ElijahRyne
A Hermit that’s NOT that Lazy, currentlycomplainen
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I have quite a few story ideas sitting around and don’t know which I should pursue. I will post each of them in spoilers, and then leave it to a poll to decide. So long as this poll has more than 10 votes in total, I will start writing the winning story idea.
Which was your favorite? Which one did you vote on? I would love to hear your thoughts on these story ideas.
13 is to revive one of my dropped stories.
This is the first, most of these drafts/outlines will be fairly short this is the one exception. It is also the worst idea imo. Chapter 1 - Introduction (Part 1)
Thursday
5:00 p.m.
October 12th, 200x
…
*tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick*
The small school library was quiet, yet not quite silent. That potential silence was broken by a few sounds like the weak, but persistent, ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the library as well as the occasional muffled voices of people passing by its doors. Nevertheless, the noise was a persistent distraction from my homework. One that forced me to focus on my task, yet that focus was strained and waning due to its constant use.
My eyes grew heavier and heavier, as I fought to keep myself on task. I went here directly after finishing my classes for today. I was practically forced to research some obscure nonsense for 3 different papers. All of the three were unfortunately assigned to me today. One was for my English class, one was for my Spanish class, and another was for my history class. I had finished my research and notes for my English essay and was now working on the Spanish one. I looked up from the aged animal encyclopedia to look at the clock. It was 4 p.m. I had been on this for only half an hour. With my eyes on the clock silently despairing my luck, my fingers stumbled as I tried turning to the next page.
*flip*
Eventually, I looked back down to the new page. It was about tapeworms. Even if it was only something recorded on this old paper, the concept of any parasites' existence, coupled with an image of their disgusting forms forced me to quickly turn the page.
“Yo, Terry! How are you doing? Want to go fishing?” A loud energetic voice distracted me from my boring task. It was Page, or rather ‘Pagen Caprice’, an old friend of mine. He is lanky, about 1.8 meters tall, with dirty blond hair. Normally I would enthusiastically greet him but my tiredness, as well as how his name reminded me of my unfortunate task, simplified my greeting to nothing more than a grunt and a nod.
“What are you reading today?” He looked over to the encyclopedia. “Tapirs, huh, you know they look pretty strange. Like a gross mix of a hog and an anteater.” He continued in a faux expert voice.
“I guess they look kind of strange. I was researching info for a paper. I have been here for more than an hour now.” I began to yawn after my sentence.
“What for? You aren't taking a biology course at the moment, right?”
Ah yes, he asked the dreaded question that I have been asking myself. One that I have pondered on and off for the past hour now. I don’t even want to think about it anymore…. Get back to work and ignore it… Ignore him… No, this is enough info for this paper, at the very least I don’t want to continue it… Let’s move on to the last paper.
Ugh, I really want to get this over with and sleep right now, but I guess Page is a worthy enough distraction.
“The Spanish professor assigned us to write a 6-page paper today. Over… well, an animal. Their abilities, their habits, and their habitats, what we think about them, as well as their history. All in APA format, with in-text citations. It is due in 5 days.”
“Monday, hmmm…. Ha, I bet it is Professor Hayan, right? Last year we were given a similar assignment. Our class had to create a 6-page essay on the various qualities, properties, and applications of Boron.” Page said before he leaned towards my ear and began to whisper.
“I hear he does something like this every year, while. And I know that Jorge gives the writers of what he deems ‘the best three essays’ a reward. Anyone who has finished his class knows that. Yet, no winner is known, and the people who claim to have won all refuse to show their prizes.” He leaned his face close to my ear before whispering.
“The big rumor is that the people who win will disappear, forgotten by all. Some people believe that Professor Jorge sacrifices them for the creation of the philosopher’s stone. A few believe that he eats their brains to gain their knowledge. While others believe it to just be a glitch in the Matrix.”
“Well, while that story sounds interesting, it is filled with holes,” I said as I pushed him away. “If he wanted to give out a prize, why this assignment? Why have I heard nothing of any prize, much less mysteriously missing people? If there was going to be one, why not announce the prize and the conditions to get it before giving us a 6-page essay from nowhere? Why not put this on the syllabus? And even if there is a prize at the end of this, I doubt it would be nothing grander than a pen or a piece of candy.” I yawned and stretched before looking back at the encyclopedia.
“What are you working on? The outline? Introduction? The source page? I could help you know.”
*sigh*
“I have yet to choose an animal.”
“Wha… and how long have you been here? I knew you were indecisive, but this is a whole other level.”
“I had other things to work on before this, Page.”
“Let me guess you finished that ‘other stuff’ 40 minutes ago, before taking out this here encyclopedia and reading it. You are telling yourself that you need to look through the entire encyclopedia before you have enough info to cho—”
“You know, that’s not true this time. At the very least, I have found quite a bit that I will not choose.”
“An entry in an encyclopedia takes up a page, you are on page … 507. So how many have you ruled out? Let me guess twenty-tw—“
“Anyways Pagen, thank you for the info, but I have two other essays that were assigned today. I need to go back to working on them.”
“That will take you forever to do if you don’t combine some of your essays bro. Anyways Godspeed!”
‘Hell, that is actually a good idea! Now all I have to do before I can go home and sleep is finish the preliminary research for this paper… At the very least there is no page requirement for this one. I can feel my bed already!’ I thought.
*tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick*
The clock ticked on, as I continued my research. I sighed as I closed the animal encyclopedia and opened a history textbook. I wrote notes as I read through it.
I had ‘finished’ my research an hour later. I hurriedly said my goodbye to the small library as I made my way outside.
The cold autumn wind clawed at me as it passed by. While turning my head to look up to the sky, I could see that the sun was setting. Perhaps, I might have wasted another day.
I slowly stumbled my way back to my dorm, after buttoning up my coat. My tired mind protested along the way, but the cold wind kept me awake. At least somewhat so, I did almost trip and fall when stepping from the elevated sidewalk to the brick road. I also dozed off for a bit because of the 10-floor wait I had in the elevator. Despite that, eventually, I entered my room. I then locked the door, took off my glasses, and fell asleep.
…
Thursday
6:36 p.m.
…
An aged figure was browsing the books in the library Terry had recently left. The setting sun dyed the room red.
“What is the fool even trying to do with that damned portal experiment, and why the fuck did the association send me to watch over?! His pursuit is flawed and bound by that flawed tradition. Fucking hell! Did that alchemist not learn from the lesson the first time!?”
“No, but he, and the old ‘alchemists’, are not entirely wrong on planar travel. They have just been blinded, bound to the whims of this particular plane.” An ethereal voice sounded out from one of her many bracelets.
“You always talk of ‘being blinded’? Being bound to this plane is just that. A necessary sacrifice for stability.” The old woman spat out.
Chapter 2 - Introduction (Part 2)
Friday
6:00 a.m.
October 13th, 200x
…
*beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep*
A familiar noise sounded out. The blue walls swiveled as the grey books danced. The skin of my hands pulsated to its rhythm.
*beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep*
The skin of my hands, in its pulsations, frayed like an old cloth. The dancing grey books, they circled me. The swiveling wall lost its blue and became the night sky.
*beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep*
With each swivel stars disappeared. My hands had turned into a knotted mass of thread. The dancing books opened their covers.
*beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep*
I groggily stood up from my bed and waddled to my alarm clock. Which was on the other side of my dorm room, under the spare bed that was left after my roommate dropped out. I crouched down and turned it off. When I did so, I was greeted with the persistent shaking of my windows, probably due to the wind.
After stumbling around a bit, I found and put on my glasses. I looked out the slits in the blinds that covered my window. There were no clouds in that dim morning sky, at least from what I could see.
I put on some slippers before heading to the elevator. It was hashbrowns and breakfast pizza today.
…
7:30 a.m.
…
After I ate breakfast, I went back to my dorm and got ready for the day. I put on my backpack and a jacke—
*Shreee tun tun tun*
I somewhat worriedly looked at my window for a moment, it was still rattling against the wind. I searched for about a minute before finding my umbrella next to my cane. I grabbed my umbrella, hurried to the elevator, and then left the dorm building for class. The wind was strong enough to occasionally push me off balance, and invert the canopy of my umbrella before launching it out of my hands.
“…”
I checked around me for a bit and saw that the sidewalk was empty before picking it up. I put the strap of the umbrella on my wrist and opened it again to see what would happen. Almost immediately after, the umbrella wobbled around as it tried to escape my grip. It swayed back and forth as the wind blew, then it would settle when it stopped, before swaying back and forth once more. It was quite fun trying to keep it steady.
After a while, I became curious about what would happen if I let go of the umbrella. I waited until the wind picked up and let go. The umbrella glided a bit in the air, tethered to my wrist, before falling on my head. I closed the umbrella as I continued to class.
…
7:48 a.m.
…
When I got to my first class, the room was strangely completely empty. Which made the large semicircular room and its hundreds of empty chairs slightly unsettling. I went to a seat on the edge and waited for a couple of minutes before hearing a rhythmic metallic clicking & clanking before the doors opened. I looked over to see that someone, with a ton of bracelets on, had joined me here. It was a peculiar hunchbacked old woman who only had a few thin tufts of hair remaining. She wore a grey robe that resembled a quilt due to its numerous stitchings and patterns.
“Class was canceled for today, you can leave now.” She said while pointing towards the door.
I was slightly perturbed before leaving. The wind seemed to have died down. I hurried to my dorm before checking my emails on my laptop. All classes for today were canceled due to the weather.
*sigh*
‘If only I didn’t have those essays to write, that would be very good news.’
…
10:22 a.m.
…
*ringringring*
*click* “Hey, Terry! Whatch ya doing?” Sarah said.
“I’m still ‘working’ on those essays.”
“Wanna head to lunch with me and the gang?”
“Where?”
“I was thinking about a picnic on those old tracks, at Will’s tree.”
“What happened? It’s quite rare for us to meet there…”
“Something big is happening, really big, it is important for you to come.” Her voice sounded worried.
“When?”
“If we don’t want rain, we should be there by noon.”
“I will be there.”
“Do you need a ride?”
*click*
The ‘tracks’ are a 5-mile-long set of abandoned railroad tracks. It is about an hour's walk from here for me or a minute drive for them. Besides Page, since Will and I fell through that… It has been a bit difficult for me to accept help from them.
My window rhythmically clicked as the wind pounded away on it like it was waiting eagerly for me to let it in. I took my umbrella before I once again left my dorm. A massive storm cloud hovered right above my dorm. Giant wispy tendrils wavered back and forth in the wind. The dark grey cloud was massive, if my dorm building wasn’t there to give me a sense of scale, I might’ve reached out to touch it. The awesome size of the cloud made my feet go cold.
I hurried to the tracks, as the wind buffeted me. Perhaps it was urging me to go back, yet it wasn’t too long before I arrived.
…
11:57 a.m.
…
Four people were waiting. One was Page next to his white truck, he was talking to Jane. She is Page's cousin, and although we have known each other since 6th grade, we have always been a bit distant, mostly because she knows I am not one of faith. Next is Fred, he was reading a book while sitting on the tracks. Fred is about my height at 5’11. He was Will’s boyfriend. I am surprised he showed up. After Will left us, he was the first to distance himself from the group. Finally is the person who called us, Sarah. She is 5’8 and has black hair. Sarah and Will used to be the glue that held this group together.
“Hey, he’s here!” Sarah yelled. Everyone glanced over before going back to what they were doing before. Sarah waved me over.
“Still can’t drive? You know you could have asked me for a ride?”
“It’s difficult to be in one you know.”
“I get that, but it is hard for me, as a friend, to see you walking without your cane. It is dangerous and you know it.”
“Hey, it’s no big deal, I can live without it. I made it here pretty quickly too, Jon and James have yet to arrive.”
“They aren’t coming, Terry. Seriously I don’t want to see you like that in the hospital again. Use your cane, ask for help, we are here for you.”
“But—“
“Terry, she is right,” Fred interjected. He stood up before waving at Page and Jane. “Let’s hurry, to the tree, I want to get this done before it rains.”
Chapter 3- Introduction (Part 3)
Friday
12:04 p.m.
October 13, 200x
…
Silently, we walked through long grass and tall weeds that poked out through the degraded railroad’s ballast. The road's wooden ties were rotten and ruined. The rusted rail marked our path. The old symbol of progress and modernity reclaimed by nature, nothing more than a fading scar.
Fred was the first of us to reach Will’s tree before the rest of us caught up. We solemnly stood looking at the old twisted tree, until someone let out a barely audible sigh.
“So, what are you worried about Sarah?” Page asked.
“I wanted to wait until we began eating first, *sigh* but it doesn’t look like we have the time.” Sarah looked up to the darkening sky before sighing once more.
“The reason I brought you here is that I need to tell you guys something serious, even if it makes me seem crazy in your eyes.” She looked into our eyes before continuing.
“Recently, as in the past couple of weeks I have had nightmares similar to last ti—”
“You can’t be serious, this is not the place to joke around!” Jane's face began to go red.
“I know that. I am being serious!”
“If you were serious then last time you would have been the one t—“
Fred stepped forward before interjecting, “Calm down you two, not here, don’t yell. Let’s listen for now, and save the anger for when we leave.”
“Yes.”“I will try…” they replied.
“Sarah, could you continue?”
“*cough* um..yes. So for the past couple of weeks, I have had a recurring nightmare, similar to the ones I had before Will and Terry… You know.” Sarah looked at the ground shortly before continuing. “In it, the nightmare I mean, I see all of us dying before our campus slowly turns to ruin. We die separately. The first of us to die was me, I am engulfed in flame in the science building. I search frantically before running to a window, b..before I leap out of it a..an….” Sarah’s face began to pale. Page and Fred were exchanging concerned looks. Though, I couldn’t tell if it was for the content of what she was saying, or how it was affecting her.
“…It was a 7-story drop, and I saw, felt heard, ta..experienced everything. I was there, in my body, without control, lying on the ground for three minutes, before I died.” Sarah paused to collect herself. She was shivering, and I began to grow worried.
I had never seen Sarah act like this. Although I have always been dubious of the ‘prophetic’ nature of her dreams, I knew what she was saying was not a lie. She believes she had experienced this death and believes that something similar will happen. If she didn’t she wouldn’t have brought us here. I looked at Will's tree and its branches and orange leaves that danced ignorantly in the wind until they were torn from their home and blown to the ground. An intense panic grew before disappearing.
‘I hope that wasn’t his experience.’
“After I died. I saw the Science building catch flames before it collapsed. While the nightmare continues after this point, I need to tell you why I called you here.” Sarah glanced at us, meeting our eyes before she continued.
“Today, about two hours ago, I thought that this just a very bad nightmare. I don’t anymore. While I was working in a chemistry lab, in the shared lab, an unattended beaker behind me exploded. Whatever was in there instantly caught flame as it spread across the room. Some of it had gotten on my jacket. I panicked for a moment before remembering the dream. I quickly removed the jacket before pulling the fire alarm.”
“So you believe this nightmare to be prophetic?” Fred asked. Jane snorted.
“The nightmare switched perspectives. It was night, and I was watching Jane through her room's window. She was frantically trying to barricade her door. Something had chased her, and the door's barricade did not stop that blob of green shadow and its floating eye from passing through the open window. Jane was engulfed by the shadow before it replaced her left eye with its own. Jane bled out.”
