A world where might makes right. A world of Jade and Gold, of Phoenix and Dragons, of Pills and Talismans, of Martial and Spiritual arts. A world where diligent training yield strength, meaning freedom. A world where loneliness means death, meaning social chains. A world still unfair, as the ones reaching the heavens are most likely born rich - be it political riches of the aristocrats, power of secret knowledges and hidden realms of clans, or lucky enough to be born one-in-a-thousand genius.
This was not the case of Quiet Word - that is, (You). Your current skill level is on par with other genius of your age. But where they were graced with secret techniques and special care, you just had lucky encounters leveraged to the best and a knack for navigating social situations.
You own a trove of techniques and treasures for such a young cultivator - more than you can study efficiently, but your strength lies in the impressive amount of Bonded Spiritual Beasts - A Phoenix spirit, a Horse spirit, a Snake spirit and a Wolf spirit. Speaking of that last one, you didn't told a world about him to anybody. As a scion of the Primordial Wolf spirit, its father warned you of its worth and how people could want to rip it away from you. Especially in such a ruthless and public environment than, say, a townwide cultivator tournament. Previously mentionned worth comes from its ability to Fuse without restriction - fusion being a secret of the higher ranking of your sect, secret you have almost completely rediscovered on your own, and freely shared with your sect-siblings (but not your masters). Alright, the Primordial Wolf might have helped you on that "figuring it out by yourself" point.
Recently, you focused on one of your Growth-realm treasure, the Wandering World-Tree. Cementing your relationship with the gifted graft-specialist, you searched and provide a trove of grafts as well as learning about the elegant art of tea composition; learned a new mythical Meteor-Hammer technique and made great progress in your cultivation, getting ready to break through the current minor realm - despite your falling behind issues. Right now, this is the eve of your fourth year with the Eastern Branch of the Tamers of Hundred Beasts. You chose to take on a rare opportunity : the <span class="mu-s">Stormwood</span> instead of breaking through, or helping chart the potential of a new crop of young lads.
Domestic Security Coordination Council Quest... Cancelled ... ... ... <span class="mu-s">Loading</span> ... ... ... <span class="mu-s">Loading</span> ... ... ... <span class="mu-s">Loaded</span> ... ... ... <span class="mu-s">Welcome User</span>, please enter in your username and password. ... ... >Username: *************** >Password: ************** <span class="mu-s">Loading</span> ... ... ... <span class="mu-s">Loading</span> ... ... ... <span class="mu-s">Loaded</span> ... ... ... Welcome <span class="mu-s">Operator</span>, to <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-b">Task Force Vanguard</span></span>
While the world and our beloved nation is in crisis, we are the ones who handle the greatest threat to our fellow citizens and perhaps the world.
The <span class="mu-s">Containment Box</span> is fully online in a secure facility with two companies of Marines, a platoon of SF qualified personnel, and a nearby National Guard base on standby. Nothing gets into the underground facility and nothing gets out. The landing spots around the <span class="mu-s">C Box</span> are filled with trained killers, ready to pacify or slaughter anything that lands from other timelines or dimensions.
As long as the Box is running, humming along, our goverment is sale from an assassination team popping into existence in the Capitol. As long we do our jobs, spies and saboteurs can't sneak into our world.
Now then? You are using a placeholder sign-in code that is being shared with multiple people. There isn't any proper documentation yet about if you're going to be a small team or some squad leaders or what. Did you even figure out your call signs yet?
><span class="mu-s">Time to pick</span>
1. Make your decisions as a collective. You might be a small team that coordinates missions together.
2. Make your choices alone. This step is harder and more difficult. Instead of the risk of not agreeing to things, you run the risk of losing interest in doing things by yourself, even if you network with others.
><span class="mu-s">Optional Choice</span>
1. Handholding. This limits you to less options and makes it slower for you to progress as a physical/mental entity. It also means that you get promoted slower.
2. No handholding. You have to enter in a general sense of what branch you come from, and in the future you have to think about your choices.
You are Kyle Mercer and you are 23 years closer to the grave, God willing. Or… gods willing? Whatever. You take a hit from your clumsily rolled joint, hold the breath, and then exhale it toward the ceiling. You're lying in bed without a stitch of clothing on, covered only by your scars and the Ouroboros tattoo on your chest, the one that matches your sister's.
"Gimme," Candi, your sister, says. She's laying on your chest, her tattoo nearly touching yours, reaching needily for the joint. You give. You can't say no to her.
That's part of the reason why you're both naked, sweaty, and spent, lying in bed together. Morning rays are filtering in through the gauzy curtains over the window. You might need to go to work soon but… you just haven't felt like it. You've been busy with occult shit. Besides, your sister's making good tips on her cam show, especially now that you're helping out.
