Jordan Sheppard Glimpses

[Sherrinford]

{Takes place a day or two before Bridge incident.}

Jordan was at his desk. The Puzzle Club had sent him a new cipher to break...he had been getting lots of practice over the past two or three months. He had always liked cryptograms, and in college had picked up puzzle magazines with ciphers just for fun. Now, those ciphers were something he could read almost like a newspaper column.

But this cipher was harder, coming from a club for real enthusiasts. He could use one of two techniques—brute force or cryptanalysis. The brute force technique attempts to decrypt the message using all possible keys. But there were too damn many factorials, even with the decryption algorithms in his computer. The brute force technique tries all possible keys and looks at the resulting decryption and checks whether it looks like English. That approach could take years...tens of years for Jordan's small laptop.

He would use cryptanalysis, using the algorithms, multilingual letter statistics and letter positions tables in his system (and in his memory) to make an effort. Most of the Puzzle Club stuff was in English, but he was prepared to move on to machine languages.

In such wise did Jordan while away his evening. Lacking a girlfriend or any kind of meaningful social life, study was the logical option.

[Sherrinford]

To say that Jordan Shepard liked to read was like saying that water was wet. The bookshelves in the T Street apartment were stacked, horizontally and vertically. All of the book spines were out, but it still would have been hard to find a particular book unless you knew where it was. His collection was eclectic, with Hawking partnering Homer, Shakespeare and Chaucer next to Asimov and Clarke, and Plato next to J.K.Rowling.

Today, Jordan's reading was from the Analects of Confucius, the ancient sage whose precise ritualistic worldview made one wonder if he wasn't a ritual mage in his own right.

Confucius was suspciious of all religions because each one held seeds of discord, and it was the sage's "superior man" who had to distinguish between high and low...that is, the good and the bad, or the wise and the foolish.

But rather than religions, Jordan wondered if the Pentacle didn't have the same weaknesses that Confucius warned against. Since arriving in Sacramento, Jordan had witnessed some disheartening things about the mage community.

Justl like religions, the Orders seemed to be in competition. The evident friction between Hierarch Andrade and Curator Primoria was the clearest example, and it bubbled to an uneasy surface at the recent Consilium meeting. The Free Council had shown some new life, ready to replace centuries of history with a freedom that all mages did not have the maturity for. Magic was dangerous, and newer mages needed guidance in spite of the tendency of mages to be solitary players.

But the political stresses went beyond that. The two duels at the event told him that the Consilium as then constituted was more interested in appearing foolish but strong as opposed to smart but weak. This was really disheartening. Jordan had resisted beiieving that the world stage bore such a heartbreaking resemblance to high school.

But now there was a newly constituted Consilium...same high end leadership secured by trial by combat, for pity's sake. But new counselors. Will they have the same high school mentality? Time will tell.

Jordan continued reading and came across his favorite Analect: He upon whom a moral duty devolves should not give way even to his master. Food for thought. The young Mystagogue reached for his diet Vernors...the elixir of the gods.

[Sherrinford]

An Extract from the Journal of Jordan Shepard

I just got the word that another Consilium has been scheduled for the Sacramento Awakened. I look forward to the meeting the same way I look forward to root canal work or an IRS audit. Unfortunately, a doctor's note won't let me out of it.

There is very little doubt that the bulk of the agenda is to fill holes in the leadership of the Consilium. With the departure...generally unlamented...of Andrade and John Dee, there is a Hierarch and Provost to be replaced. I enjoy politics like I enjoy a good swim in boiling oil.

Working together does not come naturally to mages, really. Being blessed with arcane abilities turns one inward towards developing one's own abilities rather than work in concert for a common goal.

Leadership is elusive. There is an old Welsh proverb that says that to be a leader one must be a bridge. Not many bridges in the community, I am afraid. Many aspire to leadership, but achieving it is another matter. I am a scholar by training and inclination...I would be content giving counsel and leaving it at that.

That old Roman Ovid says that a leader is quick to reward and slow to punish. Clearly he was never a mage. Our Curator has a tongue as precise and merciless as a scalpel. More is done in fear of her disapproval than in anticipation of her approval. Her competence and vision are unquestioned, but Ovid's formula doesn't seem to obtain. The Order, of course, has its own problems, with the Curator's two top people gone with the wind. Ruby is the only midlevel Alae. But she's as good as any two people so maybe it evens out.

