts and there’s no going back, roll +holy:
10+: You rout the enemies of Israel. Trade harm for harm, giving your gang +2 harm and +2 armor for this battle only. You may pursue them and inflict harm, taking none yourself. This counts as the same battle; so the +2s still apply.
7-9: You rout the enemies of Israel. Trade harm for harm, giving your gang +1 harm and +1 armor for this battle only. You cannot pursue them effectively.
Miss: There is sin in the camp. You are routed by the enemies of Israel. You cannot succeed in battle until the sin is atoned for.

Gain +1 ongoing for a battle if the whole people have sanctified themselves for it.

Weak harm means that it is -1 harm versus armor but normal vs unarmored folks.

You start with 12 people in your army, including the PCs (2-weak-harm gang small 0-armor). Cousin Jeroboam has an oxgoad. Your little sister Deborah has a scythe.

• The GM determines what a bonfire is and what activating it looks like and where they are. Normal rest and healing rules are still in play.
• When you die, you respawn at your last bonfire naked. This activates the bonfire.
• The gear you had is still where your corpse was. Your corpse is gone.
• When a bonfire activates, you regain full hp immediately if you’re basking in its glow. You get your spells back as well. Non permanent spell effects cast by you, however, end.
• Monsters never respawn. They regain all hp if they survive the encounter. Bonfires don’t reset traps.
• Optionally, when you die, you lose some XP, depending on how punishing you want it. Lose at least (your level * 100) XP, optionally times 1d10, to a minimum of zero. You retain your level; you only lose accumulated XP.

This should work for any edition of D&D and for other simmy combat + exploration focused tabletop games.

Here we go: Christians are citizens of the kingdom of God and owe allegiance to that kingdom above all other allegiances. The kingdom of God is a state: an entity with a territorial monopoly on the initiation of violence. This is a commonly accepted definition in political philosophy.

The state: an entity with a territorial monopoly on the initiation of violence.

The territory of the kingdom of God is the universe. The sovereign in whom power resides is God. The delegation of that power is in his discretion.

The other kingdom is “the world,” which is under the dominion of Satan, who (while providentially superintended of course, as in Job) plausibly has some role in establishing configurations of earthly political power (see the temptation narratives in the Gospels). He is “the god of this world,” “the prince of the powers of the air,” the one against whose “thrones, principalities, and powers” Christ through the Church wars without “carnal weapons.”

The kingdom of the world is not limited to states; it is manifested in them: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome (and I’d say line up all the rest too).

The Christian is a sojourner in the world, like our father Abraham, who as a family, a gathering, suffered persecution from Egypt in the first conflict between the state as such and the people of God as such recorded in the Bible. Unlike Abraham, we bless rather than curse; we put away our swords; we engage in radical submission to the powers that be to show that God fights through us against the kingdom that the state manifests and represents. The kingdom of God is not of this world; otherwise, we would be fighting.

Because we are sojourners in the world, we consider ourselves citizens of heaven exclusively. We may use political citizenship when expedient, as Paul did, but we do not use the sword of the state against our neighbors. The wars of this world, between outposts of Satan’s kingdom, do not concern us, except to the extent that they provide opportunities to love our neighbors, pray for our enemies, and bless those who curse us.

The kingdoms of this world delegate the power of the sword to their servants. Our sovereign has denied us the use of the sword: “vengeance is the Lord’s.” God uses states to punish evildoers. He uses America and Iran for this just as he used Assyria and Egypt. This does not mean that Christians are to participate in those functions or approve of them morally. God ordains everything, even the sinful actions of wicked men, such as Pontius Pilate and the patriotic, obedient soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross. And not only will we stay away from Satan’s battlefields, we’ll stay out of the courts, choosing to suffer wrong and be defrauded rather than use the judge’s sword against our neighbors (I Corinthians 6.7).

This is the general position. I’ll engage with particular texts in subsequent posts. I’ll start not with Romans 13, as is common when dealing with the relationship of the Christian with the state, but at 1 Samuel 8.

Here’s something I just wrote like three seconds ago. Miriam’s one of the Anointed. She’s a rival to the main character, Shiloh. So far, Miriam’s been growing more and more distant from her mom, who’s in this perpetual depression since her husband skedaddled. Things are about to get bad.

Miriam’s mom was weary. She’d never been beautiful: her face was too round, and she didn’t have much in the way of chin. She’d always had her hair, though, this wavy onyx she’d had since she was squirted worldward. It’d always been long. On the wedding pictures that were still packed tight over all the walls, the stuff was down past her waist. And that’s how it was for as long as Miriam could remember, while things were still good, anyway.

The first time she remembered her mom getting her hair cut was the day after the divorce finalized. She overheard her dad say something creepy to Mom about how she was pretty good in bed and he wished they’d done it one more time. Turns out he’d been cheating on her most of the time they’d been married, mostly with one of Mom’s coworkers at the salon. The harlot still worked there.