All in all, it's shaping up to be a good day.
Candi passes the joint back to you and sighs wistfully, laying her head on your chest, golden hair haloed across you. "Why couldn't it have been you who knocked me up instead of Dad?"
Yeah, even you don't really know how to approach that one. What can I say? You two have a <span class="mu-i">special</span> relationship.
XXX
Nemesis Quest follows an evil man hurting himself and those around him out of malice, lust, and inhuman cruelty. Do not attempt.
You close your eyes and lean back in your chair, taking a deep controlled breath. The pitter-patter of rain against a window overseeing the lake had always calmed you. It was an indication of how far you had come, how far you had led your people, to go from but a scant few in prebuilt fabs, huddling together against the raging storm, to now have tamed the waters of your surroundings and not only built shelter from the merciless winds, but to have grown and prospered.
And now ? Now that your people are safe, now that their bellies are full and their heads empty of constant worry about the danger of the morrow ? They go and try to kill your son ! To add to the farce, as the bastard tried to blow Magnus’ head off, he had the gall to proclaim his respect for you ! Your wife, Celyn, understandably wants blood, rivers of it for every drop that Magnus had lost. You really cannot blame her for it, if it were you a few decades younger you too would have made sure that there was hell to pay in a more…brutal manner.
Seeing as how you will be sixty in a few years’ time, a lot of the fire and brimstone that had made up your gut had long since cooled. You have to admit, despite wanting to dig out Coen’s guts and use them as decorations, a curious feeling of serenity holds onto you.
It is rare for you to be so sure of mind and purpose without even a moment’s hesitation. The rule of law will be upheld. You will ensure that there are no calls of claims of tyranny, no abuses of power…well, bar maybe one, as Magnus will need a proper command of his own, and it just so happens that the recon corps is lacking a leader. But besides that, perhaps out of romanticized ideals of nobility, or just nostalgia for when you were much younger and naïve, the whole point behind nobles is that they are supposed be bound by ideals of honour, duty, a certain noblesse oblige. An ideal you hope to embody and set down the precedent for the generations that shall follow your own.
Opening your eyes, you look at Celyn. She seems so tired, so worn, her light brown hair already has streaks of grey running across them, wrinkles are apparent where in your memory there were none. She has gotten old, and so had you.
“Dear.” You say, your voice even, the list of names still slowly moving before your eyes. “I cannot become a tyrant. I will not become a monster that slaughters its own people out of paranoia.”
“It is not paranoia to take necessary precautions to ensure the safety of our children !” She says, her choler rising.
The stars align themselves under the heavens once more, tonight is the birth of a new chosen God. A special event that only incurs on set increments, unless tampered by the gods themselves.
The hospital lights are dizzying bright, the white walls and sterile materials only serving to further make her head feel worse. Your mother is pushing relentlessly through her labor, following the breathing instructions from the nurses and gripping onto the bed. The many hours which have passed are showing their toll on the poor woman, the Labor and Delivery team all share worried looks with each other, that's until finally you begin to crown and show your head.
"Keep pushing, you're so close!" The nurses encourage, your mom struggles with her breathing technique the more you start coming out.
She screams in pain, the sound vibrating and nearly in sync with your own high pitched wailing when you come out. You are gently picked up by one of the women in the room as she quickly tends to you and looks over your body. Before she can realize what's going on she announces that you're a..
A comet falls across the sky. Across the land, men, greenskins, and other Things look up at the sight, and point and wonder. Some are fearful. Some consult their wise men. And some get krumped. An emperor sits uneasy in his court. Amidst these days of ill omen, could this be another herald of doom? Elven seers clutch their heads, as they feel fate itself becoming warped. The Four pause their great game a moment, for there is a new piece on their board. Books are consulted, wise men harassed, but none have any answer for this sudden portent. And then more comets fall upon this world, streaks of red across a purple sky, and the people scream out in terror.
But they are all of them deceived.
For it is one of His Space Marines that has landed upon this forgotten world, a world unknown to the Imperium, a world that does not know His light. You are one of the last of your chapter, your battle barge breaking apart in the warp as it spat you out above this forgotten corner of the galaxy. Grabbing onto a piece of debris, you fell onto this world alone. You do not know if any of your brothers survived.