“Seriously, Sarah!?” Jane intervened once again. She was seriously agitated. She clenched her fists before releasing them. “You guys can continue, I am heading home.” Sarah’s panicked face turned almost completely white.
“Please don’t go there!”
“You two, not here.”
“I get it, I am leaving.”
“If you are going home, leave the dorms before sundown! Please!”
“I’ll see…”
We stood there in silence as Jane walked down the dilapidated tracks. Shortly after she disappeared from our sight, Page frantically began to pat his pockets.
“Wait, she has the keys…”
“Don’t worry I will drive you, please hurry Sarah. I think it has already begun to sprinkle.” Fred said.
“…Slowly the green shadow began to spread until it had filled the dorm building. It was then that it was Fred. You were walking in the park when a tree fell on you. It was not the only tree to fall. Then it was Page, you were pulled into the campus pond, while fishing. The pond flooded. Then it was Terry, you were taking a stroll outside when a semi hit and pushed you through a window. Cars skewered ruined buildings, everything was destroyed.”
An awkward silence engulfed us. Sarah, with clenched fists, was staring at the ground. It seemed as if she was shuddering. Fred was looking at the sky, while Page was looking between everyone until he met my eyes and then winked.
“Well then, I guess my evening plans are canceled.”
“I guess mine are as well.” Fred said.
“Are you ready to head back Page?” Sarah asked
“Yeah, the first to the car chooses lunch?.”
“Then let’s go.”
The two of them ran off. Sarah grabbed my arm as I began to follow after them.
“I think you should ride with me. I am worried about you walking home today.” She said, I was about to say no, yet, after looking at her tear-stained eyes I agreed. Her eyes squinted down as she smiled.
“Good! Want to get lunch?”
“Sure.”
“What do you feel like eating?”
“Well… I don’t think I have any preferences right now. Except, no alcohol, none at all.”
“What about Typo’s?”
“Sounds good to me.”
The rain began to fall, though only at a light sprinkle, halfway through our walk back. The rocky ballast became ever so slightly harder to balance on. After I stumbled a bit Sarah began to speak.
“By the way, we should keep in contact today. Just in case.”
“Okay, I shall be on the lookout for danger, captain.”
“You should also keep your cane on you, to ward off danger.”
“What is my cane gonna do, outside of being a potential weapon?”
“There is that too, but it can also keep you from falling at an inopportune time, which can help stop any potential injury.”
“I ain’t going to fall, there is no need to walk on eggshells or worry about a year-old injury. I know myself and my limits.”
“But still…”
“I. am. fine. Sarah.”
The drive to and back from Typo’s was filled with an awkward tension.
Chapter 4 - Introduction (Part 4)
…
Friday
1:38 p.m.
October 13, 200x
…
When I got back to my room, Jane was waiting outside the door. She was pacing back and forth before she saw me.
“Terry, we need to talk.”
“Okay?”
I was a bit confused, despite knowing each other for more than a decade we have barely had a conversation one on one. So, this was strange not to mention the fact that we haven’t really spoken since the last… no second to last time we met at Will’s tree.
I unlocked and opened my door and Jane quickly entered before turning and pulling me into the dorm. My windows were still rattling in their frame.
“What was that for?”
“Sarah was too late with that talk, once again.”
“What?”
“What I mean is her vision has already happened.”
“Then how are-“
“I am alive because her ‘visions’ are not accurate. What she described was a dream that I experienced yesterday. Not to mention….”
“What?”
“Nevermind, look at the ground.” Jane said after snapping her fingers.
My mind was swirling in confusion. I had yet to catch my bearings. Yet every word was more confusing than the last. So, I looked down and saw her shadow. Her green shadow. Wait, her green shadow? She isn’t wearing green, though I doubt that that could create this phenomenon.
“Your shadow is green. Why?” I asked before my brain could reboot itself.
“Like hell I know! …all I know is that this started because of my dream from last night, and that I can do this now. She snapped her fingers again and a green half sphere apperated in her palm. Her shadow went back to normal. I collected myself before talking again, something was off.
“Why tell me this? No matter how I think about it, we aren’t really close enough for this.” I asked after deciding to just go with the flow.
“It was instinct if not something more divine, I had been planning on coming here since I realized this happened to me. I felt that you would know what to do.” She said whilst snapping repeatedly, her shadow changing with the movement.
‘Yeah whatever today might as well be a fever dream.’
“So what else can you do?” I asked.
“I don’t know, that’s why I came here.” She said with an expression somber enough to fit right in at a funeral.
“Have you tested anything?”
“No.”
Seriously what goes on in her head. This is potentially a dangerous ability. If she doesn’t understand it she could hurt herself or someone else without knowing.
“Well we might as well start then, see if you can pass me that green dome.” I said. Jane reached out after snapping, hesitated for a second, and then gingerly laid the dome in my left hand. I felt nothing as the ground grew towards my face.
…
Terry fell to the ground, I barely managed to keep his head from hitting the ground. I quickly snapped my dream back to my shadow.
…
I was trapped in a dorm room, it wasn’t my room. The door was barricaded, the window was open. I searched around for a minute before realizing I was probably in Jane’s room.
‘Is her power teleportation?’
I went over to the window to look outside and check my surroundings. What I could see of the sky was a brilliant purple, but it was mostly blocked by the clouds of fire. Yes fire clouds, green fire clouds. A bolt of lightning hit the blood vessel looking tree, as it condensed into a floating green shadow. I heard a snap as everything flipped. The sky was below me, a flickering green light engulfed me as my second nose fell out of my foot.
“Terry, Terry!” Jane was whisper shouting while shaking my shoulder.
“Where am I?”
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you? Oh lord, did I damage your brain!? How many fingers am I holding up? What’s my name? Do you remember your name?”
“Jane, what happened?”
“You held my dream and fainted. Are you okay?”
“I think so? Wait your dream is that mini-dome. Why didn’t you say anything about that?”
“You didn’t ask, and I thought you had figured it out… What happened when you fainted?” She asked in a slightly guilty voice.
“I randomly teleported into your room, the door was blocked and the window opened. The sky was on fire and lightning created a green blob. Then everything flipped and my second nose was lost.”
Jane looked at me before patting my head. I could swear she whispered something like ‘Don’t worry I will still be your friend even if you have brain damage.’ I gave her my blankest stare before pointing at her hand.
“What is this for?” I asked.
“Everything will be fine Terry, I am sure your second nose will grow back.”
“What second nose?!” I exclaimed as I grabbed the hand on my head. Her face slowly grew pink as she took her hand back. The room grew silent as the seconds passed.
“Well, did you figure anything out?” Jane asked.
“Let me think… Sarah said something about this dream right? A green shadow with an eye… Have you tried putting that dream of yours on your eye yet?”
“No…” Jane replied before holding the dome to her right eye. Nothing happened.
“I think Sarah said something about the left eye.” I said. Jane’s hand moved as a green light enveloped the room. My left hand grew hot as the light grew in intensity,then it disappeared. Jane shook her head as if waking from a bad dream.
“I have to go.” Jane hurriedly whimpered before rushing out of the dorm room. I couldn’t say anything before she left. I gently touched my left palm, the world went white as a hundred people screamed. Their voices were my voices. I quickly moved my right hand back. My head spun and I went to sleep.
When I woke up I ate before I fell asleep, before I knew it it was Sunday.
‘Shit my essays’
Chapter 5 - Introduction (Part 5)
A middle-aged man walked slowly towards a nascent crack that hovered in midair. He was barely carrying a tome that was thicker than his thigh. The book moved about randomly. Sometimes it would switch from open to closed like a bird flapping its wings. Occasionally it would flip pages back and forth. One time the pages stuck straight out before swaying back and forth, like a dancing peacock.
…
Monday
9:04 a.m.
October 16, 200x
…
It is Monday morning, and classes were canceled again. Yesterday I spent the small amount of time I had left finishing the rough drafts for the three papers. I feel pretty good about the English and History papers, but the Spanish one feels like a giant train crash. Not to mention Friday’s events…
I have started the Spanish essay three different times, with three different animals, before now, but had struggled to get past three pages. Nowhere close to that 6-page requirement.
Seriously though, I doubt my solution will work. After the third try, I gave up and decided to finish the drafts of the other two papers. Then I started actually writing the English paper, I had to write a paper describing what I thought about when writing and reading. It had no minimum size and ‘twas very quick to complete. The history paper, however, required a minimum of fourteen pages all about Ptolemaic Egypt.
Altogether it took six hours to finish those papers. After this, I found the solution for the Spanish essay. After all, the History papers did describe a certain animal in the end.
…
4 hours later
…
‘Hermes Trismegistus … Coptic Egypt… mystery cults…flying mummies on chariots… a fire filled green sky… flesh trees.’
My consciousness was wavering back and forth as I turned in my essays. The intense rattling of my window, and the occasional crackle from thunder, were all that was keeping me awake, as it has done for the past three days. It wasn’t long before I turned off all the lights and went to sleep… then I heard a faint sound in the distance.
*Vrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooahm*
My heart plummeted as all sense of drowsiness disappeared into nothing. I put on my shoes and a thick winter coat before leaving my dorm room.
*ding ding ding* “All residents head to the basement immediately. This is not a drill.” *ding ding ding* “ All residents head to the basement immediately. This is not a drill.” *ding ding ding* …
I rushed to the elevator. There was no room. Maybe I should wait.
“—to the basement immediately. This is not a drill.” *ding ding ding* “All residents—“
The good thing about living on the top floor is that the stairway is never crowded. The bad thing is that 3 of the four walls are basically just steel and glass. Besides the fact, the stairway is often ungodly hot… If that thing happened to be carrying something and happened to pass by here the windows would not just shatter, but its broken fragments would be launched at more than 100mph. If you were not launched out of the building outright.
*Vrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooahm*
I looked out the window as the siren was drowned out by an ominous buzzing.
“Is that a semi—!?”
*Chraump*
Everything went dark.
*************************************************************
“Hayan! You old maggot-eyed thorn-n-the-ass bastard! Stop fucking around and stop your shit-brained ‘experiment’!”
“No way! It’s almost finished!”
“Fuck off! Someone has died because of this!”
“Don’t worry, that’s what the soul array and that cage over there are for!”
“How the hell is that even remotely supposed to be helpful!?”
“I don’t know? Isn’t that your job?”
************************************************************
*ting**ting**ting*
Strange sounds echoed in the distance as I tried to open my eyes. A painful ripping sensation, like that of pulling a tooth off its root, passed through my body.
“—ester—y a mas—ve —— tornado passed through Bryan-Cross University in —nnings, —br—ka. Fou-ty-four people were injure—-nd thirteen -eople are missing. Rescuers are still searching for survivors.”
Am I in a hospital? Thank the heavens! I thought that semi was the end of me. ‘Is anyone there!’ I tried to shout, but nothing came out. Hell, I couldn’t even feel my mouth or throat. Shit, am I comatose? I tried to move my neck but couldn’t feel anything at all. No sense of touch, smell, heat, cold, nor any feeling of balance.
*ting**ting**ting*
Wait, is someone speaking?
“—uck him and his itty-bitty portal.‘Isn’t it your job?’ ‘I’m only an alchemist trying to visit the heavenly spheres. How can I know anything about soul-binding.’ Like hell I know how! I am only a trainee exorcist!”
It was a sharp but old voice echoed around me. The sounds surrounding me seems to be the only thing I could sense, no feel.
“Maybe we could bind this soul to a Void-form, mistress. It could balance the pressure of the Aether while giving them a form to stop planar erosion.”
This voice was hollow, it was missing something important…
“And why don’t I sacrifice 33 virgins to bring forth salvation!”
“Mistress, -hat’s not what I mea—“
“Void-forms are naturally expelled by planes, unless they are summoned and sealed with an array made from the lives of the targeted plane's inhabitants. After which they try to burst the planer shell apart, before frolicking back to the Void Sea. Don’t try to trick me.”
“What about Alchemist Hayan’s portal?”
“I know your tricks, little devil. Throw this soul into that portal unprotected, and it will be pulled apart by the portal's energy.”
“Then what will you do, mistress?”
“………….Fuck it, I will seal their soul in that book and throw it to his mass murdering portal. I have had enough of that bastard and headquarters can just go fuck itself if they wish for me to deal with his mess.”
As the old voice spoke, something changed, the sound around me faded to nothing as my body began to warp. It was as if my insides were being wrapped around a flagpole. Like a thread wrapped around a spool. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. I wanted to cry, barf, bargain, pray, faint, and curse, but I couldn’t. Maybe it was a day, maybe an hour, before it stopped. I felt wrong as if there was something logged in my gut. Like a painful splinter. Slowly the pain began to vanish as my consciousness faded out.
Arc One
Mystery = What is the dream space? What are the powers in this plane? How does this plane work? What is in the book? Who talked to Terry after his transformation?
Conflict = Book trying to communicate. Cursed book that affects the owner. How to get home? Home plane V new plane. Exploitation of this plane.
Thesis/Moral = Curiosity killed the cat. Those who do not learn from mistakes are bound to repeat. Competition V Cooperation. Apes together strong.
Split POV between girl and Terry.
Chapter 6
Terry is trapped in a strange book that is abandoned in a park behind a high school. He watches as a girl picks him up and tries to read him. The book doesn’t open. She throws it in her backpack before heading home. Terry is placed on a shelf as he looks around he sees a mirror and it reflects his state, an ear and eye on a tome thicker than a textbook. He tries to move only to smack his front cover on the bookshelf. The girl comes in and attempts to read the book after realizing it was open. She could not understand a word at all, nor could she turn a page, all she could see was a magic looking circle with symbols in it. She feels compelled to draw it on the back of her hand, with permanent marker.
Chapter 6
…
“Wake up.”
My groggy mind felt a distant voice brush against it.
“You seem like an interesting addition to my experiment.” A whisper of the voice scratched again. “Your heading to an unrecorded plane, your goal is to help me gain data on it.” The voice grew farther and farther away as it tapped its message.
…
It was a boring day at the university. I had 4 hours of psychic training before lunch. Training consisted of floating through 7 obstacle courses, phasing through electronics without interfacing, interfacing with 5 trees and 2 rocks, and a lecture on the practical uses of those exercises. I don’t know if I am lucky that training programs are tailored to the individual. If they had me on any of my classmates' programs, maybe they would finally allow me to flunk out. I never wanted to be here in the first place, but my family signed me up when they realized that I had a slightly above average skill in psionics. Now I am forced to work for the University for a minimum of 3 years after my training. Despite the fact that my capabilities and understanding of my ability has not improved in my four months of ‘studies’.
I floated up into the sky to clear my mind. The strong cold wind paired with the slight falling feeling in my ankles has always calmed my mind. It reminds me of the exhilaration I felt jumping off swings at the height of their momentum when I was a kid. Except now I don’t have to touch the ground until I want to.
I always found it strange that the blue sky could obscure the ground above us during the day. There was about two hours before the light fades. I looked up at the sky squinting trying to see the continent above me. I floated as high as I could. It was impossible for me to reach the point where everything flips, but that didn’t stop me from trying. The atmosphere became thicker to the point it felt like I was swimming.
