You are a <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-b">Wizard</span></span> and it is high time that you build a tower.
What do you mean you look like a witch? Silver hair? Black clothes? Skull motifs? The spooky gothic ruby choker that your old party's paladin never snapped with his ever-victorious pure-white Holy Sword because he was a thick-headed himbo who didn't know how to read the fucking mood and <span class="mu-i">accept your many invitations into your atelier</span>? No that's just your preferred aesthetic. Your tender taught you that human men - especially handsome paladins - wanted big tiddy goth mommies, and as an elf you can do two of those three things.
Your tits? Biggest in your decantation batch. Your aesthetic? Humans consider it goth, <span class="mu-i">especially</span> since your specialized school of study is necromancy. Your ability to bear children and become a "mommy"? Well, you don't have a womb, but nothing's stopping you from growing a child in your atelier with some blood from you and your husband.
<span class="mu-i">If you had one</span>.
You don't. This is a problem. No one wants to marry an elf after her two hundred and fiftieth birthday. Twelve adventuring parties came and went throughout your career as a wizard, and every fucking time the Paladin or Warrior's childhood friend - usually a priestess who stood in the back row, squealed in terror, and cast heal cure spells - won before you could even shoot your shot. So now you're three hundred years old (and have been so for over two centuries), exhausted, single, a virgin who has never even seen a man's sword outside of paintings.
Not for lack of trying. Sun above and moon below you tried. You even went as far as to strip naked and walk into a camp of savage orcs rumored to take human women for their vile pleasures... only for their warchief to throw his cloak over you, take you aside, and explain quite clearly that orcs don't work like that. All male orcs may be, just as elves are always female, their reproduction is tied to battle and so most aren't keen on using their clubs like that.
The "breeding pits" you read about in the Central Library were the perfidious lies of the Holy Church.
How dare they give you <span class="mu-i">hope</span>.
You'll extract your revenge against them and all their wretched, man-stealing priestesses later. Right now, you're making a <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">Tower</span></span> to get your mind off of your perennial loneliness and elfin desire to take a human male who vaguely resembles <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-b">The Creator</span></span> to husband. Not a great spindling thing that pierces the space between dream and truth and anchors the real like the Elfhomes, just an ordinary wizard's tower, insofar as any wizard tower can be ordinary.
Where shall you build it? >In the desert, near to the elfhome of those harem building thots. >In the city, where it might catch some handsome stranger's eye. >In the mountains, where you can bicker with the dwarves. >In the islands, where you can shamelessly flaunt yourself. >In the plains, where many sturdy farmhands can be found. >Write in
“HAHAHA, FOOLISH HEROES, KNEEL BEFORE MY GRAND MAGIC!”
Your skeletal body, adorned in robes that have lived longer than any human has breathed, lords over the fallen party of heroes. Your ultimate <span class="mu-s">Origin Magic</span>, though incomplete, has proven more than sufficient to take on the pathetic mortals sent to their knees before its might. Miasma-smoke fills the room, spewed by the necromantic fire left in the wake of your destructive magnum opus. However, to your incredible satisfaction, the Holy Sword itself, the only weapon capable of striking you down, lies corroded beneath the hero’s tattered frame, little more than a sparkly pile of smoldering slag.
Yes, your ultimate victory has been achie–
Pain unlike any you’d ever imagined stabs through your very being, a thin, needle-like blade jutting out from the cluster of mana animating your undead body, destabilizing it, causing your very being to quiver and weaken. Something is wrong— something is very, very wrong. . You collapse to the floor, your head snapping 180 degrees back to see just who had landed the killing blow. If your eyes could widen, they would: the Hero Michael, who you had thought collapsed in front of you, stands proudly behind you with an unknown blade in your back.
“H-how?”
“Lich King Atrebor,” the hero declares, his obnoxious condescension shamelessly leaking into his words as he drives the blade even further through your ribs, “you may have been wary of me, the possessor of the Holy Sword, but you paid far too little attention to my real strength: my friends.”
You turn your eyes back to the party: an illusion, a paltry trick, dissolves from the worthless entourage of the chosen one, revealing a golem in place of his second in command and that same eternal loser, Reinlock, in his place.
“Impossible!” you roar, “I was certain! He– he had the holy sword! He acted just as you would!”
“I’ve been chasing that bastard’s back my whole life, you undead bastard.” Reinlock snickers, blood trickling from his broken lips, “I know him better than the back of my own hand.”
This is infuriating but… it matters not. Your phylactery, the real vessel of your existence, is safe, in an unknown locale far from here. Or at least, <span class="mu-r">that’s how it should be</span>. Golden cracks start to form on you— first on your body’s mana core, then on your bones, then, horror of horrors, on your <span class="mu-i">mana itself</span>. “What trickery is this!” You scream, your rage powerful enough to shake the foundations of your castle.
