1.21 GitawattsAnother Choose Your Own Adventure

Michael Vu, Jilly Dos Santos, Sophie Whyte, AJ Fuchs,

1

Introduction• You should know the drill by now

• If you don’t, please refer to the Middle East Template.

• I will still maintain that you had no childhood.

• It’s another ‘Choose your own Adventure’ template.

• Why must I make another template like this you ask?

• Well it’s much more fun to write and read than a

boring essay.

START 2

Start• Well after time traveling to the past in a DeLorean and being

stuck there, you have a sudden epiphany to just have the

local mechanic replace the flux capacitor. Which succeeds

and you come back to your time. Unfortunately a

combination of time traveling radiation and mental trauma

from your mother having the hots for you cause you to have

amnesia and occasionally warp through time. Well, good

luck!WAIT WHAT?!?

3

WAIT WHAT?!?• You feel a tug on your stomach and suddenly you

are pulled back while passing out. When you

come to you find yourself lying on the floor.

• You’ve lost all sense of identity so you check your

pants. What do you find?

Chalice A BIG Spear

4

Chalice• Well sucks to be you. Odds are that you ended up as a

prostitute or something. You were probably doing

important stuff at the time, but nobody actually

knows what exactly you did. Maybe you were great

and powerful. Who knew? Men just didn’t care about

women unless you were, wait for it… the Mongols!

There is a reason it’s called HIStory.

5GAME OVER!

A Big Spear• After lying to yourself, you realize that you are male. You are suddenly

yelled at by somebody who you suspect is your father to get ready to

work. You only have enough time to clean one part of your body.

• Do you…

• Wash your face and feel less groggy?

• Wash your hands/arms and avoid dysentery?

• Wash your legs and get off that elephant poop you stepped in?

• Wash your feet and make them feel less sticky?

6

Face Hands Legs Feet

Feet• You carefully clean your feet and get rid of the stickiness which distinctly

smells like elephant poop. You get ready and you place your best forward,

to only step in elephant poop again! If only you had shoes… you then

realize that you have no more time to wash again so you head for the

fields.

• When you get to the fields you are instantly bored and you are tempted

to slack off when you see a bunch of clay in the river your family uses to

irrigate your crops that you are allowed to work with. You were never

good at farming. All the crops you ever tended to died and withered

away. You suspect that a few of them committed suicide to get away from

you too.

• Will you play with clay or will you do back breaking work?

7

ME PLAY CLAY Boring Work

ME PLAY CLAY• You start messing around with the clay and you make a pot which

catches the eye of one of the local kshatriya who offers you money that

you and your family would have to work several moons for. You realize

that you are a naturally skilled potter and your family could become

highly wealthy due to your skills and not have to be servants of those

who own land.

• You quickly agree and you rush to tell your father. He quickly disciplines

you, throws the money away and forbids you from ever doing it again.

Will you obey and have your family live in poverty or will you improve

your family’s standard of living?

8

They’re fine eating dirt Family First

They’re Fine Eating Dirt• You decide to ignore your father and to move out. You

move into town and once a week you gather all the

pots you’ve made and sell them. You end up reaping

profits that your family could’ve only dreamed of

earning. Unfortunately one day the city gets caught

on fire and in the haste of it all you trip on your long

beard and you break your neck.

9GAME OVER?Or is it?

Game Over?• Well you never followed your darma, you forsook your

family, and well I don’t really like you all too much now.

• Congratulations! You are now a germ!

• Now give somebody dysentery and germ it up

somewhere else or whatever you germs do. I don’t

care.

10GAME OVER!

Family First• You are sick and tired of being mere servants of the wealthy so you continue to

secretly make more and more pots by the river. You make several pots a week and

when you have the time you take a trip into the city to sell the pots while making a

nice profit that your family could only dream of having. You hide the money and use it

to buy food for whenever there wasn’t be enough to feed the family. You manage to

keep the charade up for several years until one night while drunk, you try to hug a

reflection of the moon and you drown.

• Sadly you never followed your dharma and instead did the dharmas of others. You

however get some leeway as you did it for noble reasons. Which is why you aren’t

going to be a germ.

11Thanks?

