THE PONTIANAK, IN FICTION
The following is one of a pairs of essays I wrote as a Stretch Goal for A PERFECT WIFE.
Pretty basic stuff for hantu aficionados, of course. But it is designed as orientation for GMs / players who are unfamiliar with the Malaysian context—a primer of the pontianak’s pop-cultural significance; an author’s note for why I wanted to treat her story the way I did.
This essay—alongside another essay titled “The Supernatural, in Southeast Asia—will appear as appendices in the zine, which you can support
>>>HERE<<<
Three days left!
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Malaysian culture is replete with monsters.
Many are gendered female, and cluster around childbirth, that oldest and bloodiest of terrors. A toyol is created from the flesh of a dead fetus. The penanggalan seeks the blood of new mothers and infants. A woman who perishes while pregnant or in labour may rise as a langsuir or pontianak.
If you have read through or played this adventure, you have already met the pontianak.
She is pretty famous! She lends her name to a city in Indonesia. She headlines horror movies: the first was a Cathay-Keris production, Pontianak (1957); the latest is Glen Goei and Gavin Yap’s Dendam Pontianak (2019). One of the three protagonists in Charlene Teo’s litfic novel Ponti (2018) is the aging star of a fictional 1970s pontianak film.
There is much scholarship about the pontianak. A frequently-cited paper is Alicia Izharuddin’s The laugh of the pontianak: darkness and feminism in Malay folk horror (2019). Alicia focuses on one of the pontianak’s trademark features—her laugh, popularly a cackle of wild abandon—as a site of radical resistance.
Nothing scares men more than a woman “laughing at patriarchy, laughing at power, laughing from below.”
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It is said the pontianak “can only be subdued by striking a nail to the back of her neck” (Lee & Balaya, 2016). So thwarted, she turns “into a beautiful woman and a good wife until the nail is removed” (Lim, 2008).
With fortitude, craft and cunning, a hero may snare this female creature for himself. Vanquish the monster, get the girl! Because the monster is the girl.
A notable depiction of the pontianak-as-perfect-wife appears in Gergasi (1958):
A hunter, driven by the prospect of winning a “woman of incredible beauty”, stalks a fanged and taloned pontianak. He watches her kneel by a stream to drink. In this private moment she looks tired: an old crone.
He attacks her from behind with hammer and nail.
She screams. Falls into the water. When he fishes her out again, she is a transformed: a young woman—confused, afraid. Quiet, she shrinks away from him. He tells her: “You have awakened from a terrible dream. Let us go home.”
“Home?” she asks. She has no idea where she is, who he is.
“My home,” he says. “Do not doubt. Believe in me. I am human, just like you.” He yanks her into his arms. “Let us build a palace of happiness together.”
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Watching such a scene today feels uncomfortable. Physical assault at a moment of vulnerability. A man taking control of a woman when she is too disoriented to consent. Penetration used as a guarantee of marriage.
The nail is a straightforward symbol: with it, the pontianak is pinned in place, like a moth specimen in a lightbox.
The pontianak-as-captive-wife narrative is rare, nowadays. Nowadays she is allowed to be a sympathetic villain. In Shuhaimi Baba’s Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam (2004), she rises to exact vengeance on her murderers. We acknowledge the fact that women suffer at the hands of bad men, sometimes!
It is satisfying to see justice done. To bad men—and to monsters. The pontianak typically meets one of the following ends:
- She is banished by devout Islamic prayer;
- She fades away, having exacted her revenge;
- She escapes into the dark, so a sequel can be made.
In all cases:
With the avatar of abhorrent femininity gone, a conventional ever-after is possible. The male lead safely marries his lady love, starts a family. Baby-making and heteronormative gender roles resume. The order of the world is upheld.
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A PERFECT WIFE is set in the aftermath of a pontianak story. Dr Azman is a good man, enjoying the just reward he believes he deserves. All is well, in the order of the world. Yet Sara wonders why her happy ending feels pyrrhic.
What will you do about it?
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A PERFECT WIFE is a modern-horror adventure for TTRPGs, published as a print art zine and PDF. Its publication is helping fund flights and expenses for Amanda Lee Franck, Scrap World, and myself, to travel to Nottingham for WEIRD HOPE ENGINES, in March 2025.