It became difficult for me to breathe so I stopped and looked around. The thick blue atmosphere shimmered and rippled as the daylight danced through it. It was then that I saw something falling from what looked like a fracture in the blue sky. I hurriedly caught up with it. It was a rectangular object that was falling fairly slowly. As I neared I realized it was a book, yet the cover was closed. I plucked the book from its fall before looking back to the fracture in the sky. There was nothing there, as if it was a fragment of my imagination. Looking back at the book, it was an old thick book. It was large enough for me to require two hands to hold it. It had a black leather cover, with an eye and ear stitched into both sides with a green thread. I let myself slowly fall to the ground before trying to open the book. The cover refused to budge. I tucked the book in between my left arm & shoulder, before Itried phasing my right hand and interfacing with the book, but my hand couldn’t pass through.
I walked back to my dorm to drop the book off before heading to lunch. There was something strange about this book. I didn’t want anyone else to have it. I hurried to my room before putting it on a shelf. I made sure to lock the door behind me.
…
As the message faded, I began to fall. I couldn’t see anything as I did. I must have been falling fast as my ears heard the growing roar of the wind. Then it stopped. A hand caught me by half my face. The tip of their fingers touched my ear, as my eye was held by their palm. Then they used their other hand to flip my spine. I was spun around as I felt myself float to the ground. Then the hands tried to rip me open. Then my head was tucked in their armpit before they began to walk. After a couple of minutes I was sat down before I heard a door shut and lock. What the fuck just happened.
What the fuck just happened.
What the fuck just happened.
What the fuck just happened.
Calm down Terry. Let’s go through this slowly. There was a tornado siren, and as I was evacuating to the basement I was hit by a flying semi-truck. Next thing I knew I heard an old voice (Was it a nurse?) cursing someone out before saying that they were going to bind a soul (My soul?) to a book, and that I was not their responsibility. Then a random voice said something about an experiment before I fell and was caught and brought here. Cool did I miss anything?
Yeah, I can’t see, and consist of nothing but a head… no, I am a book.
What the fuck just happened.
Cool down, first I need to restore my sight. How? Do I even have eyes? I mean that hand sure did feel as if it touched some. Cool, all I need to do is open my eyes.
I strained my new face for a while before I heard a fierce snap. My eye took a minute to adjust. I looked around the second it didn't hurt to do so. I was sat on some sort of bookshelf, tilted towards the ceiling. It was a white ceiling with a couple faint cracks.
This, however, wasn’t enough to look around the room. I tried moving to get a better look, nothing happened. I was a book, how could I move? Maybe I could try moving my cover, and use it as makeshift arm-leg-things. I shook for what felt like thirty minutes straight. Then with a snap my cover flung open and I fell to the floor face, or cover, down. As time passed my eyes grew heavy and eventually I was claimed by sleep.
…
*click*
When I finished eating lunch, I hurried back to my room. When I got back I saw that book on the floor. It must have fallen. The book was open this time. I hurried to see what was in this strange book.
“?”
It wasn’t what I was expecting. The pages were covered in a strange scribbled language. In the upper left of the left page there was a strange painted symbol. A silver circle that contained three green arrows conjoined at the fletching would have been. The tips of the arrows were stabbed into what looked like a stick figure that had horns and no legs. I tried to turn the pages, but I couldn’t. I picked it up to return to the shelf. As I tried to close the book the cover wouldn’t budge.
“Strange.” I muttered as I put it on the desk. I stared at the strange book for gods know how long, before I caught my left hand tracing that strange image. As I looked away, I saw my collection of markers.
“Green, grey, and black they are all here, good.” Something muttered, no I muttered. My hand moved before I could think as I drew that symbol on my left hand. I grew woozy, but I continued to stare at my hand. The symbol warped and grew. It was a giant silver sphere filled with craters and lakes of mercury, that orbited around a giant disembodied head floating in a giant grey void speckled with tiny multicolored spots of light. I looked around me and saw a giant ball of fire, and then the headless body. My vision shifted again, and I was in a strange room. Green light filtered in through a window.
“?uoy era ohW” I heard a girl speak.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“?egaugnal ngierof a taht sI ?tahW”
No doubt that she is speaking a different language. I held out my hand so I could interface with her. No doubt the most useful of my abilities, interfacing allows me to become a part of what I interface with. With humans it allows me to experience the target's thoughts, and them my own. Anything we learn from that experience becomes a part of us when the connection is cut. Which really brings our everchanging relationship with the world to the forefront. Before she could respond and grab my hand, I felt as if a thousand hands were dragging me away. I resisted at first, but that force grew stronger as I was pulled towards the open window and to a giant green flaming cloud.
Thursday
5:00 p.m.
October 12th, 200x
…
*tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick*
The small school library was quiet, yet not quite silent. That potential silence was broken by a few sounds like the weak, but persistent, ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the library as well as the occasional muffled voices of people passing by its doors. Nevertheless, the noise was a persistent distraction from my homework. One that forced me to focus on my task, yet that focus was strained and waning due to its constant use.
My eyes grew heavier and heavier, as I fought to keep myself on task. I went here directly after finishing my classes for today. I was practically forced to research some obscure nonsense for 3 different papers. All of the three were unfortunately assigned to me today. One was for my English class, one was for my Spanish class, and another was for my history class. I had finished my research and notes for my English essay and was now working on the Spanish one. I looked up from the aged animal encyclopedia to look at the clock. It was 4 p.m. I had been on this for only half an hour. With my eyes on the clock silently despairing my luck, my fingers stumbled as I tried turning to the next page.
*flip*
Eventually, I looked back down to the new page. It was about tapeworms. Even if it was only something recorded on this old paper, the concept of any parasites' existence, coupled with an image of their disgusting forms forced me to quickly turn the page.
“Yo, Terry! How are you doing? Want to go fishing?” A loud energetic voice distracted me from my boring task. It was Page, or rather ‘Pagen Caprice’, an old friend of mine. He is lanky, about 1.8 meters tall, with dirty blond hair. Normally I would enthusiastically greet him but my tiredness, as well as how his name reminded me of my unfortunate task, simplified my greeting to nothing more than a grunt and a nod.
“What are you reading today?” He looked over to the encyclopedia. “Tapirs, huh, you know they look pretty strange. Like a gross mix of a hog and an anteater.” He continued in a faux expert voice.
“I guess they look kind of strange. I was researching info for a paper. I have been here for more than an hour now.” I began to yawn after my sentence.
“What for? You aren't taking a biology course at the moment, right?”
Ah yes, he asked the dreaded question that I have been asking myself. One that I have pondered on and off for the past hour now. I don’t even want to think about it anymore…. Get back to work and ignore it… Ignore him… No, this is enough info for this paper, at the very least I don’t want to continue it… Let’s move on to the last paper.
Ugh, I really want to get this over with and sleep right now, but I guess Page is a worthy enough distraction.
“The Spanish professor assigned us to write a 6-page paper today. Over… well, an animal. Their abilities, their habits, and their habitats, what we think about them, as well as their history. All in APA format, with in-text citations. It is due in 5 days.”
“Monday, hmmm…. Ha, I bet it is Professor Hayan, right? Last year we were given a similar assignment. Our class had to create a 6-page essay on the various qualities, properties, and applications of Boron.” Page said before he leaned towards my ear and began to whisper.
“I hear he does something like this every year, while. And I know that Jorge gives the writers of what he deems ‘the best three essays’ a reward. Anyone who has finished his class knows that. Yet, no winner is known, and the people who claim to have won all refuse to show their prizes.” He leaned his face close to my ear before whispering.
“The big rumor is that the people who win will disappear, forgotten by all. Some people believe that Professor Jorge sacrifices them for the creation of the philosopher’s stone. A few believe that he eats their brains to gain their knowledge. While others believe it to just be a glitch in the Matrix.”
“Well, while that story sounds interesting, it is filled with holes,” I said as I pushed him away. “If he wanted to give out a prize, why this assignment? Why have I heard nothing of any prize, much less mysteriously missing people? If there was going to be one, why not announce the prize and the conditions to get it before giving us a 6-page essay from nowhere? Why not put this on the syllabus? And even if there is a prize at the end of this, I doubt it would be nothing grander than a pen or a piece of candy.” I yawned and stretched before looking back at the encyclopedia.
“What are you working on? The outline? Introduction? The source page? I could help you know.”
*sigh*
“I have yet to choose an animal.”
“Wha… and how long have you been here? I knew you were indecisive, but this is a whole other level.”
“I had other things to work on before this, Page.”
“Let me guess you finished that ‘other stuff’ 40 minutes ago, before taking out this here encyclopedia and reading it. You are telling yourself that you need to look through the entire encyclopedia before you have enough info to cho—”
“You know, that’s not true this time. At the very least, I have found quite a bit that I will not choose.”
“An entry in an encyclopedia takes up a page, you are on page … 507. So how many have you ruled out? Let me guess twenty-tw—“
“Anyways Pagen, thank you for the info, but I have two other essays that were assigned today. I need to go back to working on them.”
“That will take you forever to do if you don’t combine some of your essays bro. Anyways Godspeed!”
‘Hell, that is actually a good idea! Now all I have to do before I can go home and sleep is finish the preliminary research for this paper… At the very least there is no page requirement for this one. I can feel my bed already!’ I thought.
*tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick*
The clock ticked on, as I continued my research. I sighed as I closed the animal encyclopedia and opened a history textbook. I wrote notes as I read through it.
I had ‘finished’ my research an hour later. I hurriedly said my goodbye to the small library as I made my way outside.
The cold autumn wind clawed at me as it passed by. While turning my head to look up to the sky, I could see that the sun was setting. Perhaps, I might have wasted another day.
I slowly stumbled my way back to my dorm, after buttoning up my coat. My tired mind protested along the way, but the cold wind kept me awake. At least somewhat so, I did almost trip and fall when stepping from the elevated sidewalk to the brick road. I also dozed off for a bit because of the 10-floor wait I had in the elevator. Despite that, eventually, I entered my room. I then locked the door, took off my glasses, and fell asleep.
…
Thursday
6:36 p.m.
…
An aged figure was browsing the books in the library Terry had recently left. The setting sun dyed the room red.
“What is the fool even trying to do with that damned portal experiment, and why the fuck did the association send me to watch over?! His pursuit is flawed and bound by that flawed tradition. Fucking hell! Did that alchemist not learn from the lesson the first time!?”
“No, but he, and the old ‘alchemists’, are not entirely wrong on planar travel. They have just been blinded, bound to the whims of this particular plane.” An ethereal voice sounded out from one of her many bracelets.
“You always talk of ‘being blinded’? Being bound to this plane is just that. A necessary sacrifice for stability.” The old woman spat out.
Chapter 2 - Introduction (Part 2)
Friday
6:00 a.m.
October 13th, 200x
…
*beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep*
A familiar noise sounded out. The blue walls swiveled as the grey books danced. The skin of my hands pulsated to its rhythm.
*beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep*
The skin of my hands, in its pulsations, frayed like an old cloth. The dancing grey books, they circled me. The swiveling wall lost its blue and became the night sky.
*beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep*
With each swivel stars disappeared. My hands had turned into a knotted mass of thread. The dancing books opened their covers.
*beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep* *beebeeebeeep*
I groggily stood up from my bed and waddled to my alarm clock. Which was on the other side of my dorm room, under the spare bed that was left after my roommate dropped out. I crouched down and turned it off. When I did so, I was greeted with the persistent shaking of my windows, probably due to the wind.
After stumbling around a bit, I found and put on my glasses. I looked out the slits in the blinds that covered my window. There were no clouds in that dim morning sky, at least from what I could see.
I put on some slippers before heading to the elevator. It was hashbrowns and breakfast pizza today.
…
7:30 a.m.
…
After I ate breakfast, I went back to my dorm and got ready for the day. I put on my backpack and a jacke—
*Shreee tun tun tun*
I somewhat worriedly looked at my window for a moment, it was still rattling against the wind. I searched for about a minute before finding my umbrella next to my cane. I grabbed my umbrella, hurried to the elevator, and then left the dorm building for class. The wind was strong enough to occasionally push me off balance, and invert the canopy of my umbrella before launching it out of my hands.
“…”
I checked around me for a bit and saw that the sidewalk was empty before picking it up. I put the strap of the umbrella on my wrist and opened it again to see what would happen. Almost immediately after, the umbrella wobbled around as it tried to escape my grip. It swayed back and forth as the wind blew, then it would settle when it stopped, before swaying back and forth once more. It was quite fun trying to keep it steady.
After a while, I became curious about what would happen if I let go of the umbrella. I waited until the wind picked up and let go. The umbrella glided a bit in the air, tethered to my wrist, before falling on my head. I closed the umbrella as I continued to class.
…
7:48 a.m.
…
When I got to my first class, the room was strangely completely empty. Which made the large semicircular room and its hundreds of empty chairs slightly unsettling. I went to a seat on the edge and waited for a couple of minutes before hearing a rhythmic metallic clicking & clanking before the doors opened. I looked over to see that someone, with a ton of bracelets on, had joined me here. It was a peculiar hunchbacked old woman who only had a few thin tufts of hair remaining. She wore a grey robe that resembled a quilt due to its numerous stitchings and patterns.
“Class was canceled for today, you can leave now.” She said while pointing towards the door.
I was slightly perturbed before leaving. The wind seemed to have died down. I hurried to my dorm before checking my emails on my laptop. All classes for today were canceled due to the weather.
*sigh*
‘If only I didn’t have those essays to write, that would be very good news.’
…
10:22 a.m.
…
*ringringring*
*click* “Hey, Terry! Whatch ya doing?” Sarah said.
“I’m still ‘working’ on those essays.”
“Wanna head to lunch with me and the gang?”
“Where?”
“I was thinking about a picnic on those old tracks, at Will’s tree.”
“What happened? It’s quite rare for us to meet there…”
“Something big is happening, really big, it is important for you to come.” Her voice sounded worried.
“When?”
“If we don’t want rain, we should be there by noon.”
“I will be there.”
“Do you need a ride?”
*click*
The ‘tracks’ are a 5-mile-long set of abandoned railroad tracks. It is about an hour's walk from here for me or a minute drive for them. Besides Page, since Will and I fell through that… It has been a bit difficult for me to accept help from them.
My window rhythmically clicked as the wind pounded away on it like it was waiting eagerly for me to let it in. I took my umbrella before I once again left my dorm. A massive storm cloud hovered right above my dorm. Giant wispy tendrils wavered back and forth in the wind. The dark grey cloud was massive, if my dorm building wasn’t there to give me a sense of scale, I might’ve reached out to touch it. The awesome size of the cloud made my feet go cold.
I hurried to the tracks, as the wind buffeted me. Perhaps it was urging me to go back, yet it wasn’t too long before I arrived.
…
11:57 a.m.
…
Four people were waiting. One was Page next to his white truck, he was talking to Jane. She is Page's cousin, and although we have known each other since 6th grade, we have always been a bit distant, mostly because she knows I am not one of faith. Next is Fred, he was reading a book while sitting on the tracks. Fred is about my height at 5’11. He was Will’s boyfriend. I am surprised he showed up. After Will left us, he was the first to distance himself from the group. Finally is the person who called us, Sarah. She is 5’8 and has black hair. Sarah and Will used to be the glue that held this group together.
“Hey, he’s here!” Sarah yelled. Everyone glanced over before going back to what they were doing before. Sarah waved me over.
“Still can’t drive? You know you could have asked me for a ride?”
“It’s difficult to be in one you know.”
“I get that, but it is hard for me, as a friend, to see you walking without your cane. It is dangerous and you know it.”
“Hey, it’s no big deal, I can live without it. I made it here pretty quickly too, Jon and James have yet to arrive.”