Boring Work• You dutifully ignore the cool stream and continue toiling in the

dirt. Where your shoeless feet quickly gets cut up, however

you ignore that and the back breaking work as your father has

said to you that even though this life may be crappy the next

one will be better as long as you follow your dharma. However

you also remember him telling you this while laughing when

you stepped in elephant poop. Regardless you decide to

believe him.

12Believe

Believe• And this is your life. You wake up, step in elephant poop, and you

work for those who own land and you come home tired, aching, and

hungry. Until one day you see an incredibly beautiful woman. You

watch her for days, figuring out when she appears, borrowing a lock

of hair, until one day you gather the courage to talk to her. You guys

hit it off and fall madly in love. Then you learn that she’s been

engaged to another man in the village and she belongs of the caste

above you.

• Will you keep on trying and convince her to marry you instead or will

you let yet another good thing in your life go and settle for much

less?

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MARRY ME PLEASE! FOREVER ALONE

MARRY ME PLEASE• Oh good job you jerk. You managed to get her and you disowned

and now you’re all pariahs. Outcasts! Untouchables! I really do

hope you make better life decisions in your next life. Well you

and your newly acquired wife are now untouchables.

Congratulations. Just when you thought your life was crappy and

couldn’t get worse, you made it worse! Seriously. How did you do

it?

• You and your wife struggled to get food and water. You both

manage to acquire dysentery and both die a crappy death.

14GAME OVER!

FOREVER ALONE• You decide that it would be the best for the both of you to forget one

another. You both go your own ways and never see each other again.

You walk home with a heavy heart. Your parents inform you once you

arrive home that they’ve decided on your next wife and you are

being married in a few suns.

• You are soon married and you grow to love your new wife. However

you soon die from an infection in your foot. Who’d have thought that

open wounds and elephant poop are a bad combination?

However you led a good life so you manage to get to the next varna.

15Yay?

Yay?• Well so begins your next life out of many of this varna. You

are the only son of a fairly wealthy family during the height

of Buddhism in the Mauryan Dynasty. You are taught and

trained by your father. One day he decides to retire and have

the merchants’ guild take care of him. With it he hands over

to you the family business. Will you usher in a new era of

greater success for your family or will you ruin all the hard

works the generations before had done? Good luck! No

pressure!

16No Pressure!

No Pressure!• To celebrate your newly appointed position you

decide to embark on a giant caravan for a giant

profit. You have two major choices to make first

though.

• Will you embark over land on the Silk Road or will

you embark over sea?

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Did you just say silk? YO-HO!

Did you just say Silk?• You decide to trek over land. You travel for about a moon till you

find your destination. There you find that you can sell your fine

cotton textiles for a fine profit. However you notice that several

merchants are selling their textiles for a price much lower than

yours. Most merchants are paying for those textiles instead and

very few are coming to you. It’s going to take a long time for you to

get home.

• What will you do?

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CAPITALISM HO! Wait it out

YO-HO!• You buy a fleet of ships which you load full of cotton textiles

to sell. And after a long trip you finally reached your

destination. You manage to sell your goods relatively quickly

and you begin your trip home. However you forget to

account the monsoon winds in your calculations you are

delayed heavily. You and your crew quickly run out of food.

And several men die of starvation.

• Will you turn to cannibalism, pirating, or will you endure it

out?

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NOM NOM NOM YOU ARE A PIRATE! Endure It

NOM NOM NOM• You and the rest of the crew eat a few bodies out of pure desperation. The rest

of the trip was pure hell. There was an unspoken agreement to never talk of

this and it is kept. You made a giant profit off of the trip and came back

physically safe, albeit you became a bit more mentally unstable. However

several years later your body starts shaking uncontrollably. You ignore it and a

few months later you start laughing randomly. You are rushed to a local

medicine man who diagnoses you with laughing sickness (kuru as it was later

to be called) and your dark past was revealed. You and your family are

deemed untouchables and you soon die from a constant echoing laughter.

Your heinous actions earns you the privilege of becoming a germ!

Congratulations!

20GAME OVER!