SUPPORT US >>>HERE<<<
A PERFECT WIFE
(It is Vampire Weekend! Have a pontianak-themed urban-horror investigative adventure. I wrote it with Kuala Lumpur in mind, but it should work for any big city just fine.)
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DISAPPEARANCES
An inner-city neighbourhood, too ugly for gentrification. Refugees have settled here. They fled war in their own country. But they have not escaped violence.
People work basement sweatshops, or clean toilets in nightclubs. They stumble home in the morning dark. At dawn, their neighbours find gore blotching the dumpsters.
The first disappearance was a year ago. Now it happens with alarming regularity—every fortnight. The neighbourhood is tense. Most agree the following precautions work:
- Cross the road if you spot rats.
- Walk on if your name is called.
- Do not look for the baby crying.
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THE COMMUNITY CENTRE
A school for refugee children. A girl in pink polka dots tugs the sleeve of a hijabi woman. “Shingalong time, Missh Shara?” she asks.
Sara gives in. Poor Yinyin! Her father vanished over the weekend. Sara offers cash for information about what happened to him. The authorities don’t seem to care.
Sara cares. She teaches English here, weekdays. Last year, when she miscarried, she bled all over the felt carpeting. She paid to have it cleaned. A faint stain remains.
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YINYIN, THE ORPHAN
Sniffling, hiding, remembering.
A bundle of giggles, playing with her friends—but as soon as she is allowed a moment on her own she crouches, hugs herself, sobs.
Yinyin tells you her Papa is short a finger on his left hand, and has a picture of a scary black cat on his right arm. Yinyin tells you she loves her Papa.
“Shaturday night, Papa wentsh out to buy shtuff at the shop. Papa hashn’t come home. Will you ashk Uncle Yat when Papa will be home?”
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SARA, THE WIFE
Literature, pastry arts, embroidery.
At brunch her friends coo: “Look. At. You! You’re glowing!” Then they smile, half-cringing. They know she knows they’re lying.
Sara has not been sleeping well. Hormones, she thinks. She is six months into her second pregnancy. This will be her firstborn child. She will not disappoint her husband the doctor again.
She has a nail embedded into the back of her neck. She cannot feel it. Her hijab means nobody else sees it.
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THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Shop signs in a language you cannot read. Even the thoroughfares feel like alleys. Whenever you turn a corner, roll an encounter:
- Music blaring from a phone. A gang of six 38-ers. They whistle passers-by over, to squeeze for snack money.
- Excited yaps. Seven dogs, four puppies. An elderly man has brought them rice and curry, in styrofoam packets.
- The flutter of yellow paper. Ideograms and a tiger, drawn in red ink. Somebody has lost their protective talisman.
- Squeaks from a smelly drain. A rat pokes its head out, peers at you for a full minute, then continues on its way.
- Police tape. “Move along, move along,” Sub-inspector Rafiq repeats, bored. A severed finger has been found.
- “Eh-hek, eh-hek, eeeeeeeeeh!” A baby has begun to cry, close by. Just behind that pile of boxes. Sara’s baby.
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38-ER, GANG MEMBER
Machete use, boasting, escaping.
Tattooed on their bare shoulders: the number “38”, stylised to look like the symbol for the sacred sound Aum.
Are these disappearances the work of some rival triad, trying to take over their turf? They were protective amulets. They move in groups. One in every group carries a gun.
They are still losing. Three senior members have gone missing. Their boss Uncle Day has not left his club in weeks.
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SARA’S BABY, THE GHOSTLING
Stalking, mimicking, exsanguination.
There was no funeral because she lost them so early. She buried their remains, mourned them in private. She doesn’t know their spirit is still abroad.
Usually invisible; materialises to attack. Appears as a child with corpse-green pallor; talons; and proboscis-like umbilical cord.
Will never harm Sara. Hungers for her affection. Often spies on her at the Community Centre. May copy her teaching voice: “Quiet please!” “Sit down, children!” Make a check, or obey.
DEALING WITH SARA’S BABY
As resilient as an ordinary five-year-old. Harmed by mundane weapons. If slain, reappears the next new moon. Even full funeral rites will not put them to rest.
The wrong that made them was done to their mother.
