Deacon Jack

Jack Deacon was, in his Second Life, an unrepentant skinhead with a drug addiction before he was killed in a gang drive-by. In death he was approached by the tem-akh of an artist. In his Third Life as an Amenti, Deacon Jack was reborn as Kher-minu, a reformed tattoo artist bestowing his art with magical properties.

Biography

For some folks, life is an endless exploration of joy and wonder. Each day is interesting and challenging, and every morning is bright with new possibilities.

Jack had to work very hard to keep from slugging those kinds of people.

In his Second Life, Jack Deacon (or “Deacon Jack,” as he usually called himself) was a member of the Aryan Nation, an unrepentant skinhead, an even more unrepentant heroin user, and an all-around nihilistic, suicidal bastard. His body was a roadmap of scars, cheap tattoos, piercings and needle tracks. He and his gang cruised New York, fighting with gangs of various ethnicities. Deacon was just waiting for the bullet or knife that would take him away.

Wouldn’t you know it? When that night finally came, Deacon found something worth living for. The Big Circle Boys, a Chinese gang, had evidently marked Deacon Jack for death. Might have been that batch of tainted smack he’d unloaded on their turf the month prior, who knows? One warm summer night, while Jack was stumbling toward a tattoo parlor with a crude sketch of a raven in his hand, the BCBs pulled up and emptied several semi-automatic weapons in his general direction. They couldn’t shoot worth a shit, usually, but with that number of bullets, the odds weren’t on Jack’s side. They sped off, sure he was dead.

He was dead - momentarily. And then an angel came toward him and asked him, in a nutshell, if he’d like to join a different kind of war. The angel really didn’t use words, but it showed Jack what he’d been missing - a world of endless exploration and joy, new possibilities and all the rest of it. Jack got up and stumbled away, and somehow managed to survive his hajj all the way from ol’ New York to Egypt.

It turned out that the ka spirit that merged with him had been an artist in life, and with his newfound knowledge of Amulets and Effigy, he turned toward locking such spells into tattoos rather than just jewelry. He did get that raven tattoo (although he redesigned it at least a dozen times in the interim), but now he can call the raven to life. Most of his piercings are gone - they just don’t feel right anymore - and the very thought of a needle makes him queasy. He still carries a piece, yeah, but it’s not like he’ll ever use it on someone. He understands now about life and about how wasting it is the real crime.

Although Jack’s not a Sakhmu, he does want to beautify people a bit. He’s gone back to NYC and opened a tattoo parlor. He doesn’t just want to paint art on people, though. He tries to help them to help themselves: Get off drugs, out of gangs, find work, whatever helps. He’s not well connected or anything, but he can usually offer advice, and he was always someone you listened to. He was tempted to set up shop in a nicer section of town - much safer, after all, and he doesn’t want to get shot again - but in the end, finances (and the knowledge that if you’re to help people, you have to be where they are) won out. His store is in a dangerous section of town, not far from his old gang’s turf.

Hey, some of those crazy, nihilistic urges die hard. But life is indeed interesting and challenging.

References

• MTR: Mummy Players Guide, p. 218