"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."
--Leonardo da Vinci

Dying Slowly

Once, everybody in role-playing games had quick and violent deaths. You might play a character for days, weeks or years, but you could be guaranteed that at some stage the dice would fail you and a sword buried in your gut would bring a violent end to a violent life. As a player you would need to shed a single tear for your lost adventurer before grabbing a fresh character sheet to try again.

Over the decades, however, the roleplaying hobby has matured and evolved and so have our stories. Not every game is about combat now, and not every death needs to be bloody and brutal. In real life most people don't die sudden brutal deaths, but instead die slowly over a period of time.

Is there potential for evocative and moving stories here? Certainly.

Can slow death be as dramatic as quick violent death? Absolutely.

Yet for some reason, even in these enlightened days of narrativism and full character immersion we rarely see slow deaths. This article examines the slow death through the eyes of three characters, hopefully showing how the story of slow death can be an interesting and involving story.

The structure of this article owes a lot to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and the five stages of grief model that she developed in 1969. Dr. Kubler-Ross was one of the driving forces between the development of modern palliative medicine, and this article is my in memoriam tribute to her.

1) Denial

The Hitman

Thomson had been coughing up blood for some time now. Big sticky red-black gobbets that splattered on the white porcelain of the sink. Thomson was no stranger to blood, of course, having killed so many over the years. He'd do the job, take a life and then go home. The job played on his nerves of course, and so he smoked. He smoked a lot.

The doctor had told him it was the cigarettes that had done it ... bronchial adenocarcinoma, the doc had said. Thomson had stared at him blankly till the doctor translated for him: "Lung cancer, Mr. Thompson. You have lung cancer."

To be honest, he hadn't thought about it much since going to the doctors. He had a couple of jobs, and it was important to get them done. His health could wait.

So the hitman stood there, coughing up blood into a hotel bathroom sink, with the corpse of his latest target lying on the bed behind him. Then, as he always did, he drew a cigarette from his case and lit up.

The Sorcerer

The Black Mark was upon the Sorcerer. He had wrestled a night demon and smote it with the Sword of the Art, but it had placed its dying curse upon him. The sorcerer knew that the Black Mark was a death sentence that would give him less than a moon's turn left to live, but he was still exultant from his hard fought victory.

After all, was he not a Magus of the Eleventh Circle? What could the petty magics of a dying demon do to possibly harm him?

The Netrunner

Zero had experienced glitches on his last run that he swore were down to his hardware, but he just couldn't find the problem. He checked his cyber-deck again and still found nothing wrong with it. His Fixer had suggested that the glitches might be due to a disease called "NDS" which all the street-runners were talking about. Neural Degen Syndrome. They claimed that it was caused by jacking in to unstable matrices too often, which could lead to glitches and viruses infecting the runner's brain. They said that eventually you’d shut down and die, just like an overworn deck.

Zero didn’t believe that bullshit, of course. He figured it was Globalcorps propaganda, made up to scare hackers off the running. He wasn't scared. He checked his decks again for the hardware problems he knew he must have missed.

Denial is the first stage of grief. Faced with the idea that they are going to die, the individual retreats into thinking "This is not happening to me!"

Isolation is common too, as the dying person has a lot to come to terms with, and doesn't really want to deal with people around them. Also, of course, other people might try to make them face reality which is far too painful to do at the time. In game, consider that your dying character when confronted with news of his impending demise wll be initially dismissive. If others keep pestering him about it he'll seek to spend time away from them, and perhaps lose himself in his job to take his mind off things.

2) Anger

The Hitman

Thomson wasn't sure why he'd let himself get angry. It was just an ordinary job, but he'd gotten lost in the moment.

He looked down at the bloody corpse in front of him. One bullet would have done the job, but Thomson had emptied an entire magazine, reloaded, then emptied the magazine again, all the time roaring and swearing.

Frustrated, angry and scared, Thomson grabbed up a chair and smashed the nearest window, sending a shower of glass into the street below.

The Sorcerer

The Sorceror's minions scuttled for cover. There was nothing else to do when the master was in a foul mood. His initial attempts to disenchant the Black Mark had failed, and he was furious.

Wild, destructive spells arced out as he lashed out in anger, melting stone and laying waste to his own sanctum.

The Netrunner

Zero hadn't meant to snap at Suzie. She was a good friend and had always been there for him with a fix or a hit when he needed one. She had been trying to help, offering to check his decks for him and see if she'd catch anything he had missed.

But he had shouted at her, and thrown his decks to the ground, and she had left him alone again.

All in all, he felt like an idiot.

Anger comes next, along with blame. This will likely be irrational, blaming God, friends or carers.

The anger stage doesn't tend to last long, but it is a reaction to the individual finally realizing that there is a problem to be faced, and he doesn't know how. Its easy for a character to alienate his friends at this time, but his truest friends will stick by him. In an RPG if your player group isn't used to emotional storylines it might be worth warning other players what the character is doing, so that no player takes it too personally.