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REFUGEES
It is a close-knit neighbourhood. Folk gossip about your business. Some are becoming familiar faces. At every location, roll to see who also happens to be here:
- An eleven-year-old. Suki. Organising, hauling, shortcut-taking. With five siblings to support, she has stopped school. Is a gofer for most businesses. Has keys to most back doors.
- A one-armed man. Uncle Tin. Marksmanship, bushcraft, forgetting. His panther tattoo marks him as a former resistance fighter. Cheap rum in his pocket. An assault rifle in his flat.
- A woman, heavy makeup. Sanda. Dancing, drinking, scrimping. Go-go dancer. Annoyed that the the new girls at the club pinching her regulars. Uncle Day’s favourite niece.
- A bald head, robes. Brother Pha. Selling, haggling, spellcraft. Peddles a camphor liniment. “I bless, I bless!” Claims it wards against evil. It stings spiritual entities like pepper spray.
- Always taking a call. Mr Nong. Spying, deception, pistol-use. Seems helpful, but feeds you bad leads. Actually a private investigator keeping an eye on things for Dr Azman.
- Waddles like a duck. Mya. Cooking, scolding, knife-use. She is expecting twins—two boys. “My hubby’s so happy.” Unless you get involved, will be the next person to disappear.
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THE SHOP
No signboard; doesn’t need one. Sells cosmetics; produce and spice pastes for dishes from the old country; third-hand phones.
Also roasted sunflower seeds; cheap rum; smuggled cannabis—enjoyed at tables in the alley out back.
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UNCLE YAT, THE SHOPKEEPER
Smuggling, gossiping, electronics.
“See this panther here?” He points to a tattoo on his left arm. “We fought. We believed! But we lost. That’s life.” He takes another drag of his spliff, and chortles.
Yinyin’s father was here, Saturday, drinking. “Putting the charm on some girl. Real pretty! And getting real close, touching his face, all that. They left together.”
Yat gets quiet. “After what we’ve been through? We all deserve some happiness.” Yat thinks she was a go-go girl. “They work at the club. Go ask Day.”
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THE POLICE KIOSK
Community board: empty. Front desk: empty. Air-conditioning: freezing. You have to press the call buzzer four times before an officer appears, irritated.
Whatever you say, she will ask if you want to make a report. “Here, the form. Write. Sign.”
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SUB-INSPECTOR RAFIQ, THE OFFICER
Report-writing, delegating, pistol use.
Takes cigarettes breaks to escape the kiosk’s chill. Obliged to set up a cordon around any scenes of obvious violence. Treats his job as a pensioner’s hobby.
A grey moustache, holding your attention. Friendly but unhelpful. Mention Sara and his eyes narrow; he asks whether you know Dr Azman.
“Because I do. The doctor’s wife has pure intentions, yes. But she is naive. These refugees? They are bad people. We should protect pure women from bad realities.”
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THE CLUB
A poor person’s idea of what wealth looks like: lots of glass; lots of pleather. Driving dangdut. Dancers gyrating on stages in front of murals of elephants, phoenixes, panthers.
Upstairs, a 38-er with a shotgun guards an armoured door. To meet the boss, you must be vouched for.
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UNCLE DAY, THE BOSS
Speechifying, martial arts, rifle-use.
A fifty-year-old veteran with hippie dreads. Panther-themed ink. Day was a military commander. Now he fights on a different plane.
“My people’s true war is spiritual. You appear on a lucky day—very lucky. It is fate. Preordained! What insight do you bring, heavenly messenger?”
Confirms that there are many fresh faces on weekends. “Beautiful girls are sacred animals, you understand? We cannot turn away beauty!”
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THE WOMAN OF YOUR DREAMS
This happens on the next weekend night, to the most cishet male person among you:
Maybe she is in some sort of trouble, and her car won’t start. Maybe she is on a corner, smoking—one black eye. Maybe she is on the podium, enduring gropes and jeers.
She is beautiful. Exactly your type. You can save her, be her hero. She will be grateful.
There are warning signs. There is no car. She will not describe her assailants. She leads you down a dead end. Her fragrance is sweet, like rotting flower garlands. Every dog in the neighbourhood bays.
She lowers her eyes, bites her lip. How can she repay you? she asks. This is a game she likes. Gratification delayed. It makes the end delicious.
Show suspicion, fear? She gets annoyed. Why aren’t you playing along?