But who has the vision, the humility, the ability to demand excellence without demanding perfection, to take the reins here? And who in their sober senses would want the god-awful job of Hierarch?

Bonaparte said it best: A leader is a dealer in hope. Maybe such a paragon will show up at the meeting. Perhaps I'll skip the doctor's note after all and see where we fly.

[Sherrinford]

Jordan hung up his land line. His contact at the Bode in England wanted more Browning letters, and Jordan was at pains to make him understand that he had no more currently. After promising on a stack of Scripture give him first crack at anything new he would find, he rung off.

Finally!Jordan thought. He liked Noel well enough, but the man was just a manuscript maniac. Prompt pay, though.

Jordan switched the ring on his phone off, and went to double lock the front door of his apartment. Crossing the room, he opened the door to the spare bedroom that Jordan had converted to his workroom for both his mundane and arcane vocations.

In the corner of the room was a chest-high safe with a combination lock...top of the line and far, far too expensive. But it was fire rated for anything up to a volcano...more or less. From the work table, Jordan put on a pair of skintight latex gloves...his automatic habit when handling any book he was investigating. His fingers spun the knob of the combination lock, and opened the door. Of all his discoveries at the Kruegen library, two merited special security. One was a journal book roughly from the 1870s, a match to the two Trench Journals that former Hierarch Andrade gave to that dog-in-a-manger Vector. But it was the other, smaller volume that caught the Acanthus scholar's interest today. It was potentially the Rosetta stone that he had sought for so long...a cipher book that could be used to read Atlantean Runes and other sigils subjected to linguistic variations, that semantacists called "drift."

The young Mystagogue sat at the worktable with the book, opened it, and pulled a pad of quarter inch graph paper from a shelf, along with two sharp pencils. He started to read, with a cryptographer's eye. He got an idea that it would be slow going.

Slow start

2010-07-08 23:47:57 Jordan rolls 6 to attacks the code book Wits3+Investigation4+Skillspec1-5 difficulty (10 Again, WillPower) 6, 1, 9, 6, 7, 1 1 success

[Sherrinford]

Jordan wasn't mistaken. The minutes ticked into hours. Page after every page was looked at, and looked at again. The pencil sharpener was earning its keep. For a change, Jordan's thoughts didn't drift far from the work. The opportunities offered by this book were just too good to miss.

Finally, after three hours, Jordan took a bathroom and fruit juice break, and to take stock. He needed to get into better shape...he was bushed.

hours 2 and 3

2010-07-09 00:48:37 Jordan rolls 6 to attacks the code book, hour 3 Wits3+Investigation4+Skillspec1-5 difficulty (10 Again, WillPower) 5, 10, 9, 1, 10, 8, 6, 1 4 successes
2010-07-09 00:47:53 Jordan rolls 6 to attacks the code book, hour 2 Wits3+Investigation4+Skillspec1-5 difficulty (10 Again, WillPower) 7, 5, 4, 6, 9, 3 1 success

[Sherrinford]

As Jordan drove home from the park, he knew that his bare duty was done. He had reported to the Hierarch, and would regroup with Ruby once he got home. The time spent with Master Animus was unnerving. Jordan had spent so much of his time down in the dumps, but the Thyrsus had him beat six ways from Sunday.

Jordan entered his apartment, got a diet Vernors from the fridge, and sat in his favorite chair to emotionally regroup. Jordan had tried, at least tentatively, to reach out to the lonely leader. But wherever Animus' healing was to come from, it wasn't from Jordan.

A smart guy once said that the greatest barrier to own own healing is our ongoing capacity to judge, to criticize, and to bring tremendous harm to ourselves. If we can harden our heart against ourselves, we simultaneously armor our heart against the possibility of gentleness, love and healing.

On reflection, the Mystagogue realized that most of the people Animus was close to had left town. Boy, did Jordan understand that feeling. A hand for each hand was the world's plan, and that lack of that hand...well, it was just sad.

But for the Consilium's leader, healing would be a journey, not a destination. Jordan raised his can of wood-aged ginger ale in symbolic toast: here's to you, Master Animus. Remember that being strong is not the same as being complete.

And here's to me; may I learn my own lesson.