The next day, Mom got said harlot to cut her hair since, Miriam figured, it was poetic. Mom still kept some of the clippings in an unmarked ziploc bag at the back of her jewelry drawer. Mom didn’t know Miriam knew about them, but she did. She saw Mom with them pulled out, pinching them between thumb and forefinger, examining them in the ringlight of the makeup mirror and bawling like she was going through it all over again.

Mom’s hair never got longer than that. She got it cut shorter every time. Dad got harlot pregnant, and she started working part time at the salon. Then Dad got a job in Cincinnati, and harlot didn’t really hear from him anymore. She confided this to Mom one day while she was cutting Mom’s hair even shorter. Mom kept the kid a lot. She felt responsible for it: the harlot had lined up the abortion at Dr. Bobobobo’s clinic, but Mom wasn’t having any of that; she talked her out of it with tears and promises. So now the harlot found Jesus, or so she said, and joined the pentecostals down the street and started speaking in tongues, or so she said. Mom always looked at her out of the corner of her eye.

And when, tonight, Mom asked Miriam who she wanted to take care of her in the unfortunate and unexpected event of her death, Miriam noticed her hair was even shorter yet again. She looked like a boy now, a boy with thin grey streaks and wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. She never wore makeup anymore. She sat at the mirror every morning surrounded by the stuff, but she never seemed to be able to bring herself to application.

“Did you get another hair cut?”

“Yeah,” Ms. Tolstoy says. “Bambi did it for me.” Bambi is the (ex-)harlot’s name. “Do you like it?”

“It’s short,” Miriam says.

Ms. Tolstoy shrugs. “It’s out of my way. And, besides, who do I have to impress?”

Miriam frowns. Ms. Tolstoy sees it. She can’t think of anything to say. She presses.

“So who do you want? I’m making a will.” She rattles the papers she’s got on the desk to prove the point.

“Aren’t you a little young for that?”

“You can’t be too careful,” Ms. Tolstoy says. She stares in the mirror like she’s going to find something out. The ringlight halos her pupils.

Miriam thinks a bit. “I guess I’d want Rockwell to take of me.”

“You mean Miss Rockwell.”

“Right.”

“You can’t forget to be polite,” Ms. Tolstoy says. She reaches for eyeliner but can’t wrap her fingers around it. “It’s good her husband died. I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” Miriam says.

“Sorry. I’m being morbid again.”

“It’s okay. I understand. How’ve you been sleeping?”

“Not so good.” Ms. Tolstoy sighs. “Dr. Wadlington prescribed me some new pills for it. Would you mind picking them up on your way home? The prescription’s on the table.”

“Sure. No problem.”

Miriam grabs the papers on the way out. She looks up at the wedding pictures, sees Mom grinning with that long hair like gushing crude, hears her scribbling down a signature on the will in the bedroom. Then things are quiet, and Miriam feels like Mom’s waiting for her to leave. She does. She closes the door quietly and doesn’t turn on the radio in the car. Miriam prays for her the whole way to school, but she gets the feeling it’s not going to work.

This is the complete opening scene of the new stuff I’m writing for Christian kids.

“I’m finally going to do it,” Jesse said.

Jesse was tall and thirteen years old, barely heavier than the staff he walked with, and had a bunch of curly brown hair on his head that seemed to catch every grain of sand on the road to Beersheba.

Jesse was walking beside another thirteen year old boy with a staff. The other boy’s name was Ari. Ari only came up to Jesse’s shoulders. He was bald, and his eyes were all black. There was no white, no iris, no pupil. Or maybe there was only pupil. In any case, he was born that way, and it gave everyone a scare when he first popped out.

“Do what?” Ari asked.

“Talk to Lilith.”

Jesse looked ahead of them on the road. That’s where the girls were—Lilith and Hannah. They had staves too and were walking close together and talking, which is to say they were behaving in the manner of girls. Their conversation concerned mysterious subjects. Jesse imagined that they were talking about him now.

“Go for it, I guess,” Ari said.

“But Hannah’s in the way.”

“So?”

“So I don’t want to talk to Lilith while Hannah is around,” Jesse said.

He moved aside for a caravan of merchants coming up from behind. Their camels smelled bad. They stirred up even more sand for his hair. He leaned over and started beating it out like a rug. Ari stopped with him. The girls kept walking.

“If Lilith doesn’t want to talk to me,” Jesse said, “and Hannah’s around, it’ll be embarrassing.”

Ari crossed his arms. “I think it’ll be embarrassing anyway.”

“You’re not helping.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “Pretend your stuff is too heavy?”

“What, all of a sudden?” Ari looked over his shoulder at his backpack. “I’ve been carrying this stuff around since Hebron. It’s not that bad.”

“Just say you’re feeling weak,” Jesse said. “Maybe you’re dehydrated.”

“Okay, I guess.” Ari kicked camel poop out of the way; the stuff is great for kicking: hard as a rock and flies forever. “When do you want to do it?”

“Now.”

“Fine with me,” Ari said. “Hey, Hannah! Can you come here for a minute?”