<span class="mu-s">Who are you?</span> >Dornas Krone >Etronus Aster >Gurnemanz Thule >Write in name
Your hazel eyes scan across the golden brown frontier, tumbleweeds drift and hop along to the winds tune. You pull on the reigns equipped to your horse and come to a full stop as she neighs loudly and snorts at your sudden pulling, "easy there girl," you tell her, brushing your hand across her mane to help relax her. Your left hand reaches for the binoculars, bringing them to eyesight
<span class="mu-s">RIVERTON TOWNSHIP</span>
That's what the sign you catch a glimpse of says off in the distance. The rays from the sun cast a hazy mirage over the whole town, as if conjured by your own imagination. You attach your binoculars back onto your belt, and you make the heels of your feet cause impact with your steeds ribcage, clicking your tongue with the roof of your mouth to signal for her to get a move on . She kicks up both her front hooves and announces her effort with a crying neigh, when all hooves are back on the ground they kick up dust and you both make haste for Riverton.
The distance between yourself and Riverton steadily closes, the dusty plain clouding the trail behind you as your reliable girl runs like the winds blessed her hooves.
You finally make it to the entrance of the town, the middling populated township has some hustle and bustle going on from the locals here, though it seems there's nothing more than miners and law enforcement scouring through the town. The local law itself takes notice of your entrance and he saunters his way slowly over to you and your ride, his hands clutched to the sides of his waist and gripping his belt.
"Not often that we get visitors round these parts fella," he says, his unkempt salt and pepper beard drifting to one side from the wind blowing against it. "What's your business here, stranger?" He asks you, his cloudy blue and aged eyes scanning your every movement.
"Reckon I just went on a ride and came adrift here, there a saloon somewhere nearby?" You ask him, you take off your brown rimmed hat and put it flat against your toned chest, revealing your sweaty and slicked back dark hair.
What have we done to deserve heaven? If it is our place, why are we here? We are unjust and terrible creatures, and our hell is to ever look at heaven and demand that we be allowed entry. Utopia is heaven- Socialism is heaven’s gates, yet Heaven is no place for humans, is it? We are allowed our glimpse of paradise, yes, but we shall never claim our dreams. We would suffocate as a fish does out of the cold seas. <span class="mu-i">-Charlot Doumer, “We Are of the Night”</span>
-----
It was afternoon on Monte Nocca- a lovely place for most who came here in the beginning of summer, but the one held in highest regard upon it was thinking of being elsewhere.
Vittoria Bonaventura had returned to the mountain once again- that lonely clutch where one half of her bloodline hailed from- and if mother and grandfather were to be believed, they had been there since before even memory of mankind, but to her that was just the Vitelian disease and Mosshead arrogance intermingling, in a way she refused to let fester in her head. The Judge had been merciful in making it blonde like father’s. Yet that did not deter grandfather from calling Vittoria by her new alias, and more comfortably than he spoke her name. Remiel. The same name was what she was summoned by now, further up the stony trail.
“Don’t drag your feet, Remiel,” her tutor in mystic lore and art said from ahead, his voice seeming more like the wind that blew over the mountain trees than particularly human, through that mask of his. He loomed as high as a peak too, in a way. “If this is to be your last lesson for a while, then you should pay close attention. Get a good score, heh heh. Prepare you for where you’re headed.”
“Whatever you’re having me do,” Vittoria said, “I don’t think any of it’ll have anything to do with the Azure Halls. The Dawn and the coming days in its light.”
“If that’s so,” Zeitgeist said as he walked slowly, his steps cloistered by his coat as though a curtain rose and fell on each foot forward. “You’re off, soon, to have your head filled with the dreams of others. To, heh heh, be <span class="mu-i">told</span> how to be wise, Remiel.”
“As though you’re against the concept of education,” Vittoria grumbled back, amusing herself with her teacher’s pace by weaving back and forth amongst the stones on each side of the mountain trail, “Utopia is the future, the inevitability. I might as well be an expert in it, especially if I want to help father. I can’t be of any use if I don’t know all there is to know. You said yourself that this tradition and mysticism is trapped in the past.”
You are a LALAFELL. A mere eight years old at that. You were sold into slavery in the gladiatorial arena of Ul'dah--a city state which has grown only more cruel and corrupt since Sultan Ravenous Boar came into power. A madman, he elected to make both poverty and starvation illegal in the state which disproportionately affected the primarily Lalafell miners.
Your father sold you off as the youngest of your siblings to save costs and have less mouths to feed. Cutting off the pinky to save the hand, as it were. The Roegadyn ruling class do love to see frail little Lalafell risk their lives fighting for their lives, so they paid a decent penny for you, if that's any consolation.
But that was then, this is now. You are a shivering little man in a cell with nothing but a white tunic and worn down pants who will be sent to die in obscurity for the entertainment of the masses. Yet, still, you deserve a name. What will it be? >Mushir Toshir >Tilbicho Mobicho >Mindafu Cidafu >other (must follow Plainsfolk naming convention)
(Author's Note: An AU FFXIV RP I wanted to write, blending elements from Kenshi into my interpretation. No stat system or dice rolls. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.))