YOU ARE A PIRATE• You believe that you won’t make it and you refuse to dirty

yourself by eating your own comrades. So you turn to the life

of a pirate. You raid the occasional ship for the food strictly

and in doing so condemn them to death. You and your crew

while a day away from home suddenly die of scurvy.

Should’ve had some oranges. I hear they make everything

‘kay. Your heinous actions end up making you into a shudra.

21GAME OVER!

Endure It• You stand firm in your morals and standards. When your crew

resorts to theft and cannibalism you stood firm and

righteous. Which unfortunately doesn’t fill an empty

stomach. You starve to death and become food for the rats

and your companions.

• Your morals and standards are what people should aspire to,

however you weren’t very successful at your dharma. So you

remain a vaishya for yet another life.

22GAME OVER!

CAPITALISM HO!• You quickly use the profits from the little textiles that you sold to buy

the goods of the ones undercutting you, which you proceed to sell at a

marked up price. This proves highly effective once you sell all the

textiles you had. You use that profit to buy all of the textiles that were

selling for less than what you would have sold for and you sell that for

even more profit! You eventually build your portfolio so high that you

don’t even have to make trips anymore! You maintain your monopoly

until you get a heart attack and die. Shocking huh?

• You great success in this dharma has guaranteed you another step in

the path to Brahman.

23OH YEAH!

Wait it out• You decide to wait it out. Surely they’ll sell out quickly, and the others will

come to you! After several days, which turned into weeks, which then turned

to months of thinking this, you decide to lower your prices. Which is when you

learn that the average selling price was way below what you bought the

textiles at in the first place! You then decide that you mustn’t come back as a

failure so you travel for several moons till you find a city where the profits are

several times higher than you were even aiming for! You come home a major

success and nothing can make you lose your mojo. Except the fact that you

picked up the bubonic plague through your travels and killed everyone in your

town.

• You were highly successful at your dharma, but killing an entire town kind of

knocks you down a notch. Sorry buddy. Try again in the next life.

24GAME OVER!

OH YEAH!• And so begins the next of many lives in this varna. You were

born into a fairly well off family and you were trained from a

young age in the art of killing others. After several years of

peace your time to prove yourself has come.

• However as you are marching into battle your commanding

officer takes a sudden arrow to the knee and dies.

Widespread fear ensues and many desert. What will you do?

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Tactical Retreat THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

Tactical Retreat• You realize that with your forces at a mere fraction of what it was prior

you couldn’t win. You retreat to fight another day, which actually

proves helpful. You gather up all the men that ran away and run a night

operation which was super effective. It was a pure slaughter as the

enemy were drunk when you led your group against them. However

you start puking when you see those you killed ,and you start shaking

at the thought of killing more men.

• Will you retire or will you charge into battle again?

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I’m too old for this sh- CHARGE!

I’m too old for this sh-• You decide to retire and you lead a quasi-aristocratic lifestyle.

Which lasts about a day as the remnants of the army you

slaughtered came and raided and ravaged your village. Lets

see, you lost your house, your land, your money, and the

army slaughtered everybody you ever knew and loved.

Including yourself.

• Your cowardice and lack of devotion to your dharma cause

you to rank down to a vaishya.

27GAME OVER!

CHARGE!• You lead your band of soldiers and you find the remnants of the army

you had just slaughtered. You find them an arrow’s flight away from

your village. It appears that they were planning on raiding and killing

everybody there. You finish interrogating a prisoner when somebody

who was playing dead thrusts a spear into your heart, killing you

instantly.

• You gain favor due to your dedication to your dharma and you

manage to pass on to the next varna and become a brahmin in your

next life!

28OH YEAH!

The Face• Congratulations! You’re at the top of the food chain. Thanks to

the Aryan belief in Perusha, the caste system deems the

Brahmins (spiritual leaders) as the closest to the Brahman. You

are almost to Moksha, but not yet. You still have a chance to

screw it up!

• Today you have the choice to share your spiritual knowledge,

however, that would require you getting out of bed and it’s so

early…

29

Share Spiritual Knowledge Be Lazy (like AJ)

Share Spiritual Knowledge• You have decided to fulfill your sacred duty!

• This morning you plan to go out to teach that

Brahman is the universal soul and the only

genuine reality. First priority however is breakfast.