“They aren’t coming, Terry. Seriously I don’t want to see you like that in the hospital again. Use your cane, ask for help, we are here for you.”
“But—“
“Terry, she is right,” Fred interjected. He stood up before waving at Page and Jane. “Let’s hurry, to the tree, I want to get this done before it rains.”
Chapter 3- Introduction (Part 3)
Friday
12:04 p.m.
October 13, 200x
…
Silently, we walked through long grass and tall weeds that poked out through the degraded railroad’s ballast. The road's wooden ties were rotten and ruined. The rusted rail marked our path. The old symbol of progress and modernity reclaimed by nature, nothing more than a fading scar.
Fred was the first of us to reach Will’s tree before the rest of us caught up. We solemnly stood looking at the old twisted tree, until someone let out a barely audible sigh.
“So, what are you worried about Sarah?” Page asked.
“I wanted to wait until we began eating first, *sigh* but it doesn’t look like we have the time.” Sarah looked up to the darkening sky before sighing once more.
“The reason I brought you here is that I need to tell you guys something serious, even if it makes me seem crazy in your eyes.” She looked into our eyes before continuing.
“Recently, as in the past couple of weeks I have had nightmares similar to last ti—”
“You can’t be serious, this is not the place to joke around!” Jane's face began to go red.
“I know that. I am being serious!”
“If you were serious then last time you would have been the one t—“
Fred stepped forward before interjecting, “Calm down you two, not here, don’t yell. Let’s listen for now, and save the anger for when we leave.”
“Yes.”“I will try…” they replied.
“Sarah, could you continue?”
“*cough* um..yes. So for the past couple of weeks, I have had a recurring nightmare, similar to the ones I had before Will and Terry… You know.” Sarah looked at the ground shortly before continuing. “In it, the nightmare I mean, I see all of us dying before our campus slowly turns to ruin. We die separately. The first of us to die was me, I am engulfed in flame in the science building. I search frantically before running to a window, b..before I leap out of it a..an….” Sarah’s face began to pale. Page and Fred were exchanging concerned looks. Though, I couldn’t tell if it was for the content of what she was saying, or how it was affecting her.
“…It was a 7-story drop, and I saw, felt heard, ta..experienced everything. I was there, in my body, without control, lying on the ground for three minutes, before I died.” Sarah paused to collect herself. She was shivering, and I began to grow worried.
I had never seen Sarah act like this. Although I have always been dubious of the ‘prophetic’ nature of her dreams, I knew what she was saying was not a lie. She believes she had experienced this death and believes that something similar will happen. If she didn’t she wouldn’t have brought us here. I looked at Will's tree and its branches and orange leaves that danced ignorantly in the wind until they were torn from their home and blown to the ground. An intense panic grew before disappearing.
‘I hope that wasn’t his experience.’
“After I died. I saw the Science building catch flames before it collapsed. While the nightmare continues after this point, I need to tell you why I called you here.” Sarah glanced at us, meeting our eyes before she continued.
“Today, about two hours ago, I thought that this just a very bad nightmare. I don’t anymore. While I was working in a chemistry lab, in the shared lab, an unattended beaker behind me exploded. Whatever was in there instantly caught flame as it spread across the room. Some of it had gotten on my jacket. I panicked for a moment before remembering the dream. I quickly removed the jacket before pulling the fire alarm.”
“So you believe this nightmare to be prophetic?” Fred asked. Jane snorted.
“The nightmare switched perspectives. It was night, and I was watching Jane through her room's window. She was frantically trying to barricade her door. Something had chased her, and the door's barricade did not stop that blob of green shadow and its floating eye from passing through the open window. Jane was engulfed by the shadow before it replaced her left eye with its own. Jane bled out.”
“Seriously, Sarah!?” Jane intervened once again. She was seriously agitated. She clenched her fists before releasing them. “You guys can continue, I am heading home.” Sarah’s panicked face turned almost completely white.
“Please don’t go there!”
“You two, not here.”
“I get it, I am leaving.”
“If you are going home, leave the dorms before sundown! Please!”
“I’ll see…”
We stood there in silence as Jane walked down the dilapidated tracks. Shortly after she disappeared from our sight, Page frantically began to pat his pockets.
“Wait, she has the keys…”
“Don’t worry I will drive you, please hurry Sarah. I think it has already begun to sprinkle.” Fred said.
“…Slowly the green shadow began to spread until it had filled the dorm building. It was then that it was Fred. You were walking in the park when a tree fell on you. It was not the only tree to fall. Then it was Page, you were pulled into the campus pond, while fishing. The pond flooded. Then it was Terry, you were taking a stroll outside when a semi hit and pushed you through a window. Cars skewered ruined buildings, everything was destroyed.”
An awkward silence engulfed us. Sarah, with clenched fists, was staring at the ground. It seemed as if she was shuddering. Fred was looking at the sky, while Page was looking between everyone until he met my eyes and then winked.
“Well then, I guess my evening plans are canceled.”
“I guess mine are as well.” Fred said.
“Are you ready to head back Page?” Sarah asked
“Yeah, the first to the car chooses lunch?.”
“Then let’s go.”
The two of them ran off. Sarah grabbed my arm as I began to follow after them.
“I think you should ride with me. I am worried about you walking home today.” She said, I was about to say no, yet, after looking at her tear-stained eyes I agreed. Her eyes squinted down as she smiled.
“Good! Want to get lunch?”
“Sure.”
“What do you feel like eating?”
“Well… I don’t think I have any preferences right now. Except, no alcohol, none at all.”
“What about Typo’s?”
“Sounds good to me.”
The rain began to fall, though only at a light sprinkle, halfway through our walk back. The rocky ballast became ever so slightly harder to balance on. After I stumbled a bit Sarah began to speak.
“By the way, we should keep in contact today. Just in case.”
“Okay, I shall be on the lookout for danger, captain.”
“You should also keep your cane on you, to ward off danger.”
“What is my cane gonna do, outside of being a potential weapon?”
“There is that too, but it can also keep you from falling at an inopportune time, which can help stop any potential injury.”
“I ain’t going to fall, there is no need to walk on eggshells or worry about a year-old injury. I know myself and my limits.”
“But still…”
“I. am. fine. Sarah.”
The drive to and back from Typo’s was filled with an awkward tension.
Chapter 4 - Introduction (Part 4)
…
Friday
1:38 p.m.
October 13, 200x
…
When I got back to my room, Jane was waiting outside the door. She was pacing back and forth before she saw me.
“Terry, we need to talk.”
“Okay?”
I was a bit confused, despite knowing each other for more than a decade we have barely had a conversation one on one. So, this was strange not to mention the fact that we haven’t really spoken since the last… no second to last time we met at Will’s tree.
I unlocked and opened my door and Jane quickly entered before turning and pulling me into the dorm. My windows were still rattling in their frame.
“What was that for?”
“Sarah was too late with that talk, once again.”
“What?”
“What I mean is her vision has already happened.”
“Then how are-“
“I am alive because her ‘visions’ are not accurate. What she described was a dream that I experienced yesterday. Not to mention….”
“What?”
“Nevermind, look at the ground.” Jane said after snapping her fingers.
My mind was swirling in confusion. I had yet to catch my bearings. Yet every word was more confusing than the last. So, I looked down and saw her shadow. Her green shadow. Wait, her green shadow? She isn’t wearing green, though I doubt that that could create this phenomenon.
“Your shadow is green. Why?” I asked before my brain could reboot itself.
“Like hell I know! …all I know is that this started because of my dream from last night, and that I can do this now. She snapped her fingers again and a green half sphere apperated in her palm. Her shadow went back to normal. I collected myself before talking again, something was off.
“Why tell me this? No matter how I think about it, we aren’t really close enough for this.” I asked after deciding to just go with the flow.
“It was instinct if not something more divine, I had been planning on coming here since I realized this happened to me. I felt that you would know what to do.” She said whilst snapping repeatedly, her shadow changing with the movement.
‘Yeah whatever today might as well be a fever dream.’
“So what else can you do?” I asked.
“I don’t know, that’s why I came here.” She said with an expression somber enough to fit right in at a funeral.
“Have you tested anything?”
“No.”
Seriously what goes on in her head. This is potentially a dangerous ability. If she doesn’t understand it she could hurt herself or someone else without knowing.
“Well we might as well start then, see if you can pass me that green dome.” I said. Jane reached out after snapping, hesitated for a second, and then gingerly laid the dome in my left hand. I felt nothing as the ground grew towards my face.
…
Terry fell to the ground, I barely managed to keep his head from hitting the ground. I quickly snapped my dream back to my shadow.
…
I was trapped in a dorm room, it wasn’t my room. The door was barricaded, the window was open. I searched around for a minute before realizing I was probably in Jane’s room.
‘Is her power teleportation?’
I went over to the window to look outside and check my surroundings. What I could see of the sky was a brilliant purple, but it was mostly blocked by the clouds of fire. Yes fire clouds, green fire clouds. A bolt of lightning hit the blood vessel looking tree, as it condensed into a floating green shadow. I heard a snap as everything flipped. The sky was below me, a flickering green light engulfed me as my second nose fell out of my foot.
“Terry, Terry!” Jane was whisper shouting while shaking my shoulder.
“Where am I?”
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you? Oh lord, did I damage your brain!? How many fingers am I holding up? What’s my name? Do you remember your name?”
“Jane, what happened?”
“You held my dream and fainted. Are you okay?”
“I think so? Wait your dream is that mini-dome. Why didn’t you say anything about that?”
“You didn’t ask, and I thought you had figured it out… What happened when you fainted?” She asked in a slightly guilty voice.
“I randomly teleported into your room, the door was blocked and the window opened. The sky was on fire and lightning created a green blob. Then everything flipped and my second nose was lost.”
Jane looked at me before patting my head. I could swear she whispered something like ‘Don’t worry I will still be your friend even if you have brain damage.’ I gave her my blankest stare before pointing at her hand.
“What is this for?” I asked.
“Everything will be fine Terry, I am sure your second nose will grow back.”
“What second nose?!” I exclaimed as I grabbed the hand on my head. Her face slowly grew pink as she took her hand back. The room grew silent as the seconds passed.
“Well, did you figure anything out?” Jane asked.
“Let me think… Sarah said something about this dream right? A green shadow with an eye… Have you tried putting that dream of yours on your eye yet?”
“No…” Jane replied before holding the dome to her right eye. Nothing happened.
“I think Sarah said something about the left eye.” I said. Jane’s hand moved as a green light enveloped the room. My left hand grew hot as the light grew in intensity,then it disappeared. Jane shook her head as if waking from a bad dream.
“I have to go.” Jane hurriedly whimpered before rushing out of the dorm room. I couldn’t say anything before she left. I gently touched my left palm, the world went white as a hundred people screamed. Their voices were my voices. I quickly moved my right hand back. My head spun and I went to sleep.
When I woke up I ate before I fell asleep, before I knew it it was Sunday.
‘Shit my essays’
Chapter 5 - Introduction (Part 5)
A middle-aged man walked slowly towards a nascent crack that hovered in midair. He was barely carrying a tome that was thicker than his thigh. The book moved about randomly. Sometimes it would switch from open to closed like a bird flapping its wings. Occasionally it would flip pages back and forth. One time the pages stuck straight out before swaying back and forth, like a dancing peacock.
…
Monday
9:04 a.m.
October 16, 200x
…
It is Monday morning, and classes were canceled again. Yesterday I spent the small amount of time I had left finishing the rough drafts for the three papers. I feel pretty good about the English and History papers, but the Spanish one feels like a giant train crash. Not to mention Friday’s events…
I have started the Spanish essay three different times, with three different animals, before now, but had struggled to get past three pages. Nowhere close to that 6-page requirement.
Seriously though, I doubt my solution will work. After the third try, I gave up and decided to finish the drafts of the other two papers. Then I started actually writing the English paper, I had to write a paper describing what I thought about when writing and reading. It had no minimum size and ‘twas very quick to complete. The history paper, however, required a minimum of fourteen pages all about Ptolemaic Egypt.
Altogether it took six hours to finish those papers. After this, I found the solution for the Spanish essay. After all, the History papers did describe a certain animal in the end.
…
4 hours later
…
‘Hermes Trismegistus … Coptic Egypt… mystery cults…flying mummies on chariots… a fire filled green sky… flesh trees.’
My consciousness was wavering back and forth as I turned in my essays. The intense rattling of my window, and the occasional crackle from thunder, were all that was keeping me awake, as it has done for the past three days. It wasn’t long before I turned off all the lights and went to sleep… then I heard a faint sound in the distance.
*Vrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooahm*
My heart plummeted as all sense of drowsiness disappeared into nothing. I put on my shoes and a thick winter coat before leaving my dorm room.
*ding ding ding* “All residents head to the basement immediately. This is not a drill.” *ding ding ding* “ All residents head to the basement immediately. This is not a drill.” *ding ding ding* …
I rushed to the elevator. There was no room. Maybe I should wait.
“—to the basement immediately. This is not a drill.” *ding ding ding* “All residents—“
The good thing about living on the top floor is that the stairway is never crowded. The bad thing is that 3 of the four walls are basically just steel and glass. Besides the fact, the stairway is often ungodly hot… If that thing happened to be carrying something and happened to pass by here the windows would not just shatter, but its broken fragments would be launched at more than 100mph. If you were not launched out of the building outright.
*Vrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooahm*
I looked out the window as the siren was drowned out by an ominous buzzing.
“Is that a semi—!?”
*Chraump*
Everything went dark.
*************************************************************
“Hayan! You old maggot-eyed thorn-n-the-ass bastard! Stop fucking around and stop your shit-brained ‘experiment’!”
“No way! It’s almost finished!”
“Fuck off! Someone has died because of this!”
“Don’t worry, that’s what the soul array and that cage over there are for!”
“How the hell is that even remotely supposed to be helpful!?”
“I don’t know? Isn’t that your job?”
************************************************************
*ting**ting**ting*
Strange sounds echoed in the distance as I tried to open my eyes. A painful ripping sensation, like that of pulling a tooth off its root, passed through my body.
“—ester—y a mas—ve —— tornado passed through Bryan-Cross University in —nnings, —br—ka. Fou-ty-four people were injure—-nd thirteen -eople are missing. Rescuers are still searching for survivors.”
Am I in a hospital? Thank the heavens! I thought that semi was the end of me. ‘Is anyone there!’ I tried to shout, but nothing came out. Hell, I couldn’t even feel my mouth or throat. Shit, am I comatose? I tried to move my neck but couldn’t feel anything at all. No sense of touch, smell, heat, cold, nor any feeling of balance.
*ting**ting**ting*
Wait, is someone speaking?
“—uck him and his itty-bitty portal.‘Isn’t it your job?’ ‘I’m only an alchemist trying to visit the heavenly spheres. How can I know anything about soul-binding.’ Like hell I know how! I am only a trainee exorcist!”
It was a sharp but old voice echoed around me. The sounds surrounding me seems to be the only thing I could sense, no feel.
“Maybe we could bind this soul to a Void-form, mistress. It could balance the pressure of the Aether while giving them a form to stop planar erosion.”
This voice was hollow, it was missing something important…
“And why don’t I sacrifice 33 virgins to bring forth salvation!”
“Mistress, -hat’s not what I mea—“
“Void-forms are naturally expelled by planes, unless they are summoned and sealed with an array made from the lives of the targeted plane's inhabitants. After which they try to burst the planer shell apart, before frolicking back to the Void Sea. Don’t try to trick me.”
