Jars are a most wonderful thing

[Zettaijin]

You can keep so many things in jars.

Bugs, plants, food... that guy who played Mr.Belvedere on television...

OK, I recall many moons ago a skit on Saturday Night Live wherein an unsuspecting comic walks in on a rather odd gathering of obsessive Mr.Belvedere fans. One member explains that while he should say hi to him nicely, he shouldn't however want to keep him in a giant glass jar in his basement since his breath might fog up the glass and he wouldn't be able to see him.

Now there's a thought - keeping people in jars. Not very practical mind you, but I can certainly imagine some loony being given the means to his ends by the dark powers. Why keep people in jars? Why not? We have a disembodied brain in a jar and Jacqueline Monterri keeps her collection of heads in glass jars.

Now has anyone else ever thought about someone other than themselves who would like to keep people in jars?

[Ail]

For some reason, this reminds me of a very distant and very foggy memory of Professor Pacali and the Pickled Punks (Carnival accessory)... but as I said, memories are very very hazy... That might have nothing to do wiht jars... nor people.

[Amicus]

The homunculus of Paracelsan alchemy, it is said, will mature to resemble a perfect adult human albeit in miniature. However, it cannot leave the confines of its jar for long, because it cannot breathe air but only the vital fluid in which it was grown. Several such creatures are depicted in the movie The Bride of Frankenstein, creations of the sinister Dr. Praetorius.

Homunculi are able to communicate with spirits, and therefore can serve as useful intermediaries between the alchemist and the unseen world. Also, an homunculus may be created to resemble a specific person, and as a result will possess knowledge appropriate to that person.

However, knowledge can be a dangerous thing. What must the homunculus feel, trapped in its bottle, created merely to serve as a tool of knowledge? With its arcane insight, might it not be possible for an homunculus to discover a means to escape the confines of its artificial womb? Perhaps it is necessary for someone else to take the homunculus' place in the bottle. While the homunculus gains human size and freedom, the victim is correspondingly reduced in size and imprisoned.

It may be that the homunculus also gains the ability to mimic, doppelganger-like, the skills and appearance of whoever is trapped in its bottle. Moreover, by crafting more bottles, it can trap others in the same manner, thereby collecting a variety of useful skills and identities. Meanwhile, the victims are hidden safely away, their tiny screams and pleas for rescue heard only by the inhabitants of the neighboring bottles...

[Admin]

In an era without grocery stores, canning preserves is a common activity for most families. More than just a means of storing food, its a great way for a family to bond.
It was an especially great way for a mother to bond with her sickly son. Alone in their house, they found ways to preserve everything: fruits, vegtables, pickled meats.
Everything except the boy, of course.
Eventually the boy could not leave his bed and his mother left alone to her work. Day by day he wasted away, even as the canned preserves remained pristine and perfect. In the lonely hours and idea emerged. Mother had pleanty of salt to make brine. It was just a matter of finding a big enough jar....

[cure]

Well given the requirements of casting human sized jars, and in some cases ones capable of resisting efforts to break out of them, pursuing the matter within the Veil of Sleep as a dreamscape locked away in a dreamsphere has a certain appeal.

[The Giamarga]

For some reason, this reminds me of a very distant and very foggy memory of Professor Pacali and the Pickled Punks (Carnival accessory)... but as I said, memories are very very hazy... That might have nothing to do wiht jars... nor people.

No you're right. The pickled punks are indeed kept in jars afaik.

[alhoon]

Back when we were playing with Jason in the HWalks series we have met Matilda in the Carnival. She was kept in a tank, not unlike a jar.

[High Priest Mikhal]

IRL "pickled punks" is carny slang for the human fetuses stored in glass jars filled with formeldahyde they display at sideshows. So yes, the giamarga is absolutely right. I think I'll go visit Paizo now...

[Rotipher of the FoS]

IIRC, there's a magic item in the RLDMG which takes the form of a sealed glass aquarium, with black murky water inside. Smash it, and it unleashes a ready-packaged Black Tentacles effect.

Surely if that's possible, one could encase plenty of other nasty effects in glass or pottery containers, too.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Yeah, the tentacle aquarium. A jar form would make for a nasty trap.

