Character Journal: Cedric Lowell Jensen

My name is Cedric Lowell Jensen, I am twenty years old, and I am in trouble.

This may be more than you need to know at this point, but I live with magick. Not the parlor tricks of a stage magician or the high-tech wizardry of illusionist or even the amazing abilities of a mentalist. Real Magick. The kind reserved for movies and urban fantasy novels. But I never really wanted it, it was thrust upon me by a long-standing legacy. My parents tried to shield me from it. But they failed...

You don't need to know more than that right now, except that the magick is not learned. It is wielded, by me, with the help of an artifact that I have in my possession: The Grayson Ring. I got it well, I stole it. But it was looking for me. At least that is what it told me when I found it. It's complicated. And scary.

But let me focus on the problem at hand...The Lodge.

The Lodge
The Lodge is a a group of experts, judges, narcissistic power-brokers who intervene in all matters of the Occult. They want the world to remain ignorant that the mystic powers of ancient times are still around, albeit in severely limited quantities. But in the last 10 years they have developed on affinity for hoarding tomes, artifacts, and relics of mystical, infernal, or preternatural origin. They have the largest vault and library of magical power in the world.

That is why I joined them. After they tried to kill me that is. You see my parents were running from them, my mother was a member of their organization from a young age, but she didn't want to stay involved. My father was a hermetic talent of unusual ability. When they met it caused a shift in the local politics. It upset the balance. The order of things. Because he was better than they were at using the power, but they had access to the information.

Needless to say, a war started. A shadowy, nighttime engagement hidden from the eyes of the mortal world, but a war none the less. So my parents did what any sensible couple would do: they took what they could and they ran! I was born about a year later.

For most of my early childhood there was no magick. Just a normal in a well-to-do family that seemed to have all it's needs met. It wasn't until my eighth birthday that things got strange...That is when my I came into contact with a random occult book, in a package from the mail. It was addressed to me. So I opened it. Then all hell broke loose...literally.

I did not understand at the time, but the book had been sent via a "seeking ritual" and the sender had no idea where I was living. The spells embedded in the book, the packaging, and the ink of the address label all worked deliberately to find me. Opening it was the trigger. The catalyst to a summoning of powerful and ancient magick.

When the hellhound appeared before me, my whole world changed. Mundane objects all around me reacted to the threat. Bookcases shielded me, lamps and power cords attacked the monstrous hound, and my own clothing transformed into armor. I thought I had lost my mind.

My mother appeared, dispatched the beast and enchanted me, sending me to a blissful nap. When I awoke, my normal life was over, and my apprenticeship began. The training was rudimentary at first, use this item first, remember the key-words, don't forget to wear the same belt when you leave the house. It was tedious and constricting. I wanted very little to do with it, mostly because no one was teaching me anything valuable. It was all practical and boring and non-sensical.

But that changed when I was 15. I met Claudia and fell in love. Madly, deeply, in love.

What a lot of people don't seem to be clear about is: Cedric always loved me. Even when we drifted apart, when prep school took him away from us...he never stopped loving me. Never.

It wasn't always clear to those around us, or to those we talked to, or were friends with, but during the last of our teenage years we never gave up on each other. And because of that we were there for each other when we needed each other the most.

Especially after this parents...disappeared.

I do not like to reflect on what I went through from sixteen until I turned twenty. It was a twisted, confusing path. From my involvement with "the Lodge" as a petitioning apprentice to discovery that I wasn't really talented like my parents. I cold never figure out if I belonged in the Occult world, or if it just wouldn't leave me alone.

Claudia helped reconcile it all, she gave me perspective. She accepted that the "weird shit" was some kind of natural process that I had to work through. And she never doubted me, or questioned my sanity, she just incorporated it into the paradigm of being my friend.

By the time I figured out that Nicodemus was my only real ally in "the Lodge" and that Malficar was a villain-in-training it was too late. I had found the Ring, or it had found me at least. And my power was real. My talents were finally developing.

I took what I had, and returned home. To Claudia. To normality. To a world of problems that I couldn't even see coming...

Derrick Damian Jensen and Elena Wakandari, yes they were precious. Very important for a multitude of reasons, but the single most important thing that they ever did for me...was expose the Lodge for what it was...