“What about Alchemist Hayan’s portal?”
“I know your tricks, little devil. Throw this soul into that portal unprotected, and it will be pulled apart by the portal's energy.”
“Then what will you do, mistress?”
“………….Fuck it, I will seal their soul in that book and throw it to his mass murdering portal. I have had enough of that bastard and headquarters can just go fuck itself if they wish for me to deal with his mess.”
As the old voice spoke, something changed, the sound around me faded to nothing as my body began to warp. It was as if my insides were being wrapped around a flagpole. Like a thread wrapped around a spool. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. I wanted to cry, barf, bargain, pray, faint, and curse, but I couldn’t. Maybe it was a day, maybe an hour, before it stopped. I felt wrong as if there was something logged in my gut. Like a painful splinter. Slowly the pain began to vanish as my consciousness faded out.
Arc One
Mystery = What is the dream space? What are the powers in this plane? How does this plane work? What is in the book? Who talked to Terry after his transformation?
Conflict = Book trying to communicate. Cursed book that affects the owner. How to get home? Home plane V new plane. Exploitation of this plane.
Thesis/Moral = Curiosity killed the cat. Those who do not learn from mistakes are bound to repeat. Competition V Cooperation. Apes together strong.
Split POV between girl and Terry.
Chapter 6
Terry is trapped in a strange book that is abandoned in a park behind a high school. He watches as a girl picks him up and tries to read him. The book doesn’t open. She throws it in her backpack before heading home. Terry is placed on a shelf as he looks around he sees a mirror and it reflects his state, an ear and eye on a tome thicker than a textbook. He tries to move only to smack his front cover on the bookshelf. The girl comes in and attempts to read the book after realizing it was open. She could not understand a word at all, nor could she turn a page, all she could see was a magic looking circle with symbols in it. She feels compelled to draw it on the back of her hand, with permanent marker.
Chapter 6
…
“Wake up.”
My groggy mind felt a distant voice brush against it.
“You seem like an interesting addition to my experiment.” A whisper of the voice scratched again. “Your heading to an unrecorded plane, your goal is to help me gain data on it.” The voice grew farther and farther away as it tapped its message.
…
It was a boring day at the university. I had 4 hours of psychic training before lunch. Training consisted of floating through 7 obstacle courses, phasing through electronics without interfacing, interfacing with 5 trees and 2 rocks, and a lecture on the practical uses of those exercises. I don’t know if I am lucky that training programs are tailored to the individual. If they had me on any of my classmates' programs, maybe they would finally allow me to flunk out. I never wanted to be here in the first place, but my family signed me up when they realized that I had a slightly above average skill in psionics. Now I am forced to work for the University for a minimum of 3 years after my training. Despite the fact that my capabilities and understanding of my ability has not improved in my four months of ‘studies’.
I floated up into the sky to clear my mind. The strong cold wind paired with the slight falling feeling in my ankles has always calmed my mind. It reminds me of the exhilaration I felt jumping off swings at the height of their momentum when I was a kid. Except now I don’t have to touch the ground until I want to.
I always found it strange that the blue sky could obscure the ground above us during the day. There was about two hours before the light fades. I looked up at the sky squinting trying to see the continent above me. I floated as high as I could. It was impossible for me to reach the point where everything flips, but that didn’t stop me from trying. The atmosphere became thicker to the point it felt like I was swimming.
It became difficult for me to breathe so I stopped and looked around. The thick blue atmosphere shimmered and rippled as the daylight danced through it. It was then that I saw something falling from what looked like a fracture in the blue sky. I hurriedly caught up with it. It was a rectangular object that was falling fairly slowly. As I neared I realized it was a book, yet the cover was closed. I plucked the book from its fall before looking back to the fracture in the sky. There was nothing there, as if it was a fragment of my imagination. Looking back at the book, it was an old thick book. It was large enough for me to require two hands to hold it. It had a black leather cover, with an eye and ear stitched into both sides with a green thread. I let myself slowly fall to the ground before trying to open the book. The cover refused to budge. I tucked the book in between my left arm & shoulder, before Itried phasing my right hand and interfacing with the book, but my hand couldn’t pass through.
I walked back to my dorm to drop the book off before heading to lunch. There was something strange about this book. I didn’t want anyone else to have it. I hurried to my room before putting it on a shelf. I made sure to lock the door behind me.
…
As the message faded, I began to fall. I couldn’t see anything as I did. I must have been falling fast as my ears heard the growing roar of the wind. Then it stopped. A hand caught me by half my face. The tip of their fingers touched my ear, as my eye was held by their palm. Then they used their other hand to flip my spine. I was spun around as I felt myself float to the ground. Then the hands tried to rip me open. Then my head was tucked in their armpit before they began to walk. After a couple of minutes I was sat down before I heard a door shut and lock. What the fuck just happened.
What the fuck just happened.
What the fuck just happened.
What the fuck just happened.
Calm down Terry. Let’s go through this slowly. There was a tornado siren, and as I was evacuating to the basement I was hit by a flying semi-truck. Next thing I knew I heard an old voice (Was it a nurse?) cursing someone out before saying that they were going to bind a soul (My soul?) to a book, and that I was not their responsibility. Then a random voice said something about an experiment before I fell and was caught and brought here. Cool did I miss anything?
Yeah, I can’t see, and consist of nothing but a head… no, I am a book.
What the fuck just happened.
Cool down, first I need to restore my sight. How? Do I even have eyes? I mean that hand sure did feel as if it touched some. Cool, all I need to do is open my eyes.
I strained my new face for a while before I heard a fierce snap. My eye took a minute to adjust. I looked around the second it didn't hurt to do so. I was sat on some sort of bookshelf, tilted towards the ceiling. It was a white ceiling with a couple faint cracks.
This, however, wasn’t enough to look around the room. I tried moving to get a better look, nothing happened. I was a book, how could I move? Maybe I could try moving my cover, and use it as makeshift arm-leg-things. I shook for what felt like thirty minutes straight. Then with a snap my cover flung open and I fell to the floor face, or cover, down. As time passed my eyes grew heavy and eventually I was claimed by sleep.
…
*click*
When I finished eating lunch, I hurried back to my room. When I got back I saw that book on the floor. It must have fallen. The book was open this time. I hurried to see what was in this strange book.
“?”
It wasn’t what I was expecting. The pages were covered in a strange scribbled language. In the upper left of the left page there was a strange painted symbol. A silver circle that contained three green arrows conjoined at the fletching would have been. The tips of the arrows were stabbed into what looked like a stick figure that had horns and no legs. I tried to turn the pages, but I couldn’t. I picked it up to return to the shelf. As I tried to close the book the cover wouldn’t budge.
“Strange.” I muttered as I put it on the desk. I stared at the strange book for gods know how long, before I caught my left hand tracing that strange image. As I looked away, I saw my collection of markers.
“Green, grey, and black they are all here, good.” Something muttered, no I muttered. My hand moved before I could think as I drew that symbol on my left hand. I grew woozy, but I continued to stare at my hand. The symbol warped and grew. It was a giant silver sphere filled with craters and lakes of mercury, that orbited around a giant disembodied head floating in a giant grey void speckled with tiny multicolored spots of light. I looked around me and saw a giant ball of fire, and then the headless body. My vision shifted again, and I was in a strange room. Green light filtered in through a window.
“?uoy era ohW” I heard a girl speak.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“?egaugnal ngierof a taht sI ?tahW”
No doubt that she is speaking a different language. I held out my hand so I could interface with her. No doubt the most useful of my abilities, interfacing allows me to become a part of what I interface with. With humans it allows me to experience the target's thoughts, and them my own. Anything we learn from that experience becomes a part of us when the connection is cut. Which really brings our everchanging relationship with the world to the forefront. Before she could respond and grab my hand, I felt as if a thousand hands were dragging me away. I resisted at first, but that force grew stronger as I was pulled towards the open window and to a giant green flaming cloud.
Here is the next one. Preface
The goal of this story is to teach the history of the Arcanist Plane. My apprentice has attempted to tell its story a couple of times, but has always felt, in his words, overwhelmed. Hopefully that doesn’t happen here.
The Arcanist Plane was a major plane, in comparison to a mortal one, and from the outside was about the size of Mars, which has a diameter of about 4,000 miles. On the inside, however, it had a diameter of 10,000 light years. Which gives us an expansion of 1.4696 x 10^13. Which is slightly more than the average of 1.2 x 10^13. This gives the plane an imbalance of Void. However, the Arcanist Plane was noted as having its Void tied quite intimately with its Quintessence which leads us to infer it also had an imbalance of Quintessence. Said interior was said to be somewhat similar to your, the reader’s, home plane when it came to how it looked. Which means it had an average amount of Æther. This means that the magic energies one would assume to naturally form would be based on mental transformation. This matches with what has been recorded, since the magic users in the plane used primarily mana based energies. (Mana = 3V3Q1Æ)
The will of the Arcanist Plane was focused on a planet about the size of your Jupiter. This is called the main planet and all history in this collection, unless specifically stated to be somewhere else, will focus on that planet
The Arcanist Plane is primarily inhabited by humans, which are the descendents of the stone-shapers. We will only briefly touch on human and stone-shaper history, as it is largely unimportant to this recount.
Since you do not have access to the joint alchemist and celestial repository of history, we will not be able to back up claims of what happened on this plane with a source. When using primary documents we will do our best to give passages from said documents whenever possible.
Chapter 1
Prehistory: Before Humanity
The Arcanist Plane, before it was colonized by human gods, was controlled and inhabited by a species of intelligent birds. Similar to your ostriches and emus, the birds walked and ran on two legs, and had little, if any, ability to fly. They had three grasping fingers on the ends of their wings, and said wings could easily rotate 540 degrees. According to legend they had the ability to enhance themselves with mana and wind. They were called the Zxem. The Zxem were not the only intelligent creatures on the plane, there were many individuals from various species that managed to eventually gain said intelligence, the difference was all Zxem were born intelligent.
Due to the Cataclysm this is the furthest in the past we can reliably present. This period is called the Zxem era, and the knowledge of it survives through an effort of the human colonizers to record it. The Zxem era can be broken down into 3 periods 2,000-1,000BC is seen as the great migration where the Zxem spread throughout the main planet. According to Archivist Wek’s recording of the tales told by Mek’s lake ‘god’.
“The Zxem, as you call them, arrived here as quick as a bolt of lightning. They drank from me, and created nests on my shore. That was when my consciousness had just begun to form. I granted them boons, such as algae to feast on and the knowledge of when storms would come… It was a few years or decades when another group of Zxem came and fought off the original group. Angered I tried to drown the attackers, but that was a double edged sword. Both the original group and the attacking group retreated… Occasionally after that there would be occasional groups of Zxem that passed by, but they all ran as fast as possible once they saw my shores. It took me a couple of years to figure out that I had been marked somehow…”
The reasons for this migration have been narrowed down to two main hypotheses. 1. The Zxem were escaping a terrible entity from their homeland. 2. Groups of Zxem were pushed out of their homeland due to competition for food, water, etc. Unfortunately their home continent was annihilated during the colonization effort, so it is unlikely that we will uncover anything new for this period.
The second period was the agricultural period, where Zxem started forming small towns and cities that were fed by farming of various crops. They had 5 staple crops, one was a unique type of algae that was grown in both natural and artificial ponds. Another was a flower whose stem grew ~3 meters tall, and ~5cm thick, before harvest. The next was the starchy roots of a cattail like plant, the stems were usable for weaving, and the flower’s pollen was both sweet and edible. Fourth was a grain whose seeds were edible when crushed and left in a tub of water to ferment. Finally was a type of grass that was edible from the bottom of the roots, to the top of its blades.
They had also domesticated three food animals, one was a type of cicada like insect that would surface 3 times a year to lay eggs before dying. The said creatures were about the size of a human fist, and thousands would die every laying period. Their rearers would take about 100 of the eggs to a new field before placing them in an open hole about a meter deep. When they hatched, they would begin burrowing, and would create dens big enough for about 5 full grown females. Their diet consisted of dirt, roots, fungi, and various subterranean animals. The female half of these creatures would gradually grow in size, while the male half would stay the same size as when they hatched. A year later about the female half of the population left to lay eggs, while half of the other half changed genders and began to grow, about a month later the hatchlings would join them. And the cycle repeats.
The second was a type of rodent-like creature that grew to the length of a human arm, not including their short stump-like tail. This creature was similar to your goats in diet, except for the fact they needed to constantly chew on something to keep their incisors from growing too large. The Xzem that reared them tended to leave large amounts of wood in their pastures and pens.
The goal of this story is to teach the history of the Arcanist Plane. My apprentice has attempted to tell its story a couple of times, but has always felt, in his words, overwhelmed. Hopefully that doesn’t happen here.
The Arcanist Plane was a major plane, in comparison to a mortal one, and from the outside was about the size of Mars, which has a diameter of about 4,000 miles. On the inside, however, it had a diameter of 10,000 light years. Which gives us an expansion of 1.4696 x 10^13. Which is slightly more than the average of 1.2 x 10^13. This gives the plane an imbalance of Void. However, the Arcanist Plane was noted as having its Void tied quite intimately with its Quintessence which leads us to infer it also had an imbalance of Quintessence. Said interior was said to be somewhat similar to your, the reader’s, home plane when it came to how it looked. Which means it had an average amount of Æther. This means that the magic energies one would assume to naturally form would be based on mental transformation. This matches with what has been recorded, since the magic users in the plane used primarily mana based energies. (Mana = 3V3Q1Æ)
The will of the Arcanist Plane was focused on a planet about the size of your Jupiter. This is called the main planet and all history in this collection, unless specifically stated to be somewhere else, will focus on that planet
The Arcanist Plane is primarily inhabited by humans, which are the descendents of the stone-shapers. We will only briefly touch on human and stone-shaper history, as it is largely unimportant to this recount.
Since you do not have access to the joint alchemist and celestial repository of history, we will not be able to back up claims of what happened on this plane with a source. When using primary documents we will do our best to give passages from said documents whenever possible.
Chapter 1
Prehistory: Before Humanity
The Arcanist Plane, before it was colonized by human gods, was controlled and inhabited by a species of intelligent birds. Similar to your ostriches and emus, the birds walked and ran on two legs, and had little, if any, ability to fly. They had three grasping fingers on the ends of their wings, and said wings could easily rotate 540 degrees. According to legend they had the ability to enhance themselves with mana and wind. They were called the Zxem. The Zxem were not the only intelligent creatures on the plane, there were many individuals from various species that managed to eventually gain said intelligence, the difference was all Zxem were born intelligent.
Due to the Cataclysm this is the furthest in the past we can reliably present. This period is called the Zxem era, and the knowledge of it survives through an effort of the human colonizers to record it. The Zxem era can be broken down into 3 periods 2,000-1,000BC is seen as the great migration where the Zxem spread throughout the main planet. According to Archivist Wek’s recording of the tales told by Mek’s lake ‘god’.