Her neck twists around. She grins, chin over the nape of her neck. Arms at wrong angles, fingers ending in talons. She lopes after you, running backwards with a digitigrade gait.
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SARA, THE PONTIANAK
Pretending, pursuing, disembowelling.
The pontianak is a nightmare: born when an unhappy mother dies at childbirth; made when life is destroyed, trying to satiate the demands of the patriarchy.
The pontianak is a predator: she eats men. Women are exempt—except when they are pregnant with a male foetus. Baby flesh tastes best.
The pontianak is reversal. In human form, her physical features are tailored to appeal to potential victims. She must reveal her monstrously twisted form to feed.
The pontianak is fear. She wants her victims to know. She has tells. She always smells of rotting flowers. Dogs hate her: one will flee; a pack will attack.
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SARA’S POWERS
She may whisper to any man she can see. The target hears this whisper over any distance. She materialises by his ear.
She may laugh, a high-pitched cackle. Men who hear this laugh develop debilitating fever a day later. Breaks after a week.
She may touch your clothes. Unerringly locates any man wearing any article of clothing she has previously touched.
She may fly. Moves through the air as if running on solid ground.
She may change shape. Besides taking human woman’s shape, she may also transform into a bay owl.
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DEALING WITH PONTIANAKS
As resilient as three human persons. Harmed by mundane weapons. If slain, reappears the next new moon.
A known solution is imprisonment: a specially-prepared nail, stabbed into the back of her neck. This transforms the pontianak into a human woman.
Unaware of the nail, amnesiac, she is easily groomed by her captor. Often she is made to perform sanctioned gender roles—marriage, family-making—roles she previously abandoned.
The pontianak remains within. Her children may be born as monsters. If the nail is removed, she remembers what she is, and once again goes free.
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DEALING WITH SARA
A pontianak always has a nest—typically a banana plant, banyan, or frangipani. This is where the root of her spirit resides; where she retreats if her body is slain.
Kill the pontianak, wait for her to retreat to her tree. Trap her inside with mystic wards. Burn the tree. This destroys her permanently.
Sara’s banana plant is in the back garden of her house.
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THE HOUSE
A two-storey bungalow, in one of the city’s oldest suburbs. The neighbours are cousins of sultans, hedge-fund managers, architects.
The perfectly manicured back garden has spider lilies, frangipanis—and a single banana stem, in a person-sized urn. “Easier to control the corm, so it grows neat,” Dr Azman explains.
The banana’s trunk has a girdle woven from coarse black thread. Look closer: the thread is human hair.
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DR AZMAN, THE HUSBAND
Gardening, surgery, spellcraft.
Has a driver with a concealed-carry licence. Went to boarding school with the current Defence Minister. Framed: doctorates in a variety of medical fields; a masters in anthropology.
“Black magic? Bloodsucking spirits?” He shrugs. “Charlatans, placebo effect, criminal types using spooky stories to hide trafficking operations.”
You notice a vial on a cord around his neck. Inside: a single hair, suspended in dark oil. He buttons up his shirt without a word. He asks Sara to bring tea. “You’ve met my wife?”
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DR AZMAN’S WIFE
Dr Azman wanted a wife. He did not leave such a thing to the vagaries of love; he made one for himself. Etched the nail in her neck; wove the girdle around her tree.
Dr Azman wants a son—though he is willing to accept a daughter. His first try failed. His perfect wife does have some downsides.
Dr Azman is trying again. Curious how gestation goes easier if his wife’s spirit is let out, given leave to feed. Nourishment for the foetus? Once every two weeks.
When he removes her nail she blusters and threatens. She doesn’t mean those things, he knows. He wears protection, as a precaution.
Dr Azman’s vial contains oil distilled from the flesh of Sara’s original corpse. Sara may never harm the person who wears this vial.
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Some notes:
- This was written with page references—ie: “turn to pg xx”—because that’s what I do as a matter of course in drafting. But I couldn’t get internal hyperlinks to work with Tumblr’s text editor; my html-fu isn’t good enough. Sorry. Hope it is still legible nonetheless.
- The original version of this was written as a monster entry for an urban fantasy game. Stripped the system-specific stuff out; expanded the adventure bits (locations, characters, shape of What Is Going On). Basically rewrote the whole thing.