Hmmm? Bacon or a bowl of bland rice? Decisions,

decisions…

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Bacon! Bland Rice

Bacon!• While you are munching on bacon, you contemplate

the universe and your place within it. Suddenly you

realize your mistake! You are eating flesh and

inadvertently committed one of the greatest sins!

• Suddenly you are surrounded by a heard of angry pigs,

most likely related to the one you are eating, and they

devour you.

31GAME OVER!

Bland Rice• You eat the rice prepared by your good friend Raj, and have a great day of

preaching.

• You preach the epics: Mahabhatrata, Ramayana, and the Bhagavad Gita. You tell

the public that a balance of their dharma, artha, and kama will help them obtain

moksha. With this you are able to reconvert several Buddhists back to Hindus.

• At the end of it all you meet a hot female Brahmin. You hit it off and get married.

And you live happily ever after, until one day you ask for some salt for her bean

curry, and in a fit of rage she guts you.

• You led a virtuous life and you fulfilled your dharma. You’ve obtained moksha.

However moments before you die you feel a tug on your stomach and you pass

out.

32

WAIT, I WORKED HARD FOR THAT DEATH!

Be Lazy• Your laziness carries over not just today, but for the rest of your life.

You say it’s just how you are, but your dharma wasn’t to be lazy. It

was to be a Brahmin and you unfortunately didn’t fulfill that. So

much for being close to moksha.

• One morning you realize you are late to a meeting. Instead of lying

and getting caught in it you decide to get there as fast as you can.

But in your rush out of your bed you get caught up in your blanket

and you snap your neck. Should have listened to Krishna.

Unfortunately your laziness causes you to be reincarnated into a

sloth.

33GAME OVER!

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!• You give a heart chilling yell and charge. You cut down the

enemy’s front line like butter and hack your way towards their

commander. Your allies seeing that you haven’t been killed yet

decide to fight and charge. Together you and your comrades

kill their commander and force them to flee. You are later

unanimously chosen as the new commander.

• Will you lead your new army to glory or will you lead your

army to glory?

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FOR GLORY! FOR GLORY!

For Glory!• You spend the next years waging wars and

expanding the land you own. You overthrew the

Magadha Kingdom and conquered the Greek state

in Bactria and by the time you were done you had

all of northern India under control. You decide to

take it easy and rule aristocratically.

35OH YEAH!

OH YEAH!• A many years pass and many of your loyal friends and

subjects have passed away, but who cares? You've got

twelve beautiful women clamoring after you, claiming to be

your wives. This is the life. As a great an powerful ruler at

the height of the Mauryan Empire, it is your duty to lead the

people and achieve a peaceful, successful nation. Or you

can just stay in the bedroom with your wives. The choice is

clear...

36

Something about peace Ladies

Something about Peace

• Congratulations! You've chosen to save the Kama Sutra stuff for special

occasions, and instead you lived your life as a great leader and India has

seen its most prosperous era to date. Your dharma has been fulfilled,

you’ve created an expansive empire, and your name will be praised for

years after your death. Speaking of your death, it seems that throughout

the years, and the many wives and concubines you collected, you also

acquired a number of STDs. Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Herpes - I even think

you got AIDs somehow. These diseases ravage your mind and body until

you pass on to the next life...

37OH YEAH!

Ladies• I said the choice was clear! Why would you choose this? Your dharma

is to rule, not to be the inspiration for Casanova. You lived a life of

fun and games (real interesting games), but your people starved and

waged wars amongst themselves, your kama was fulfilled to the

greatest extent, but unfortunately, it wasn't enough for you to reach

the Brahman. Because of your inability to follow your dharma and

live with balance, you are reborn as an untouchable, who due to an

unfortunate accident at birth, can no longer enjoy any of the fun you

so enjoyed as emperor.

38GAME OVER!

OH YEAH!

• Well so begins your next life out of many of this varna.

You are born into a highly powerful family. Your grand

pappy has conquered many lands in his youth and now

that he died the rightful heir (you) will take over as ruler.

• What will you do? Follow the footsteps of your

predecessors and take over more land or will you usher

in a period of peace?