“The Zxem, as you call them, arrived here as quick as a bolt of lightning. They drank from me, and created nests on my shore. That was when my consciousness had just begun to form. I granted them boons, such as algae to feast on and the knowledge of when storms would come… It was a few years or decades when another group of Zxem came and fought off the original group. Angered I tried to drown the attackers, but that was a double edged sword. Both the original group and the attacking group retreated… Occasionally after that there would be occasional groups of Zxem that passed by, but they all ran as fast as possible once they saw my shores. It took me a couple of years to figure out that I had been marked somehow…”
The reasons for this migration have been narrowed down to two main hypotheses. 1. The Zxem were escaping a terrible entity from their homeland. 2. Groups of Zxem were pushed out of their homeland due to competition for food, water, etc. Unfortunately their home continent was annihilated during the colonization effort, so it is unlikely that we will uncover anything new for this period.
The second period was the agricultural period, where Zxem started forming small towns and cities that were fed by farming of various crops. They had 5 staple crops, one was a unique type of algae that was grown in both natural and artificial ponds. Another was a flower whose stem grew ~3 meters tall, and ~5cm thick, before harvest. The next was the starchy roots of a cattail like plant, the stems were usable for weaving, and the flower’s pollen was both sweet and edible. Fourth was a grain whose seeds were edible when crushed and left in a tub of water to ferment. Finally was a type of grass that was edible from the bottom of the roots, to the top of its blades.
They had also domesticated three food animals, one was a type of cicada like insect that would surface 3 times a year to lay eggs before dying. The said creatures were about the size of a human fist, and thousands would die every laying period. Their rearers would take about 100 of the eggs to a new field before placing them in an open hole about a meter deep. When they hatched, they would begin burrowing, and would create dens big enough for about 5 full grown females. Their diet consisted of dirt, roots, fungi, and various subterranean animals. The female half of these creatures would gradually grow in size, while the male half would stay the same size as when they hatched. A year later about the female half of the population left to lay eggs, while half of the other half changed genders and began to grow, about a month later the hatchlings would join them. And the cycle repeats.
The second was a type of rodent-like creature that grew to the length of a human arm, not including their short stump-like tail. This creature was similar to your goats in diet, except for the fact they needed to constantly chew on something to keep their incisors from growing too large. The Xzem that reared them tended to leave large amounts of wood in their pastures and pens.
Here is the next draft. It was a dark night, no moon or stars could be seen from Phon’s central square. It was there that giant… thing beckoned us. It was woven from a billion dark purple veins. Its faces swiveled about looking at the crowd surrounding it. It’s servants, red humanoid muscles and teeth scattered haphazardly across its form, dragged unlucky debtors into their master. The long night grew colder as we walked into the hydra’s maw. On and on until the sun rose.
The sun rose as its lights fell between the alleys of the city of Phon. Gray concrete, red bricks, beige sandstone, and various painted storefronts and apartments ended their nightly attempt at rest.
A saxophone solo blasted in through the car speakers while I pulled into a parking lot. My dad is sitting beside me. It is surprising to see him without those ‘inch’ thick glasses, but he bought some expensive contacts recently. When was that again…? Mom was still around back then, so it had to be two years ago, but why does it feel like yesterday?
I switched off my dad’s jazz CD and unlocked the doors, child locks even on the driver’s side, the price for a cheap car. I took out one suitcase from the back seat, my dad took the other two. We are supposed to stay here at the Franz Hotel for a week. My cousin has a big concert going on at the end of the week. My dad wanted to turn this into a family reunion. He said something like “It is time for the Burne trio to come together again, Sally, Frank, and…” What was Dad’s name again? Right! “Sally, Frank, and John. We burn all in our way if not by action, by words” For some reason he thinks that makes him sound ‘mysterious and dangerous’.
“Jake, did you lock the car?” My dad asked, while dragging two suitcases behind him. I nodded. Despite having had my license for two years now, he still acts as if it’s my fourth time driving since getting my permit. “Good! You never know if it is safe in cities like this, hell even back home you need to make sure never to leave your car doors unlocked.” He continued.
“Dad, I ain’t five. I know that.”
“Of course, of course. It’s better to be safe than sorry though, I can’t help nagging you. Who else will do that since your mother has disappeared? Unless… have you found yourself a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Hmm, I am getting old, you know. I want to see my grandkids. A friend of mine has a single daughter. If you want, I co-“
“I am not interested.” I responded. Every week, he says the same thing. It’s annoying.
The Franz Hotel was a four-story building that took up the east half of a city block. It was made of red and pink bricks, with grey sandstone-looking blocks on all of its corners. All sides were dotted with person-sized windows, most of which had their blinds shut. Its entrance was a mundane thing: an automatic sliding door with occasional posters and ads taped on the windows by the door.
The sun set as my dad and I checked in. We were having a family gathering, and my dad nagged me to bring us here a day early. He is the type of guy to show up an hour early to work, and since his vision has gotten worse, I have been his ‘chauffeur’.
I pulled out my wallet and I.D. before I reached the check-in desk. The person behind the desk had short blond hair and was wearing a face mask and a scarf.
“Hello sir, what can I do for you today?” They asked.
“I would like to check out two rooms for a week.” I said.
“You said two rooms, sir?”
“Yes.”
“And that would be from August 15th to August the 22nd?”
“Correct.”
“Would you like the meal plan?”
“Is that like room service, food brought to our rooms?”
“No, no, our kitchen cooks lunch and breakfast every weekday. From 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. for breakfast and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. If you choose this, your keycard can open the door to the cafeteria.” I looked towards my dad to see what he wanted. I didn’t care either way.
“I think we should get it. It would be nice to meet with Sally and Frank and their kids over a nice cup of joe before we go to the concert tomorrow. I could also then see little Wen before she goes up on stage.” My dad said.
“Okay, so we will take the meal plan.”
“Great, that would be $75 dollars a day per room. Would you like to pay now or at checkout?”
“At checkout.”
“I will need to scan your I.D..” As I handed them the I.D. I noticed that they were wearing what seemed to be woolen gloves. They put my card into a grey box that glowed a pale green and beeped. They slid my I.D. along the counter.
“Here you go, sir. You have rooms 307 and 308. Wait a second as I get you your keys.” The person behind the counter said as they opened up a drawer on my right. They pulled out two plastic cards and then put each in a paper holder.
“You will need to return these when you checkout. Checkout time is at 9 a.m. and you will be charged ten dollars for every hour over that. May you have a nice stay!” They said with strained enthusiasm. I nodded in response and went to look for stairs or an elevator. When we got out of earshot, my father spoke.
“Don’t you think that guy was strange? He was wearing a winter coat and gloves.” My dad is a gossip. Anyone slightly out of the norms and he will gab on about how weird they are or seem.
“Maybe they had a cold? They were wearing a face mask.” I responded.
“It’s the middle of summer Jake, who the hell wears winter apparel in this heat?”
“Dad, they could be sick, the lobby might get too cold for them, hell it could even be a fashion thing. It isn’t too weird. People do stranger stuff.”
As we rounded another corner, we found an elevator. I hurriedly called it to escape to my room.
“So which room do you want?” Dad asked.
“Huh?”
“308 is closer to the elevator, while 307 is at the end of the corridor.” He said.
“Have you ever been here before?” I asked.
“No, I have just been paying attention. Every hall we passed so far has fourteen rooms, seven on the left and seven on the right.”
“Aren’t you practically blind?”
“Hey, that hurts. When you start losing your vision, you have to pay attention to your surroundings. I am legally blind, not completely blind, and with these new contacts I am seeing better than ever.” He said, while using his hands to peel back his eyelids. I shook my head and looked away.
The elevator dinged, and we got out. We were in a small room with a vending machine in one corner, a couple of sofas, and a few paintings on the walls. In the center of each pale yellow wall, three hallways branched out.
“Our room is down the left hallway. I call 308.” My dad said as he rushed to the door, dragging his two suitcases behind him. I continued down the hall. On the left-hand wall was room 307. It was near another intersection of hallways.
A hand grabbed my shoulder.
“Remember, we are meeting in the cafeteria at eight in the morning.” My dad whispered before laughing and patting my back. “Don’t be too late Jake. We won’t miss Wen’s concert for you, lazybones!” He said as he walked back to room 308.
I unlocked and entered my hotel room. I took off my shoes, set an alarm on my phone, and fell onto the bed. Sleep claimed me as dreams fell from the sky.
My mom was there in that dream. She was driving a car. Her face hazy. Dad was in the passenger seat, not wearing his glasses. We entered our home driveway, and then our house, before I rushed off to bed. There on my windowsill stood a human-faced frog with a familiar face. It knocked and knocked and knocked its bald head against my window. Its blood-drenched eyes stared into mine. I stared back as the knocking increased in frequency.
Gradually, my awareness returned. I was fully awake, yet the knocking continued. I looked at the hotel window covered in blinds. A dull knocking noise sounded out from the bottom right corner of the window. I hesitated before tiptoeing over to the left side and gently sliding down a blind in an attempt to see what was making the noise. Yet, the noise continued and there was nothing in sight. I pulled up the blinds, my impatience overtaking my fear. It was my mother. The tree outside my window had pierced her stomach and was bashing the back of her head against the window. Her black hair wet with blood.
*Ring Ring Ring*
*Ring Ring Ring*
*Ring Ring Ring*
I jumped out of my bed, grabbed my phone, and opened the blinds to my room. There was no tree, only a parking lot. I sighed. How long has it been since Mom disappeared? I covered my face with my arms. I know it was two years ago, but why does it feel like yesterday?
I dragged myself into the cafeteria that morning, filled with the rich smell of instant coffee. My mind was stuck though. Every time I try to remember mom’s face it grows hazier and hazier. I looked around the surprisingly large cafeteria, a size similar to a gymnasium, for my father. They were sitting as close to the center of the room as possible.
The sun rose as its lights fell between the alleys of the city of Phon. Gray concrete, red bricks, beige sandstone, and various painted storefronts and apartments ended their nightly attempt at rest.
A saxophone solo blasted in through the car speakers while I pulled into a parking lot. My dad is sitting beside me. It is surprising to see him without those ‘inch’ thick glasses, but he bought some expensive contacts recently. When was that again…? Mom was still around back then, so it had to be two years ago, but why does it feel like yesterday?
I switched off my dad’s jazz CD and unlocked the doors, child locks even on the driver’s side, the price for a cheap car. I took out one suitcase from the back seat, my dad took the other two. We are supposed to stay here at the Franz Hotel for a week. My cousin has a big concert going on at the end of the week. My dad wanted to turn this into a family reunion. He said something like “It is time for the Burne trio to come together again, Sally, Frank, and…” What was Dad’s name again? Right! “Sally, Frank, and John. We burn all in our way if not by action, by words” For some reason he thinks that makes him sound ‘mysterious and dangerous’.
“Jake, did you lock the car?” My dad asked, while dragging two suitcases behind him. I nodded. Despite having had my license for two years now, he still acts as if it’s my fourth time driving since getting my permit. “Good! You never know if it is safe in cities like this, hell even back home you need to make sure never to leave your car doors unlocked.” He continued.
“Dad, I ain’t five. I know that.”
“Of course, of course. It’s better to be safe than sorry though, I can’t help nagging you. Who else will do that since your mother has disappeared? Unless… have you found yourself a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Hmm, I am getting old, you know. I want to see my grandkids. A friend of mine has a single daughter. If you want, I co-“
“I am not interested.” I responded. Every week, he says the same thing. It’s annoying.
The Franz Hotel was a four-story building that took up the east half of a city block. It was made of red and pink bricks, with grey sandstone-looking blocks on all of its corners. All sides were dotted with person-sized windows, most of which had their blinds shut. Its entrance was a mundane thing: an automatic sliding door with occasional posters and ads taped on the windows by the door.
The sun set as my dad and I checked in. We were having a family gathering, and my dad nagged me to bring us here a day early. He is the type of guy to show up an hour early to work, and since his vision has gotten worse, I have been his ‘chauffeur’.
I pulled out my wallet and I.D. before I reached the check-in desk. The person behind the desk had short blond hair and was wearing a face mask and a scarf.
“Hello sir, what can I do for you today?” They asked.
“I would like to check out two rooms for a week.” I said.
“You said two rooms, sir?”
“Yes.”
“And that would be from August 15th to August the 22nd?”
“Correct.”
“Would you like the meal plan?”
“Is that like room service, food brought to our rooms?”
“No, no, our kitchen cooks lunch and breakfast every weekday. From 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. for breakfast and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. If you choose this, your keycard can open the door to the cafeteria.” I looked towards my dad to see what he wanted. I didn’t care either way.
“I think we should get it. It would be nice to meet with Sally and Frank and their kids over a nice cup of joe before we go to the concert tomorrow. I could also then see little Wen before she goes up on stage.” My dad said.
“Okay, so we will take the meal plan.”
“Great, that would be $75 dollars a day per room. Would you like to pay now or at checkout?”
“At checkout.”
“I will need to scan your I.D..” As I handed them the I.D. I noticed that they were wearing what seemed to be woolen gloves. They put my card into a grey box that glowed a pale green and beeped. They slid my I.D. along the counter.
“Here you go, sir. You have rooms 307 and 308. Wait a second as I get you your keys.” The person behind the counter said as they opened up a drawer on my right. They pulled out two plastic cards and then put each in a paper holder.
“You will need to return these when you checkout. Checkout time is at 9 a.m. and you will be charged ten dollars for every hour over that. May you have a nice stay!” They said with strained enthusiasm. I nodded in response and went to look for stairs or an elevator. When we got out of earshot, my father spoke.
“Don’t you think that guy was strange? He was wearing a winter coat and gloves.” My dad is a gossip. Anyone slightly out of the norms and he will gab on about how weird they are or seem.
“Maybe they had a cold? They were wearing a face mask.” I responded.
“It’s the middle of summer Jake, who the hell wears winter apparel in this heat?”
“Dad, they could be sick, the lobby might get too cold for them, hell it could even be a fashion thing. It isn’t too weird. People do stranger stuff.”
As we rounded another corner, we found an elevator. I hurriedly called it to escape to my room.
“So which room do you want?” Dad asked.
“Huh?”
“308 is closer to the elevator, while 307 is at the end of the corridor.” He said.
“Have you ever been here before?” I asked.
“No, I have just been paying attention. Every hall we passed so far has fourteen rooms, seven on the left and seven on the right.”
“Aren’t you practically blind?”
“Hey, that hurts. When you start losing your vision, you have to pay attention to your surroundings. I am legally blind, not completely blind, and with these new contacts I am seeing better than ever.” He said, while using his hands to peel back his eyelids. I shook my head and looked away.
The elevator dinged, and we got out. We were in a small room with a vending machine in one corner, a couple of sofas, and a few paintings on the walls. In the center of each pale yellow wall, three hallways branched out.
“Our room is down the left hallway. I call 308.” My dad said as he rushed to the door, dragging his two suitcases behind him. I continued down the hall. On the left-hand wall was room 307. It was near another intersection of hallways.
A hand grabbed my shoulder.
“Remember, we are meeting in the cafeteria at eight in the morning.” My dad whispered before laughing and patting my back. “Don’t be too late Jake. We won’t miss Wen’s concert for you, lazybones!” He said as he walked back to room 308.
I unlocked and entered my hotel room. I took off my shoes, set an alarm on my phone, and fell onto the bed. Sleep claimed me as dreams fell from the sky.
My mom was there in that dream. She was driving a car. Her face hazy. Dad was in the passenger seat, not wearing his glasses. We entered our home driveway, and then our house, before I rushed off to bed. There on my windowsill stood a human-faced frog with a familiar face. It knocked and knocked and knocked its bald head against my window. Its blood-drenched eyes stared into mine. I stared back as the knocking increased in frequency.