- Writing for a contemporary setting is interesting. Felt okay to use an even more basic version of the system-neutral “stat block” I usually use. Mechanics aren’t a prerequisite to contextualise action in modern-day reality, consider we (most of us, anyway) actually live here.
- Malaysian hantu / monsters are overwhelmingly gendered female; most are created from childbirth and its horrors. They are nightmares of the patriarchy (and its callous treatment of women’s bodies) made manifest.
- Every Malaysian writer eventually writes a pontianak story. This is mine, I guess? The one bit in the pontianak mythos that arrests me most is the idea that she can be captured, turned into a “proper” woman. And that this is spoken of as some sort of victory, some sort triumph against evil—men win, in the end, always and forever.
- The refugee angle is me working through Malaysian society’s xenophobia towards of asylum seekers. I have written about it before; it is still relevant now.
- This adventure explicitly casts the husband as the villain. He should get his comeuppance. Any way the situation develops, Sara—an innocent woman—will not come out of this unscathed.
- Felt okay to sketch the NPCs, but not the monsters, because I’m not a good enough artist. Your imagination is better than I.
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Image credits:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/ufb8de/random_alley_in_cheras_kuala_lumpur_malaysia/
- https://www.sabahpost.net/2019/12/06/polis-tembak-mati-3-pengedar-dadah-rampas-syabu-dan-senjata-api/
- https://www.hmetro.com.my/mutakhir/2021/08/747004/balai-polis-sungai-besi-dihias-indah-sempena-hari-kebangsaan
- https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Flmb0m4v472n81.jpg
- Nick Gray on Flickr
- https://g.co/kgs/7wu8NTh
- https://naturerules1.fandom.com/wiki/Oriental_Bay_Owl
- https://www.bikemap.net/en/r/7659968/
- https://www.secret-retreats.com/blog/general-info/list-of-edible-flowers-in-asia-floral-delights-in-asian-cuisine-part-1.html
Three Objects
Sketching has been good at breaking up the misery of staring at a manuscript and being stuck. At least with the drawing I’m roadblocked by my lack of skill rather than my lack of ideas.
There are things from an adventure I am currently writing for Colin Le Sueur’s We Deal In Lead. It began as a homage to Wisit Sasanatieng’s tomyamgong western Fa Thalai Chon / Tears Of The Black Tiger.
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WIDOW GON’S PALANQUIN
A broad teak throne: canopied, curtained, cushioned. Stinks of tobacco.
Its bearers: the captive brothers Khol. Every night Lady Sao Rai visits their garage, selects a brother, and fucks him in her grandmother’s palanquin.
The Khols are too afraid to refuse her.
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The Widow is matriarch of House Gon. It will be her fiftieth birthday, soon. An elaborate fete is planned.
Captives are found across the sea, created through poverty, criminal sentences, or legal abduction. By Admiralty law, a captive must go free once they earn their owner their original price, a hundred times over.
In practice, few owners obey.
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It should be obvious what captives are. I ding-donged with myself about the nomenclature, here.
A simple reason for avoiding the word “slave” is because most people think “transatlantic slave trade” as soon as you say it. If nothing else I want to avoid the association because it is inaccurate.
On the other hand: annoying to have to decenter Southeast Asia in this way! The equivalent of having to say “chai tea” when I should be able to say “tea”, because that is what the word means to me!
(I strain against this specific problem often.)
Finally I decided “captive” was good, after all. This kind of legalistic euphemism (“Oh, they aren’t slaves, they are indentured servants.”) is exactly in character for rich assholes bending language to assuage their consciences.
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HOUSEHOLD PSYCHOPHONE
Listening room: settees; shelf of wax-cylinder records; a podium on which sits a psychophone.
Pop a cylinder into the psychophone, point its antenna at a servant wearing the receiving brooch, listen to them sing in an alto entirely not their own.
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Psychophones have been ruinous to local performers. Once-celebrated local singers have been reduced to glorified loudspeakers: vessels for the voices of famous chanteuses from across the Ocean.
This home entertainment system requires at least two to operate:
- One servant (or more commonly a servitor) to turn the crank;
- One servant to serve as a receiver-singer.
A receiver-singer’s health eventually suffers. When you have somebody else’s voice (and soul) forced into you over and over, and you begin to lose your own …
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This one was troublesome. Felt like production design. Appliance design.