39

War and Peace What’s Peace?

War and Peace• You spend your life sending armies across all of Asia, bringing

terror and death to al that stand in your way. After one

particularly gruesome battle though, you get word that in the

frenzy, a local restaurant, Booches, has been destroyed.

Distraught, you turn to religion for solace and realize that

Hinduism, following your dharma and living to kill, is not the

way. You decide to follow Buddhism.

40

BOOTYISM! Buddhism

Buddhism not Bootyism• After hearing the words of the Buddha you become concerned with

the spiritual welfare of all in your Empire Being the zealot that you

are, you erect tall white pointy towers, inscribed with teachings. You

instruct your people to treat all animals, as well as each other with

respect and kindness. Life is suffering, especially if you’re a strict

Buddhist, and you have to give up all your desires to reach Nirvana.

At the end of your life you are believed to have achieved Nirvana…

unfortunately you still destroyed Booches, so on to the next life you

go!

41GAME OVER!

Conclusion• You wake up in the middle of a parking lot where your time

traveling radiation and amnesia wear off. You suddenly realized

what happened and you realize that the growth and

development of Ancient Indian Civilizations can only be

understood properly with a thorough knowledge of their

religious beliefs and it's impact on their social structure. You

also realize that the social structures that they had for centuries

still affect the people living there in your time! Unfortunately as

soon as you made this epiphany you see some angry Libyans

who shoot you on sight. I don’t know why man, they were

saying something about plutonium.

42

Reflection• The reference to the chalice and spear slides are an

allusion to the gender roles of ancient India, as the

chalice was an ancient symbol for the woman’s womb

whereas the spear represented the fiery spirit of the

male. There were strong patriarchal family systems and

women were seen as lower than men.

As you progress through the game you are given

several choices when washing your body; to wash your

face, your arms, your thighs, or your feet. Each body

part represents a part of the caste system, just like in

the poem “To Purusha”.

43

Reflection

44

• During the course of the journey as a shudra, aka the feet

of Purusha, you see how the work and life of a shudra were

nothing to envy (unless you were an untouchable, of

course). However, in the advancement in the caste system,

if you wanted a better life you had to follow your dharma,

your duty. Even if you were a magnificent potter, you were

better off doing a sucky job as a shudra. After all, if you

continued with your career and shudra duties, you had a

better chance of reaching Moksha, or liberation. Also, you

see that marriage stayed within the caste, otherwise you

would become untouchables and face discrimination.

Reflection• When you were a Vaishya, aka the thighs of

Purusha, you are challenged with balancing your

duties as a Hindu versus your own life. You were

forced to either starve to death or commit sins to

maintain your life force. By doing your sacred

duty of being a merchant and as a Hindu, whether

you were good or bad at it, you had a greater

chance of reaching moksha.

45

Reflection• As a kshatriya, aka the arms of Purusha, you are expected to

live out your duties as a warrior. Even if you killed or were killed

in battle, it was your responsibility and by doing your

responsibility, you had a good chance of becoming a Brahmin.

The choices you made reflected that very belief system, albeit

with an exaggerated consequence system. The Gita was also

referenced very slightly in your choice of running away from the

fight or fulfilling your dharma. The Gita reflects the Hindu

philosophy of the caste systems as Vishnu in the form of a

human informs Arjuna on why his sacred duty is more important

than his own desires.

46

Reflection

• During the Brahmin route, aka the face of Purusha,

you see how important it was and is to follow your

dharma. Included as well is the are the some of the

basic ideas of being a Hindu, including the

importance of respecting all living creatures and this

lead many Hindus to become vegetarian. The karma

comes into play as well when you choose the “lazy”

option, and you become a sloth. Karma states that

your past actions will determine your future.

47

Reflection• Through out the game multiple epics and poems are

referenced. Those would’ve been preached and

were the reason why Buddhism was slowly pushed

out of India in favor of the new, more lenient

Hinduism. Which was possible due to the relative

flexibility of Hinduism due to their polytheistic

nature. The fact that the populace were naturally

more comfortable with Hinduism and the changes

absorbed all the features they desired in Buddhism

was the main reason why Buddhism is near extinct

in India.

48