Totemists, one of the first lines of defense against the malicious and monstrous, famed slayers of Behemoths which are perhaps the most dangerous examples of such, and bridge to the domains of spirits and magic unseen. The role is not an easy one of course, but it must be done and has been since time before almost all written history.
You are Capran, young man of the Four Peaks mountains, pupil of Oranya Skystrike.
There has been a lot of unrest on the mountain slopes lately, the issue growing further with each day it seems, but with your teacher still guiding you, there will always be a way to deal with it the trouble.
Such as this post mimic, which stands on thin wood-splinter-like legs and angrily spears them into the ground beneath it at the failure of its ambush. You stand nearby your teacher and her friend Heyra, ready and willing to destroy this mimic.
Awful thing. You're rather happy you three are the one who found it rather than some poor patrol guard or villager.
<span class="mu-i"> In times of old, there stood many a great kingdom or realm, their lines proud, their kings great, and their works were legendary. It was a time of greatness for all, from all classes and races, for it was a time when the yields were abundant, the cattle fat, and the weather favourable.
This changed, however. A creature with a heart pitch-black and eyes of darkness and despair that rise and shrink with hate. All despaired at his coming and the hordes and legions he brought with him. Crowns were broken, castles slighted, and the kings lay broken. Like a vile black hand, his reach seemed boundless; with his fiery red eyes, his gaze kept his subjects obedient, and from a dark tower, this lord of evil watched over his realm as the land fell into darkness and despair, with hope fading like a dying ember.
But embers can flare up, and like the phoenix, a new generation of heroes and their hosts of light broke the chains, shattered his armies to the winds and finally brought an end to his reign of terror. As the morrow broke once more, it was thus proclaimed that nevermore should his name be uttered, nevermore should his remains be seen, and nevermore should there be fear of his tyranny. And so, the people rejoiced in their newfound freedom, rebuilding their shattered world with hope and determination for a brighter future. His artefacts and symbols, buried deep beneath the sands and earth, were so well hidden that not even the most fanatical cultist would find anything.
And yet in that lies the danger; dead though he may be, there are still those who revere him as though he were a god-king upon this earth, and his ilk have a tendency not to stay dead… There are still whispers, mutterings and vague prophecies about his return, though none have come true as of my writing this tome…. His name was struck from the lists of both paper and mind, so one would never again say that name which struck deep grief into the hearts of all peoples…. I shall end this book with a warning: if he does return, do not try to fight him; run. Run to the nearest authorities and alert them; fighting him alone shall surely be your doom, even if he's weakened, but the worst thing you can do is to let him speak; his words shall gnaw in your mind, his arguments shall be so persuasive that you will drop your weapons, and he shall weave a web of deceit that will ensnare even the strongest of wills. Hearken unto him, no matter his guise and form, and before too long you shall find yourself in eternal servility. </span>
“The Southlands.” That’s what the races of the Northwest call them, as if they were one place—a realm unified under a single nation or people. In truth, the Southlands are a molten mosaic of humans, beastmen, and sundry others flowing over and through each other in coexistence and in conflict. The land itself is a tapestry of desert and jungle, of low savannah and high plateau, where even the Race of Man is far from uniform: the hides of the humans here range from a ruddy tan to a deep blue-black that nearly equals the Drow of Wevenore.
Not that you got to see much of it.
<span class="mu-s">You</span> are James Efron, Senior Initiate of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower. At your age—twenty-three—you really ought to be a Mage Apprentice. You should be studying in some stuffy laboratory back home in the big city like Izirina Henzler, or maybe taking a practicum under some smaller adjunct Associate Tower like your old pal Testa. But <span class="mu-i">nooo</span>, you craved a life of action, of adventure! ‘<Fireball> is meant for the field!’ you used to boast of your favourite spell. So you’d taken the field, first as a formal Field Researcher and then later as a freelance adventurer-for-hire.
And that had led you here. To the Southlands. To this dungeon.
It isn’t the cool kind of dungeon, full of monsters to kite and <Chain Lightning> for coin, alas. It’s the kind where Southrons store their prisoners-of-war, for that seems to be the size of your sad situation: a prisoner, at the beginnings of what is shaping up to be a full-scale intercivilizational conflict.
The Men of the South may be myriad, but tensions between their ilk and the fairer folk of the Northwest—your homeland, Hawksong’s aegis—have been a unifying cause as of late, and not only for the human races. Relations have been fraying since before you were born, when a sinister cabal of dark-skinned demon-worshippers staged a terrorist attack on the Mages’ Tower itself, assassinating the Archmage and destroying the much-beloved Eternal Fountain.