Had several goals:
- The core mechanism has to look like it makes sense, to its own internal logic. No greebling; every bit needs to look like it has a purpose.
- Lots of ornamentation. This is a luxury device belonging to aristocrats from a rococo Indochinese-inspired society. It needs to be a jewelbox.
- Genteel normalisation of vicious magic. The needle made of bone; the antenna that is basically a massive needle pointed at your head—but disguised as a pretty bird.
The receiver-brooch is something I discovered while sketching. Seems gameable? Also, in the spirit of point 3: the brooch has a pin you stick in your forehead.
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GHOST WATER
Auw Yin Yan, the Sea of Sorrows—of Sighs.
Imagine bodies in a mass grave the size of a country. Imagine them luminescent, in motion. Pulled by the moon, waved by the wind, clawing at the quay.
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Always forms into human shapes: when poured into a bowl, ghost water sits as a balled fist.
Like saltwater in most respects. The Sea teems with marine life, though these are cunning and cruel in human ways. Humans cannot swim ghost water. Do not fall in.
Ghosts wear the outfits and injuries they had at death. Rarely, one will crawl onto land, eyes open, a hungry ghast.
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Yeah, so: the wider campaign setting for this adventure is defined by the Sea of Sorrows. It has whales and islands and pirates. It is filled with ghosts instead of water.
I saw the Sea in my mind as a vast Escher-esque tangle of interlocking ghost-bodies.
A wave would be bodies flinging themselves on a beach; their arms and hands dragging on the sand as they pull back into the surf.
I drew a way simpler visual. And the ghost’s hair is cheating: it already looks like water.
Still: very pleased with this sketch. Gentle, sort of sweet, quietly creepy. Also it is a modest bailing bucket, which contrasts with the material excess of the palanquin and psychophone.
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LAST VOYAGE OF SEA-QUEEN LESSA
A cliff-side tomb; a moral quandary; a ship in search of one last crewmate.
5/12 - 11/12
#dungeon23
Was pretty pleased with this! I know it’s not quite a megadungeon, but the steps up to the cliff also lead down somewhere, so maybe there’s more?
(Hopefully. Knowing me I’ll probably not be able to keep this going …)
An Account of an Experience in Hue, August 2018. Part One: Mandi Bunga
It was a clear day when Sharon came home from Vietnam. The sun was blinding white. All the way home from the airport, she held my hand tight.
We asked our cab driver to make two stops: once, at a shop that sold Hindu prayer supplies, so she could buy chrysanthemums; another, at a fruit stand, so she could buy kaffir limes.
Sharon would not step through our front gate. I had to fetch rock salt and bucket of water from the kitchen.
She scrubbed herself with salt. She sliced the limes; plucked the flowers; swirled them both into the water. She had me pour this mixture over her head. She still had her clothes on. There were flowers in five colours.
She stood in the sun, gasping and shining. She sprinkled her luggage bag, her other belongings. I washed the flowers and limes off the tar of our street, so they could go into the earth
As she towelled herself, Sharon sighed and said: “I feel better. But I am worried about sunset.”
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Sharon was in Vietnam for a Southeast Asia-Japan art and research exchange trip.
A Japanese art collective organised it. There were Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai and Malaysian attendees – but the bulk of participants were Japanese.
When she was there, Sharon and her colleagues were attacked by a supernatural entity. The experience shook her. Now we sleep with the bedside lamp on, at night.
A month later, she still finds it difficult to talk about Vietnam:
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“The Japanese artists had visited Hue before. They got a Vietnamese artist to organise some a tour. The last part of the tour was a visit to a cemetery.
We ended up being an hour behind schedule, so it was around twilight when we were at the cemetery. After a short explanation of what the place was, our Vietnamese-artist guide warned us: “Oh be careful to stick together. You don’t want to get lost in here.”
It was a very big cemetery. The scale of it – I’ve seen big graves before, but not so many together. Imagine your typical Chinese graves, but ten times the size.
They were like mausoleums. Decorated by garish mosaics. A city. The ground was sand, so we must’ve been near the sea. The sand got into my jelly shoes.
The atmosphere was strangely grey. Total cloud cover, so the lighting was very flat. There were no shadows.