Jesse took off. He jetted by Hannah and sidled up to Lilith. She was just as skinny as Jesse and a couple inches taller. She wore a white robe that twisted around her more times than Jesse could count. She had the top of it pulled over her head to keep the sand and the wind out, but Jesse could see stray locks of her hair snap out every few seconds. Her hair was white, like leukocytes or leprosy. She was born that way too. It gave everyone a scare too.

Jesse cleared his throat and knuckled sand out of his eye. “Hi, Lilith.”

“Hello,” Lilith said.

Jesse suddenly didn’t know what to say. It occurred to him that he hadn’t thought this far ahead. He figured he’d get to “Hi, Lilith,” and everything would be gold. He took a big gulp of air and choked down a noseful of sand. He heard Ari protesting and turned to see what was up: Hannah had grabbed Ari, backpack and all, and was toting him on her shoulders like he was a half empty sack of barley.

“Really, you can put me down,” Ari said; he was practicing what they used to call longsuffering. “I’m feeling better already.”

“No, no, no, I know how you boys are,” Hannah said. “My brother Shimon is the same way. He won’t ever admit when he’s sick, and he won’t ever ask me for help with anything because I’m a girl, even though he knows . . .”

Hannah went on that way for a while. Ari longsuffered. When Jesse turned back to Lilith, she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was just watching the road ahead, watching the swaying of the camel tails, watching the way the dust clouds they kicked up formed patterns in the air that expired the moment you looked at them. Jesse felt like he needed to kickstart the conversation. He wasn’t going to give up yet.

“So how’s the journey been?”

“Fine.”

Jesse nodded his head and tried to look thoughtful. She didn’t bother making eye contact with him. He started to get worried: his heart was beating in his ears, and he was sweating even more; he could feel it soaking through his clothes.

“How’s Hannah doing?” Jesse asked.

“Fine,” Lilith said.

“And what about your family? Did you hear from them while we were in Hebron?”

“Yeah,” Lilith said. “I got a letter.”

“And how were they doing?”

“Fine.”

“This is like getting water from a rock,” Jesse thought.

And that gave him another one.

“Just a second,” he said.

Jesse dashed off to the side of the road, ran back and forth a couple times, crouched low, picked something up, tossed it away. Lilith thought he looked like a bird on the worm-hunt. After a minute of this, Jesse came running back. There was a whole desert of sand in his hair, and he was coughing and rubbing it out of his eyes while he caught his breath.

“Check this out,” he said.

Jesse held out a big rock in his left hand. It was heavy, a couple pounds for sure. He was grinning at it like it was a lion he’d hunted down and killed with his bare hands.

“Hey, Lilith,” Jesse said.

“Hey, Jesse,” she said.

“Check this out.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a rock, right?”

Lilith nodded along.

“Watch this.”

Jesse held out the rock and struck it as hard as he could with his staff. Water started gushing out of it for no reason. It got stronger and stronger until it was a geyser. It soaked Jesse and Lilith and shot back out of Jesse’s hand and bounced out of control off into the Negev, where (who can say?) it might still be bouncing around, spewing water today. Jesse spat out a mouthful of rock-water and beamed at Lilith.

“Wasn’t that awesome?”

“I guess,” Lilith said.

“I guess!? What are you talking about, I guess!? Didn’t you see that?”

“Yeah.”

“So? Come on!”

Lily frowned. “You know we’re not supposed to use our gifts that way.”

“What are talking about?” Jesse said. “What way?”

“To show off. It’s prideful.”

Jesse smiled. “Maybe you’re just a little jealous?”

Lilith didn’t smile back. “Maybe,” she said.

She stepped up the pace to leave Jesse behind. He watched her grow smaller and smaller in the distance, then lost her in the dust. Eventually, Hannah and Ari caught up with him.

“You can set me down now,” Ari said.

“If you say so,” Hannah said. “I’m going to go talk to Lilith again. Glad to help! See you in Beersheba!”

Ari adjusted his backpack and matched pace with Jesse. “How’d it go with Lilith?”

Jesse’s mouth was a straight line. He folded his arms and kicked camel poop.

“Oh,” Ari said. “Like that, huh?”

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “Like that.”

“Told you it would be embarrassing anyway.”

“Don’t talk to me,” Jesse said. “Let’s just find this camel.”

And that’s when the scorpion-men attacked.

• Until an actual fight against fit opposition breaks out, don’t use the combat system.
• Instead, if you’re doing violence to someone, just make an appropriate attack roll against the appropriate defense, modified per circumstances as appropriate.
• On a hit, things go your way.
• On a miss, things get out of control. Like this:
• You accidentally hurt/kill someone (e.g., I only meant to knock him out!)
• They get away
• They sound the alarm
• They hit the deck/dig in/dive for cover
• They attack you

RAW 4e (and #e as well) is pretty much are not going to let you do the “knock the guard out” thing. Unless all your guards are minions. That’s a possibility.

Because, lookit: if this were a movie, or any kind of media really, it would be possible to one shot snipe that big huge hobgoblin across the way. But, RAW, it’s not possible. (Unless maybe, maybe, you critted on two dailies, but why would you be doing that against a sentry?)

So above is how you fix it.