Faces unfamiliar to you pass by, speaking in a tongue of gibberish that is only partially comprehensible. Half of them wear tribal attire of losers larping as tribal warriors, but their cosmetic scars and muscles were way too refined to be just costumes. The sky rolls in a color you've never seen before.
Guide your Schizo to Greatness or imprisonment within a mental health facility or both! You are an anonymous young man in his 20s who has recently come down with schizophrenia and your job is to guide this youth towards a number of different paths all up to you the voters!
Have him go down the old boring route as a homeless vagrant or have him become a Orthodox Christian monk living in a monastery or turn him into a radical Satanic right wing insurgent or make bank as a lolcow...the possibilities are endless and all up to YOU!
(How this works is that I will present a list of options which you choose and vote for as a collective or you can submit your own option/action/event and vote for that and the ones with the most votes wins! I will check this every day or 24 hours and thus voting closes once I put up a new post!)
You've been going about your daily routine, taking care of chores, schooling and/or work, going about your life as a daily cog in the machine of society when SUDDENLY....you begin hearing voices...strange voices.....voices which frighten you.
Choose the nature of your auditory hallucinations:
A.) Divine: The voices beckon you towards the light, towards divinity, soothing and comforting but with a dash of righteousness to go along with grace and mercy
B.) Demonic: The voices are gnashing of teeth and screeches of rage, they whisper such deviant things into your ear, things which frighten (and at some base level, intrigue) you.
C.) Narcissistic: The voices declare you a god, the only god, a superhuman, and many other pompous titles and recognition of your inner greatness. Do you take the mantle?
D.) Paranoid: The voices take the form of hearing others whisper your demise, hearing secret codes, seeing secret symbols and language among innocuous things.
Within the walls of an abandoned café, a scheme begins to form, the take down of one of the most prominent figures of the city’s underworld will soon go underway. Preparations are happening, and you’re at the heart of it. After your short date with Celia concluded, she asked for a favor, to force her biological father to face justice: the head of the mafia, <span class="mu-s">Gianluigi Youhao</span>. You’ll be handsomely repaid for your efforts.
<span class="mu-s">The assault team</span> consists of 5 key members: You, Aurora Dewitt, Charlotte ‘Crossbill’ Summers, Celia Youhao (?), and Beanie Hedgehog.
<span class="mu-s">Beanie Hedgehog</span> consists of 4 key members: A Beanie Hedgehog doll, Veranica Mouseson, Liu Yeong, and Lydie Zexian all inside a trench coat.
During your review of the potential threats, it was revealed that one of the biggest ones is the man you defeated in a Go-Kart race, ‘Titan #1’ <span class="mu-s">Jielun Zexian</span> is Loud Lydie’s brother. Small world.
Shortly after a barrage of questions for the Golden Peak Academy Ace (that went unanswered), the second degree sisters returned to get up to speed with what had been discussed.
To recap quickly, the three threats discussed so far are:
-Former Assembly Member and Current Ka-Shing lackey — <span class="mu-s">Joe Riddle.</span>
-Former Assembly Member, Former Prisoner who you liberated during the raid, and Supposed Member of the Youhao Clan — <span class="mu-s">Sasha Langdon.</span>
-Lydie’s brother, Big Cinephile, and the Number 1 Titan of the Youhao Clan — <span class="mu-s">Jielun Zexian</span>.
What a cast. Good thing that you (potentially) don’t have to deal with them. Either way, the meeting continues!
“Why did everyone act like I was done explaining?!” Vera was caught in the middle of her explanation.
“<span class="mu-i">Huh?!</span> <span class="mu-s">My</span> brother wasn’t the main dish?! This is beyond disrespectful, Veranica.” Lydie feels insulted.
“Uhm, and well, Rora and Celia showed up. We had to start from the beginning.” <span class="mu-i">Resting Laptop Table</span> Liu says.
“I still can’t believe we’re sisters!” Aurora is hugging Celia like trying to make up for the lost years.
“Y-You’re so clingy. And, to be clear, I didn’t know either...” Celia grumbles. “Still, we’re not blood related.”
“I already told you, if you’re sis with Gisella and Pammachio, you’re sisters with me!” Rora scolds.
“<span class="mu-i">W-Why do I feel like the younger sibling…?</span>” Celia uses her third beanie to hide her embarrassment.
“I feel like I missed an emotional moment...” You wanted to watch it...
“Let’s go full throttle so we don’t miss anything else!” Crossbill wants everyone to focus. “Who wants to take it from here?”