Me and M, one of the Japanese artists, were the last two people out of the cemetery. I remember that as we were walking back to the bus she kept stopping, lingering. When I was past the entrance markers I saw her staring, looking back.
She seemed really interested in the place. I thought that interest was her just being an artist.”
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Sharon left her jelly shoes behind, in a bin, in Vietnam.
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“That same night, there was a gathering at the hotel, in one of the Japanese artists’ rooms, for drinks. We jokingly called that room ‘The Bar’. The whiskey they had was very good.
I was the only Southeast Asian there. So most of the conversation was in Japanese, once in a while they’d switch to English, for my benefit.
M arrived late. When she did, I saw them all asking her: ‘Are you okay? Is everything okay?’
Which was weird. Did something happen? So I asked her: ‘Oh what happened, M?’
I was sitting on the floor. When she came in M lay down on one of the beds, on her stomach. She started talking to me, and me only, in English. She said: ‘Oh I’m fine. I’ve just been getting messages from a guy from a long time ago.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘What would you do if you got messages like this? He said I look like Utada Hikaru.’
I was sympathetic. I thought she was talking about an ex. ‘Don’t push your feeling away, you know?’ I told her. ‘Just accept you feel sad about it. That sadness will come and go.’
I remember her staring at me very intently. It wasn’t a malicious look – just very searching. ‘Do I look like me?’ she asked, pointing at herself.
‘Yes, I think you look fine,’ I said.
‘You don’t think I look like someone else?’
‘No, I don’t.’
She got off the bed and sat up. One of the other Japanese artists massaged her back. At the end of this massage she did a throwing-away gesture: pulling something out of M’s back, tossing it away – ‘Hah!’
Like throwing away bad juju? Shaking off the heartbreak, I thought.
I left The Bar, and that night I slept like a baby.”
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“The next day we had a full day of discussions and sharings.
At dinner, the Southeast Asians sat together. On the far end of the table, the Japanese artists talked among themselves. From what I could hear and understand, they seemed to be telling ghost stories. I thought they were entertaining themselves.
Walking back to the hotel, T, an artist from Thailand, walked with me. ‘I don’t know what we are doing,” she said. ‘We shouldn’t have gone to the cemetery.’
This was when I realised that something had happened. Something had happened to M, and M had told T about it.
M was walking with us, too. I caught up to her. I asked her again: ‘Are you okay?’
‘I was haunted at the cemetery,’ M said to me. ‘I told the organisers about it. When I told them, they said I looked like a man.’
This was what M told me:
The day before, at the cemetery, walking around, M felt suddenly rooted to a spot. She doesn’t smoke – but she asked one of the other artists for a cigarette. It wasn’t her will to ask.
She stood there, smoking. ‘I cannot move,’ M thought. ‘Is somebody going to come and save me?’ ”
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“I felt angry. The Japanese artists were treating us Southeast Asia as a setting, us Southeast Asians as content for their art programme.
They expected us to tell them about our histories and cultures and stories. But they didn’t trust us, they couldn’t bring themselves to be vulnerable to us.
They wanted to use our stories for their art. But they also didn’t want to believe in our stories.
That whole day, all the Japanese artists knew about M. She had told the organisers! But, instead of telling us, instead of asking the Vietnamese artists for help, the Japanese artists decided to keep it among themselves. Keep quiet.
Rather than take care of M, their friend, they went ahead with the exchange programme. As if nothing happened.”
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“After dinner, while I was in the shower, a thought dropped into my head. ‘Oh, maybe we can all do mandi bunga,’ I thought.
I was reluctant to follow this thought. I didn’t want to make things worse for anybody. Didn’t want to scare people. This place, Hue – it wasn’t my land. I didn’t know how things were handled, here.
We were going to have drinks at The Bar again. The Southeast Asian artists met up in my room, before heading there.
S, an Indonesian artist, was very concerned for M. “Should we ask the Vietnamese for help?” she asked.
But the art exchange was almost over. We were scheduled to fly home the next day. What if things escalated? What if M had to miss her flight, stay back? Go back to that cemetery?
T said to me: ‘If you had the thought to do mandi bunga, you should do it.’
I had been given a bunch of flowers the very same day.