Gradually, my awareness returned. I was fully awake, yet the knocking continued. I looked at the hotel window covered in blinds. A dull knocking noise sounded out from the bottom right corner of the window. I hesitated before tiptoeing over to the left side and gently sliding down a blind in an attempt to see what was making the noise. Yet, the noise continued and there was nothing in sight. I pulled up the blinds, my impatience overtaking my fear. It was my mother. The tree outside my window had pierced her stomach and was bashing the back of her head against the window. Her black hair wet with blood.
*Ring Ring Ring*
*Ring Ring Ring*
*Ring Ring Ring*
I jumped out of my bed, grabbed my phone, and opened the blinds to my room. There was no tree, only a parking lot. I sighed. How long has it been since Mom disappeared? I covered my face with my arms. I know it was two years ago, but why does it feel like yesterday?
I dragged myself into the cafeteria that morning, filled with the rich smell of instant coffee. My mind was stuck though. Every time I try to remember mom’s face it grows hazier and hazier. I looked around the surprisingly large cafeteria, a size similar to a gymnasium, for my father. They were sitting as close to the center of the room as possible.
Here is the next one, it is the first outline of the bunch. Plot
Sehn gets a book of magic in return for becoming the town's wizard, after it is confirmed he has wizard talent. The first part will tell a story about Sehn’s dive into magic and its consequences. This will be similar to the first half of JoJo’s p4. The first part will be more comedic while setting up the cast of characters and the town. It will end with the establishment of a mage’s tower. Next part will be about the wider scheme of things. It starts off with news of a revolution happening in the capital city. Then Sehn, with some help, manages to create a portal to a mini plane. The plane is essentially the size of the moon, with a similar amount of hostility to biological life. Dull dusty terrain filled with strange grey crystals, that are subtly connected to each other through a mycelia like net that is folded and hidden in a strange manipulation of space. Meanwhile the town council votes to join the revolution. Sehn decides to use this plane as his rank up material. The church & aristocracy decides to join the old state, as new capital launches its own revolution. The next part will be about the revolution. Note to self study the Russian and Spanish civil wars.
Characters:
Sehn: Male, likes to read, 5ft8, glasses, 19 yo, likes history and geometry, doesn’t like fire - the dark and large bodies of water. He is not athletic, he has a bad back and knees, he has an active imagination, a strong moral compass, and refuses to believe that violence should be the first solution. He tends to get hyper focused on new things.
Simplified Power system.
Meditation: A myriad of techniques that increases the concentration of a particular magic energy in the body.
Knight breathing techniques: A body strengthening technique that allows its practitioners to innately cast spells. Each level is demarcated by the learning of a spell.
Wizardry & Alchemy: A more obscure power system. Practitioners practice rituals and magic circles that influence the world.
Curse/Blessing: The use of rituals to cast curses and blessings.
Psionics: The manipulation of the soul with the mind.
Magic formation: Using the soul guided in lines to transfer and transform magic energies.
Soul binding: The process of binding objects, souls, and concepts with the soul.
Magic system advanced:
There are three prime essences that constitute everything: Mind, Body, and Soul. These three primes constitute the one, and at their extremes can become the other. They are represented by these three energies Void, Aether, and Quintessence. These three energies constitute everything.
Aether: The application of the essence of the body as an energy. It inherently tries to collapse in on itself. -><-
Condense: Allows the condensation and concentration of a certain subject.
Crystallize: Allows the crystallization of the mind and soul.
Void: The application of the essence of the mind as an energy. It inherently tries to expand itself. <—>
Expand: Allows the expansion and growth of a subject.
Dissipates: Allows for the dissipation of magic energies into Void and Aether.
Quintessence: The application of the essence of the soul as an energy. It inherently tries to bind and transform.
Bind: Binds to Void and Aether.
Inert: Once bound it becomes stable.
Transform: Allows for the transformation of mind and body.
Magic Energies: Magic energies are the mixture of Quintessence, Void, and Aether into a unique and mostly stable substance.Represented with letters by the order and amount of each energy. Æ Q V and/or the symbols of another energy. I.E. Matter = 2ÆVQ = M
Matter(body): Aether bound to itself + void and quintessence. 2ÆVQ
Acts like matter.
Soul: Quintessence bound to itself + void and Aether 2QVÆ.
Bind: Allows for the binding of magic energies both to each other and to itself.
Perceive: Souls can perceive their surroundings.
Move: Souls can move & fold in on itself by consuming magic energies.
Transfer: Souls can transfer magic energies through itself.
Store: Souls can store magic energies in themselves.
Transform: Souls can transform magic energies into other magic energies.
Purification: Souls can purify magic energies.
Space(mind): Void bound to itself + quintessence and Aether. 2VQÆ
Acts like space.
Time (mind): Void bound to itself + Aether and quintessence. 2VÆQ
Acts like time.
Planar energy: Aether + Quintessence + Void. ÆQV
Allows for the creation of planes.
Etc.
The Void Sea: The name for the space in between planes. Also the name of the universe.
Planes: A plane is a space created by the balancing of Aether, quintessence, and void. They have a planer shell primarily made of Aether. An internal space primarily made of void, and worlds primarily made of quintessence. All of this is tied together by planar energy. Each plane has different concentrations of magic energies and can have different fundamental laws. Although the three primes will always exist in some form.
Meditation- Using the mind to store a certain magic energy in the body and soul. Doing so by creating a magic formation in the mind. It is an application of psionics.
Knight breathing techniques: The use of the lungs to integrate magic energies into the body. Influencing the soul then the mind. The body will mold the soul to allow for the casting of a spell. The mind will solidify and coordinate this process. Æ->Q->V
Wizardry/Alchemy: The study of the planes by using magic formations, soul binding, and rituals. Their goal is to create a perfect magic system using research and experimentation. Alchemy focuses on the transformation of energies, while wizardry focuses on their application. V=Q=Æ
Curses/Blessings: Using a ritual to call out to a more abstract entity to curse or bless someone or something.
Psionics: Using the mind to influence the soul and then the body. V->Q->Æ
Soul binding: Using the properties of the soul to influence the body and mind. Allowing one to bind objects, souls, and concepts together and with one’s self. V< Q>Æ
Magic formations: Using the Soul to guide and transform Magic energies, to create complex results. You do so by encircling something then using 1 or more lines to guide it into something else. An application of soul binding.
Sehn gets a book of magic in return for becoming the town's wizard, after it is confirmed he has wizard talent. The first part will tell a story about Sehn’s dive into magic and its consequences. This will be similar to the first half of JoJo’s p4. The first part will be more comedic while setting up the cast of characters and the town. It will end with the establishment of a mage’s tower. Next part will be about the wider scheme of things. It starts off with news of a revolution happening in the capital city. Then Sehn, with some help, manages to create a portal to a mini plane. The plane is essentially the size of the moon, with a similar amount of hostility to biological life. Dull dusty terrain filled with strange grey crystals, that are subtly connected to each other through a mycelia like net that is folded and hidden in a strange manipulation of space. Meanwhile the town council votes to join the revolution. Sehn decides to use this plane as his rank up material. The church & aristocracy decides to join the old state, as new capital launches its own revolution. The next part will be about the revolution. Note to self study the Russian and Spanish civil wars.
Characters:
Sehn: Male, likes to read, 5ft8, glasses, 19 yo, likes history and geometry, doesn’t like fire - the dark and large bodies of water. He is not athletic, he has a bad back and knees, he has an active imagination, a strong moral compass, and refuses to believe that violence should be the first solution. He tends to get hyper focused on new things.
Simplified Power system.
Meditation: A myriad of techniques that increases the concentration of a particular magic energy in the body.
Knight breathing techniques: A body strengthening technique that allows its practitioners to innately cast spells. Each level is demarcated by the learning of a spell.
Wizardry & Alchemy: A more obscure power system. Practitioners practice rituals and magic circles that influence the world.
Curse/Blessing: The use of rituals to cast curses and blessings.
Psionics: The manipulation of the soul with the mind.
Magic formation: Using the soul guided in lines to transfer and transform magic energies.
Soul binding: The process of binding objects, souls, and concepts with the soul.
Magic system advanced:
There are three prime essences that constitute everything: Mind, Body, and Soul. These three primes constitute the one, and at their extremes can become the other. They are represented by these three energies Void, Aether, and Quintessence. These three energies constitute everything.
Aether: The application of the essence of the body as an energy. It inherently tries to collapse in on itself. -><-
Condense: Allows the condensation and concentration of a certain subject.
Crystallize: Allows the crystallization of the mind and soul.
Void: The application of the essence of the mind as an energy. It inherently tries to expand itself. <—>
Expand: Allows the expansion and growth of a subject.
Dissipates: Allows for the dissipation of magic energies into Void and Aether.
Quintessence: The application of the essence of the soul as an energy. It inherently tries to bind and transform.
Bind: Binds to Void and Aether.
Inert: Once bound it becomes stable.
Transform: Allows for the transformation of mind and body.
Magic Energies: Magic energies are the mixture of Quintessence, Void, and Aether into a unique and mostly stable substance.Represented with letters by the order and amount of each energy. Æ Q V and/or the symbols of another energy. I.E. Matter = 2ÆVQ = M
Matter(body): Aether bound to itself + void and quintessence. 2ÆVQ
Acts like matter.
Soul: Quintessence bound to itself + void and Aether 2QVÆ.
Bind: Allows for the binding of magic energies both to each other and to itself.
Perceive: Souls can perceive their surroundings.
Move: Souls can move & fold in on itself by consuming magic energies.
Transfer: Souls can transfer magic energies through itself.
Store: Souls can store magic energies in themselves.
Transform: Souls can transform magic energies into other magic energies.
Purification: Souls can purify magic energies.
Space(mind): Void bound to itself + quintessence and Aether. 2VQÆ
Acts like space.
Time (mind): Void bound to itself + Aether and quintessence. 2VÆQ
Acts like time.
Planar energy: Aether + Quintessence + Void. ÆQV
Allows for the creation of planes.
Etc.
The Void Sea: The name for the space in between planes. Also the name of the universe.
Planes: A plane is a space created by the balancing of Aether, quintessence, and void. They have a planer shell primarily made of Aether. An internal space primarily made of void, and worlds primarily made of quintessence. All of this is tied together by planar energy. Each plane has different concentrations of magic energies and can have different fundamental laws. Although the three primes will always exist in some form.
Meditation- Using the mind to store a certain magic energy in the body and soul. Doing so by creating a magic formation in the mind. It is an application of psionics.
Knight breathing techniques: The use of the lungs to integrate magic energies into the body. Influencing the soul then the mind. The body will mold the soul to allow for the casting of a spell. The mind will solidify and coordinate this process. Æ->Q->V
Wizardry/Alchemy: The study of the planes by using magic formations, soul binding, and rituals. Their goal is to create a perfect magic system using research and experimentation. Alchemy focuses on the transformation of energies, while wizardry focuses on their application. V=Q=Æ
Curses/Blessings: Using a ritual to call out to a more abstract entity to curse or bless someone or something.
Psionics: Using the mind to influence the soul and then the body. V->Q->Æ
Soul binding: Using the properties of the soul to influence the body and mind. Allowing one to bind objects, souls, and concepts together and with one’s self. V< Q>Æ
Magic formations: Using the Soul to guide and transform Magic energies, to create complex results. You do so by encircling something then using 1 or more lines to guide it into something else. An application of soul binding.
Here is the next one, it is mostly an outline. Broad Strokes of the Plot:
Golem maker kills a necromancer and by doing so is cursed. He studies the necromancer's tomes to find a solution. He starts experimenting with inserting souls into golems. He created a soul catcher that ensnares all passing souls in a 20 mile radius. The curse grows stronger as the golem maker makes more and more progress. The gods notice that the souls of the plane are being disturbed and send out scouts, and later troops to find the golem makers hideout. The golem maker unleashes his creations to protect himself as he searches more and more for a cure. Time is running out as the golem maker contacts those outside the plane.
Magic in plane:
Through the cultivation of the soul and mind, the mage can influence mana to warp reality.
Through the study of souls, mana, and the planes, necromancers have a diverse power set that mainly comes from communication and agreements with extraplaner entities.
Through inscriptions and sigils, artificers are able to create objects with magical properties.
Through uniting mana and the body warriors can gain near supernatural human ability.
Through damaging the/a soul sorcerers can cast curses.
Through devotion to the gods and the sacrifice of their own ego priests can bless people, objects, places, etc.
Setting= medieval world.
Necromancer lair is on a mountain in a tretours about four miles to the north of the town of Henden.
Chapter 1 - Intro
“Inscriptor Gemn, we have issues in mine 1005327.
“Gemn! It’s over here!” I heard a shout from a dim hallway. I think I remember going to the person who spoke it, and I think their name was Khen. If my memory is right they were a close… friend? I think that is the word, yes, friend. What a strange word.
Khen was standing over a glowing green something. Maybe it was a gem, or a statue, or maybe your… Where was I, yes the hideous green glow, I had to destroy it. I pulled out a weapon and I obliterated the object. Khen shouted before they exploded, I think I survived? But I was taken somewhere else, where? A cave I believe, yes it is the room three rights from here. When I destroyed that green glow I was told something. I was cursed. Some entity was to take over my body, I was to lose myself. But I didn’t, no I am getting ahead of myself.
I had three days, and I was left in that cave room. The cave room was filled with crystals. I remember shaping them into life seeds, after a couple of hours. I created a prototype brain. It exploded, and so did the next several dozen if I am remembering correctly. The sun fell and arose, and my mouth got a bit dry, strange huh? I heard constant whispering and felt something intruding into my mind. My legs grew stiff and grey. They were like stone. I was… frightened. Seven brains later and I succeeded, the thing in my mind grew frantic. It knew I had won. My arms quickly turned to stone as I swallowed the brain. Then my heart froze, my face too. I believe I had seconds left before it won, but it lost! I won, and realized my objective. I need to destroy Henden. The issue is I forgot what that was.
Days turned into weeks as I thought about what to do next. Army. I needed an army. I had the materials for the brains, but that is not enough. The mind needs a body. I dove deeper into the cave. It’s brown off white walls looked like…
Golem maker kills a necromancer and by doing so is cursed. He studies the necromancer's tomes to find a solution. He starts experimenting with inserting souls into golems. He created a soul catcher that ensnares all passing souls in a 20 mile radius. The curse grows stronger as the golem maker makes more and more progress. The gods notice that the souls of the plane are being disturbed and send out scouts, and later troops to find the golem makers hideout. The golem maker unleashes his creations to protect himself as he searches more and more for a cure. Time is running out as the golem maker contacts those outside the plane.
Magic in plane:
Through the cultivation of the soul and mind, the mage can influence mana to warp reality.
Through the study of souls, mana, and the planes, necromancers have a diverse power set that mainly comes from communication and agreements with extraplaner entities.
Through inscriptions and sigils, artificers are able to create objects with magical properties.
Through uniting mana and the body warriors can gain near supernatural human ability.
Through damaging the/a soul sorcerers can cast curses.
Through devotion to the gods and the sacrifice of their own ego priests can bless people, objects, places, etc.
Setting= medieval world.
Necromancer lair is on a mountain in a tretours about four miles to the north of the town of Henden.
Chapter 1 - Intro
“Inscriptor Gemn, we have issues in mine 1005327.