After re-watching most every Amityville movie made, this thread got me thinking. They've dealt with how items from the infamous house carry on its vile corruption (a clock, a dollhouse, a painting). So why not a simple jar? My brain's on strike so I can't think of a history suitably dark enough right now.

[Amicus]

I was trying to think of a plausible scenario for a giant shark being supernaturally imprisoned inside a jar... Then I remembered that the town in the Jaws movies was named Amity. Somehow I got it confused with Amityville of the titular Horror films.

If I recall aright (which, as the above indicates, I clearly DON'T), the story of the Amityville haunting was supposedly the result of a multiple murder, which was in turn somehow associated with a mysterious red room under the cellar stairs. Also there was a ghostly pig named Jodie, I remember that much.

I don't know how the pig fits in. However, the red cellar room immediately suggests possibilities. Now, what sort of things might happen in such a hidden cellar room? Obviously, dark pacts with demonic outsiders, sealed with the blood of innocent victims, and possibly unspecified rites involving a pig.

And what else might happen in hidden cellar rooms? CANNING.

Put it all together and you get a hellish Mason jar. Unspeakably tainted by profane rites of binding, this dread preserves jar has been stained with the bloody entrails of untold innocents, and now it hungers for more. Its once-humble power to preserve has been unspeakably corrupted... For now it preserves the very life force of its victims, to sustain the existence of its murderous owner!

The jar whispers to its owner of its need, tempting them with the promise of unnaturally extended life... for once the sacrifices are made and the jar's vile hunger is sated, it then acts as a quasi-phylactery, granting its owner a measure of its stolen vitality. For a year, the owner enjoys perfect health, touched by neither age nor infirmity. Yet the seasons turn, and all too soon the days shorten and the leaves change. It is autumn once again... canning season.

Among the country folk, stories are whispered around the autumn bonfires. From one village to the next, the details differ, but the tale is always the same: an implacable, unkillable figure cursed to haunt the dark, hunting the flesh of unwary travelers. The weapon may be a scythe, or a hatchet, or a pitchfork; the site may be a decrepit farmhouse, or an abandoned churchyard, or a lonely stretch of road. And when the killer's victims are found later, there are always... parts... missing. What does the killer do with them? What need do they fill?

What do they fill, indeed?





(At this point you have to imagine a Mason jar with glowing Amityville house eye-windows, sitting on a shelf somewhere. Got it? So: something like this, only it's a jar.)

Coming Fall 2009: Amityville IX: This Time It's A Jar

[Zettaijin]

I love this stuff! (And the fact that my thread is receiving so much attention!)

You know, as a kid, I thought Mason jars had something to do with Freemasonry (which they don't... or do they? Clearly a Mason plot to overthrow world order with innocent glass jars!). Now, what if the jar was the product of a secretive cult?

Remember how I mentioned the Mr.Belvedere skit and the whole "I shouldn't want to keep Mr.Belevedere in a glass jar" - what if a cult decided to invest in building a giant jar to preserve themselves or perhaps some obscure leader after their death? What if the jar was a punishment for wayward members? Or what if they kept someone in there and worshipped the trapped being? A fiend perhaps?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

In Teresa Edgerton's two-book series, Goblin Moon and The Gnome's Engine, there are numerous parallels to IRL 18th-century cultures and social movements (e.g. "Euterpe" for Europe, "Spagne" for Spain, etc). In those books, the historical role of the Freemasons is filled by the Glassblowers guild.

Granted, they're good guys in Edgerton's novels: patrons of occult and natural science, of education, and occasionally of heroes. But it's an interesting coincidence. (There's a homunculus -- a female one, for a change -- in those books too, BTW.)

[Amicus]

What if the jar was a punishment for wayward members?

"These robes got laundry numbers on 'em. Any cultist forgets his number spends a night in the jar. These here sacrificial daggers you keep with you. Any cultist loses his dagger spends a night in the jar. No fighting in the temple. You got a grudge against another cultist, you fight him Saturday afternoon. Any cultist fighting in the temple spends a night in..."

[Zettaijin]

I may never look at a Mason jar the same way ever again.

And Amicus, I may just start a campaign for the sole purpose of having players stumble upon that piece of dialogue.