‘I’ll bring these along,’ I said, pointing at the bunch. ‘Just in case. I’ll tell them it is a play-play, folk thing that we do. Just like throwing salt over your shoulder.’ ”
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Mandi bunga – a simple flower bath, performed to wash away bad fortune and perfume oneself for good energy – is the ritual Sharon enacted again outside our front gate, two days later, gasping and shining in the sun.
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“The atmosphere at The Bar was really as if nothing happened. Somebody had bought a bag of mangosteens, to try. ‘Oh hi, oh hi!’ Normal Japanese small talk – that surface, that distance – ‘Oh yes, have another drink!’
The organisers of the programme weren’t there. M wasn’t there.
So I asked: ‘Where’s M?’
‘Oh she’s in her room,’ they said. Then they started looking searching at us. ‘Oh, why? What have you heard?’ They were still trying to figure out what we knew, and what to tell us.
S said: ‘Trust us.’
I tried to put them at ease. ‘I was too unthinking, stepping into the cemetery like that, yesterday,’ I said. ‘We should’ve been more careful.’
One of the Japanese artists said: ‘Oh but it was nothing. I don’t get affected by things like that.’
‘But other people did,’ I said. ‘You don’t care about them?’
T said: ‘If any of you are scared tonight, you shouldn’t sleep alone.’
The Japanese artists looked at us, and at each other. ‘This is heavy,’ one of them said, finally.
‘It is lighter if we carry it together,’ I said.”
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“M arrived soon after. We asked her: ‘So how are you feeling now?’
‘Feels okay,’ she said. Nobody was convinced of this.
‘You need to bring it out into the light,’ I said.
At which she got visibly annoyed. ‘This is very difficult to talk about!’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t force people to talk about it!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
She looked down and said: ‘No, no no. It is not your fault.’ Then she saw the bag of mangosteens. ‘Oh, I want one! My favourite fruit!’
I looked at her closely. I watched her. She fumbled with the fruit. She didn’t know how to open it. You are supposed to twist a mangosteen open. But she was crushing it. The juice was staining all her fingers.
‘Let me help you,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised you like mangosteens. When did you first try them?’
‘Oh when I was in Thailand with my grandfather!’ M said.
Then she went quiet, and corrected herself: ‘I mean. My ex-boyfriend.’
Nothing she said was impossible. But when she said it, I felt a chill.”
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“We put some Stevie Wonder music on.
I gave M and the other Japanese artists my explanation. I said: ‘Okay, there is this thing we do, called mandi bunga’ – just a simple cleansing ritual.
We didn’t have a bucket or a tub, so I adapted it. We did it in the bathroom sink. I put the flower blossoms in the sink, and put the tap on so we had constant running water. I got the Japanese artists to line up. Wash their faces and hands, one at a time.
Things began to lighten up. We started to be able to joke about it. ‘Things are okay,’ somebody said.
‘It’s all just energies,’ somebody else said.
There was the splashing water, and Stevie Wonder singing in the background. When M washed, I asked her how she felt. She said she felt renewed, lighter.
Afterwards I threw the flower petals into the dustbin.”
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“The other Japanese artists were very taken by the ritual.
One of them kept saying: ‘Sharon, Sharon, this is so interesting, I want to highlight this mandi bunga in an arts festival. This is so interesting.’
I thanked her. But also I remember thinking: ‘Oh, so this is just another piece of content for you?’
The mood in The Bar had changed again. There were smiles. People were now excitedly talking about other types of cleansing rituals.
Another Japanese artist revealed that she had trained as a medium at a temple, during her student days. ‘I learned this dance, to exorcise bad spirits,’ she said. ‘They used to wear these dresses, with white tops.”
‘Oh, I know which ones,’ M said. ‘They are red trouser skirts with white tops. Let me Google them, to show you.’
Meanwhile, the former medium had stood up. She began to take us through the steps of the dance, one by one. Everybody in the room watched her. Things were fun again.
I noticed that M was staring at her phone. She had found an image of the dress: red trouser skirt, white top. She hit refresh, and the image refreshed.
She hit refresh, and the image refreshed. Refresh, refresh, refresh.
That’s all she kept doing, the whole time we watched her friend dancing.”
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As she talked, recalling that night, Sharon mimed M’s motion for me. Eyes rooted at a phone screen, brows locked in worry, trapped and unable to move, except to refresh, refresh. Refresh. Refresh.
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