3) Bargaining

The Hitman

Thomson hadn't prayed since he was twelve, but he was in church today. He'd been to the doctors again, who told him that there wasn't really anything they could do to cure the cancer, though they though they might be able to slow it down.

So Thomson was in church, praying to a God that he had stopped believing in once, but who seemed to be his only hope now. If only God could grant him a respite from the cancer, he would never kill again and would spend his life making amends for his life. He promised to head back to Milwaukee to see the son he had left behind, if only God could give him the time to do so.

He'd do anything and give anything, just so long as he could live.

The Sorcerer

The Sorcerer offered up three dozen souls to the Lords of Hell, and prayers to every demon god he could think of. He had threatened at first, then cajoled, and then finally begged. He had promised a thousand souls to any who could remove the Black Mark, but each devil or fiend he spoke to told him that there was no escape.

The Netrunner

Zero sold his friends out – every last one of them. The street had failed him, so he'd turned to Globalcorps, figuring that it was in their systems that things had started to go wrong so they had to have a solution. They told him that he was right, and that they had implanted him with an encoded neurovirus. They said they had the cure but that it would cost him. So Zero paid the price, selling out all his buddies and fellow runners till the Corps had every one of them locked down. He found out that they had been lying, and that they didn't have any cure for NDS. Zero realised that he'd been tricked ... Truthfully Zero realised that he’d known all along he was being played, but he had hoped he was wrong, and had been desperate to try anything.

The third stage is bargaining. The individual looks to find a way out of his predicament and will often bargain irrationally to try to escape his oncoming death.

In real life, patients will desperately tell their doctors that they will take any medicine that the doctor prescribes, so long as it will help keep the cancer away. They'll go to church for the first time in decades and ask God or priests for forgiveness. They'll go to herbalists and homeopathists, and try treatments that they never believed in before just because anythingis better than dying. Different people take to bargaining to different degrees. In a role-playing game there may be real and valid options for escaping death through bargaining. I suggest to storytellers that if you are running a story about dying slowly to make any reprieve gained by these bargains temporary at best.

4) Depression

The Hitman

Thomson lay on his bed, barely able to move and barely able to breathe. He was a pale shadow of the man that he had once been and now death stared him in the face. He knew that he was unloved and that he would die alone. He had contacts in the business, but no real friends. He hadn't really had a friend since he was a teenager. His life seemed wasted now – an orgy of blood, violence and death that had achieved exactly nothing.

The Sorcerer

The Sorcerer was almost skeletal in appearance by now, his pale skin drawn tight across his bones. Death was coming for him, and his soul would be going to hell. He had never planned to die. He knew that in the Underworld he had a thousand enemies, and could know only torment. Soon he would die, and that would be the end of life and the beginning of eternal suffering.

The Netrunner

The neurological degeneration had progressed and over the last few months Zero had lost control of bladder and bowel, and now could barely rise from his bed. He didn't mind the disability so much as the loss of dignity. The hospital nurses had to wipe him clean, and the doctors filled him with drugs to numb the burning pains. There was no way out now.

The penultimate stage is depression. The individual contemplates the fact that he is powerless, and is filled with despair. All illusion of escaping the situation dissolves away, leaving only a numb and dead feeling inside.

Playing out depression might not be much fun, but it can be satisfying. Take a look at the previous article in the series for more on depression.

5) Acceptance

The Hitman

Thomson smiled. He was going to die, and that was a certainty. Only now, faced with impending mortality, did he come to notice the beauty in the small things in life. The movement of cold air across his face and the fresh sweet taste of orange juice ... He now saw more clearly than he ever had before. This was the end, and Thomson was ready.

The Sorcerer

Life was ending and death was about to begin. He gripped his staff tightly, and spoke the words to bind it to his souls so that he would carry it to the next world. He knew he had a hard time against him, but he was ready. Through Will alone he had mastered the Art in life, and through Will alone he would conquer the lands of the dead. As the darkness took him, the Sorcerer's soul let out a roar of defiance and plunged into death. He would not fear hell. Hell would fear him.

The Netrunner

There was regret, that much was true. Zero regretted selling out his friends, and he regretted not being able to live longer to cause more pain for the megacorporations. He regretted the fact that the world had not changed despite his actions. But now the world could go on without him. All the anger and the despair had faded away leaving him feeling halfway between absolution and contentment. This was how it ended. Somehow, Zero didn't mind.

Finally, we reach acceptance. Not all dying people are lucky enough to reach this stage of course, as death may catch up with them before they reach psychological resolution. Regardless, acceptance makes for a powerful ending to an involving story, as well as providing closure for the player who is losing the character.

I hope that this article has given you some ideas to use in your stories, and perhaps persuaded you that confronting a slow death in roleplaying can cathartic and interesting.

More Medical Musings next month, till then (in the nicest possible way) I wish a slow death on your characters.