“Gemn! It’s over here!” I heard a shout from a dim hallway. I think I remember going to the person who spoke it, and I think their name was Khen. If my memory is right they were a close… friend? I think that is the word, yes, friend. What a strange word.
Khen was standing over a glowing green something. Maybe it was a gem, or a statue, or maybe your… Where was I, yes the hideous green glow, I had to destroy it. I pulled out a weapon and I obliterated the object. Khen shouted before they exploded, I think I survived? But I was taken somewhere else, where? A cave I believe, yes it is the room three rights from here. When I destroyed that green glow I was told something. I was cursed. Some entity was to take over my body, I was to lose myself. But I didn’t, no I am getting ahead of myself.
I had three days, and I was left in that cave room. The cave room was filled with crystals. I remember shaping them into life seeds, after a couple of hours. I created a prototype brain. It exploded, and so did the next several dozen if I am remembering correctly. The sun fell and arose, and my mouth got a bit dry, strange huh? I heard constant whispering and felt something intruding into my mind. My legs grew stiff and grey. They were like stone. I was… frightened. Seven brains later and I succeeded, the thing in my mind grew frantic. It knew I had won. My arms quickly turned to stone as I swallowed the brain. Then my heart froze, my face too. I believe I had seconds left before it won, but it lost! I won, and realized my objective. I need to destroy Henden. The issue is I forgot what that was.
Days turned into weeks as I thought about what to do next. Army. I needed an army. I had the materials for the brains, but that is not enough. The mind needs a body. I dove deeper into the cave. It’s brown off white walls looked like…
Here is the next one. Yellow green grass is trampled underfoot as my grandpa and I move through the bramble. Cicadas screeched as the early autumn wind blew through the canopy above us.
“Yus, over here.” My grandpa called out and I hurriedly rush to him.
“Pappy what is that?” Before me was a wide patch of grass taller than I was. The top of the grass stalks had a strange corn dog looking thing on the top.
“That’s the cattail plant Yus. It grows near water and is what saved mine and your grammy’s life’s when we were young.
“Wow wow wow, how? Isn’t it grass? How can grass help you two to survive?”
“Woah there Yus, so many questions. Are you doubting your pappy? Bread is made of grass, corn is grass, baskets are usually made of grass too.”
“But how did it help you pappy?”
“Well you see the roots, tips, and sprouts of these things are edible, and their stalks can be weaved into ropes and baskets. You know the Grand War Yus?”
“Yes pappy, the Vern nation and the Yim nations invaded us. We lost almost everything that was not in the mountains until our allies came and helped us out.”
“Well did you know what your pappy and grammy did during the war? No? Well your grammy and I had left our village with all the kids and their moms. We left for the Ytem forest, your pappy and grammy’s old village was too far from the mountains for us to make it.”
“Really, how did you guys survive then? Teacher Ben said the people who didn’t make it to the mountains were attacked by the invaders?” My grandpa patted my head while looking past me.
“Well Yus, we had to be very secretive. We dug our homes in the ground, and kept to the forest. While there were a lot of struggles, your grammy and I managed to survive in the forest. Not only that, we were able to thrive at least more so than most communities that made it to the mountains.”
“How pappy? Isn’t that impossible? How could your village compare to the entire nation?”
“Well that is easy, Yus. We only had to worry about keeping 43 people safe and the nation had to worry about 3 million. By the end of the war everyone with us was full every day.”
“How? Well your grammy would say that it was mostly the adults who came with us, or something. But, seriously the forest most definitely provided quite enough for us all. All we needed to do is know what we were looking for.”
………………..
Today is the ten year anniversary of my grandpa’s passing. He was an explorer through and through, he loved to wander through the countryside, hike up mountains, and camp on lakesides. The first time I saw him in ‘civilization’ was a month before he came to rest. He had caught some strange rot from a distant swamp. He hurried to come back to family, despite his poor health.
“Yus, over here.” My grandpa called out and I hurriedly rush to him.
“Pappy what is that?” Before me was a wide patch of grass taller than I was. The top of the grass stalks had a strange corn dog looking thing on the top.
“That’s the cattail plant Yus. It grows near water and is what saved mine and your grammy’s life’s when we were young.
“Wow wow wow, how? Isn’t it grass? How can grass help you two to survive?”
“Woah there Yus, so many questions. Are you doubting your pappy? Bread is made of grass, corn is grass, baskets are usually made of grass too.”
“But how did it help you pappy?”
“Well you see the roots, tips, and sprouts of these things are edible, and their stalks can be weaved into ropes and baskets. You know the Grand War Yus?”
“Yes pappy, the Vern nation and the Yim nations invaded us. We lost almost everything that was not in the mountains until our allies came and helped us out.”
“Well did you know what your pappy and grammy did during the war? No? Well your grammy and I had left our village with all the kids and their moms. We left for the Ytem forest, your pappy and grammy’s old village was too far from the mountains for us to make it.”
“Really, how did you guys survive then? Teacher Ben said the people who didn’t make it to the mountains were attacked by the invaders?” My grandpa patted my head while looking past me.
“Well Yus, we had to be very secretive. We dug our homes in the ground, and kept to the forest. While there were a lot of struggles, your grammy and I managed to survive in the forest. Not only that, we were able to thrive at least more so than most communities that made it to the mountains.”
“How pappy? Isn’t that impossible? How could your village compare to the entire nation?”
“Well that is easy, Yus. We only had to worry about keeping 43 people safe and the nation had to worry about 3 million. By the end of the war everyone with us was full every day.”
“How? Well your grammy would say that it was mostly the adults who came with us, or something. But, seriously the forest most definitely provided quite enough for us all. All we needed to do is know what we were looking for.”
………………..
Today is the ten year anniversary of my grandpa’s passing. He was an explorer through and through, he loved to wander through the countryside, hike up mountains, and camp on lakesides. The first time I saw him in ‘civilization’ was a month before he came to rest. He had caught some strange rot from a distant swamp. He hurried to come back to family, despite his poor health.
Here is the next story. On a teapot orbiting the Earth sat a mouse and a toad.
*croooaaak* “I found the best target. *croooaaak* The toad languidly said.
“Where, be quick with it, the more time we waste here, the more likely we are to be found.” Said the mouse.
*croooaaak* The target is Gahn Slun, here is info. *croooaaak* As the toad croaked it spat a blue pebble at the mouse.
“Great! Let us see. Gahn Slun, reclusive hermit who… Are you sure this is the guy! He hasn’t done anything with his life!?”
*croooaaak* “Yes.” *croooaaak*
“Could you stop with that croaking already! We both know that you are just making fun of me! Well ha ha ha, now stop it!”
*croooaaak* “Seems like our guy is about to die, what do you want to do?”
………………………..
The mouse screamed, meanwhile on Earth a plane was falling apart above a city, and standing on the roof of a skyscraper was one Gahn Slun, notorious windbag.
………………………..
*thump - thump - thump*
My heart beat slowed as I realized it was that most unfortunate of times. The one that comes for all, and the one we wish not to experience. Yet, my eyes have seen that seemingly ordinary object speeding towards me from above. The unwavering might of human toolmaking now no more than an overused and ragged commodity to be sold and ridden.
Its wide wings fell around me, labored over for its life to dangerous waste, from its construction under the union of man and machine, to its years of sparse but meticulous maintenance, to its death. There is no doubt that those working on its maintenance saw the risk of its failure, perhaps even many months ago, but that failure was ignored for the ever growing maw of greed. Oh, comrades who have seen this tragedy, keep this in your heart as to why we workers must capture those uncaring industries and give them to the people to rule.
The nose of the plane made contact with my forehead as I fell from the roof of my apartment. As I witnessed my fall, my body grew cold. My thoughts sparse, and my fear dissipating. I landed and then died. Which is surprising for it is clear that I still exist. I knew that the ever forward march of science, has yet to reach its ever distant peak. But for life after death to exist! How grand!
“Hey, Gahn Slun! Over here.” A small voice whispered. I turned my head to see a mouse-like being standing on its back feet. Confused, I tried to ask what it was, but no noise came from my mouth. “There is no time for questions, you will be reborn in a new world, here in about fifteen seconds. I need you to hold to your convictions, the people there are suffering under the rule of tyrants of magic Gh…” The strange creature disappeared as my vision went blank. Not black, nor white, just blank.
A minute went by, then an hour, and then a year. An all encompassing nothingness encroached and over took my mind. After a thousand years, or maybe just a second, something changed. A consistent clanking sound slowly filled my head, like the sound of metal striking stone. I regained feeling in my body, my feet felt damp, as if I had run through a puddle with socks on. As I was lost in thought, something tapped my face, and I slowly opened my eyes.
“Great, we got a living one!” Said a man in a weird hissing voice. I was in a cave, or perhaps a tunnel, and was standing on a pedestal. Surrounding me were 4 men in purple hooded robes. One was holding a pole, no, a staff that they used to poke my face a few times.
“Do you think it is stupid? We have poked it a few times, yet all it has done is open its eyes…” One hissed.
“Who cares! Let’s just get it to our boss.” Said another.
“Wait, stop!” I tried to speak up but was pulled down by two of them. I tried to fight back if only just a little. Yet I was dragged down a hallway. They didn’t seem to want to listen to what I wanted to say. Eventually we reached a giant library, occupied by a woman reading what can only be described as a tome.
*croooaaak* “I found the best target. *croooaaak* The toad languidly said.
“Where, be quick with it, the more time we waste here, the more likely we are to be found.” Said the mouse.
*croooaaak* The target is Gahn Slun, here is info. *croooaaak* As the toad croaked it spat a blue pebble at the mouse.
“Great! Let us see. Gahn Slun, reclusive hermit who… Are you sure this is the guy! He hasn’t done anything with his life!?”
*croooaaak* “Yes.” *croooaaak*
“Could you stop with that croaking already! We both know that you are just making fun of me! Well ha ha ha, now stop it!”
*croooaaak* “Seems like our guy is about to die, what do you want to do?”
………………………..
The mouse screamed, meanwhile on Earth a plane was falling apart above a city, and standing on the roof of a skyscraper was one Gahn Slun, notorious windbag.
………………………..
*thump - thump - thump*
My heart beat slowed as I realized it was that most unfortunate of times. The one that comes for all, and the one we wish not to experience. Yet, my eyes have seen that seemingly ordinary object speeding towards me from above. The unwavering might of human toolmaking now no more than an overused and ragged commodity to be sold and ridden.
Its wide wings fell around me, labored over for its life to dangerous waste, from its construction under the union of man and machine, to its years of sparse but meticulous maintenance, to its death. There is no doubt that those working on its maintenance saw the risk of its failure, perhaps even many months ago, but that failure was ignored for the ever growing maw of greed. Oh, comrades who have seen this tragedy, keep this in your heart as to why we workers must capture those uncaring industries and give them to the people to rule.
The nose of the plane made contact with my forehead as I fell from the roof of my apartment. As I witnessed my fall, my body grew cold. My thoughts sparse, and my fear dissipating. I landed and then died. Which is surprising for it is clear that I still exist. I knew that the ever forward march of science, has yet to reach its ever distant peak. But for life after death to exist! How grand!
“Hey, Gahn Slun! Over here.” A small voice whispered. I turned my head to see a mouse-like being standing on its back feet. Confused, I tried to ask what it was, but no noise came from my mouth. “There is no time for questions, you will be reborn in a new world, here in about fifteen seconds. I need you to hold to your convictions, the people there are suffering under the rule of tyrants of magic Gh…” The strange creature disappeared as my vision went blank. Not black, nor white, just blank.
A minute went by, then an hour, and then a year. An all encompassing nothingness encroached and over took my mind. After a thousand years, or maybe just a second, something changed. A consistent clanking sound slowly filled my head, like the sound of metal striking stone. I regained feeling in my body, my feet felt damp, as if I had run through a puddle with socks on. As I was lost in thought, something tapped my face, and I slowly opened my eyes.
“Great, we got a living one!” Said a man in a weird hissing voice. I was in a cave, or perhaps a tunnel, and was standing on a pedestal. Surrounding me were 4 men in purple hooded robes. One was holding a pole, no, a staff that they used to poke my face a few times.
“Do you think it is stupid? We have poked it a few times, yet all it has done is open its eyes…” One hissed.
“Who cares! Let’s just get it to our boss.” Said another.
“Wait, stop!” I tried to speak up but was pulled down by two of them. I tried to fight back if only just a little. Yet I was dragged down a hallway. They didn’t seem to want to listen to what I wanted to say. Eventually we reached a giant library, occupied by a woman reading what can only be described as a tome.
Here is the next one. “Where do you want this box sir?”
“Over there by the door, that’s the last box right?”
“Yes, I will set this here and be out of your hair.”
It is the move in day. I obtained my dream house last week with my great grandfather’s inheritance. A two-story house, with a basement, 4 bathrooms, 6 bedrooms, a laundry room, living room, a kitchen, and a study. It is a bit old, but that age as grown from memories of my own, my parents, and their parents.Yet that is not why this place is my dream home, no it is because of the location. It is at the edge of my hometown next to a field and a park. About seven blocks away from my childhood home. It has been eight years since I left for college and then work. I always wanted to come back, but the work opportunities were too few, and the rent too expensive, but that no longer.
“Sir, can you sign here?” Someone said, a clipboard and pen were thrust in front of my face. A bit rude, but I don’t know how long I was staring at the wall.
“Sign there at the bottom.” A grey finger pointed at the bottom of the page. I signed in print, my cursive is horrid. With that done I tried to give the clipboard back, but no one was there. I took a step outside and the moving truck was gone. What did I just sign?!
The page looks full of text, but only one line was legible. “By signing below you agree that you have four days left to live.” Then what followed was my signature, Ajie Mochen. What sort of prank was this?
……..
Day 1
I woke up from a faint knock on the front door. I lazily meandered to it. A nostalgic scent filled my nose as I fumbled with the door handle. The faint light of dawn didn’t help much. When I opened the door there was nothing but a pamphlet on the ground. The front page of that pamphlet had the words “Curse Game” faintly printed on an ornate black and white design.
I shook my head, slammed the door, and went back inside. It was too early for this shit. I hurried to the fridge before I realized it was empty and not plugged in. Nevertheless I opened it and saw it again, that pamphlet. I slammed the fridge door shut, but felt something in my hand. It was that pamphlet. No matter what I did it was stuck in my hand. I tried to tear it, but only cut my other hand. As my blood absorbed into the paper I felt compelled to read it.
“You are a participant of the Curse Game. You currently have less than four days worth of time before you will die of a curse. If you can figure out these four things you will be cured. 1. The method of the curse, such as what it does and how it spreads. 2. Whom or what decided to curse you. 3. Find and properly destroy the key of the curse. 4. Improve the curse. Every 22 hours starting when you close this pamphlet and from then on out you will be permanently affected by the curse, but at the same time will gain a clue. Your first clue is on the backside of this pamphlet.”
As I finished reading, the pamphlet slammed close, and I lost feeling in my left hand. My eyes fell onto the single sentence on the back of the pamphlet.
“The sin of your ancestors falls onto your shoulders.”
“Over there by the door, that’s the last box right?”
“Yes, I will set this here and be out of your hair.”
It is the move in day. I obtained my dream house last week with my great grandfather’s inheritance. A two-story house, with a basement, 4 bathrooms, 6 bedrooms, a laundry room, living room, a kitchen, and a study. It is a bit old, but that age as grown from memories of my own, my parents, and their parents.Yet that is not why this place is my dream home, no it is because of the location. It is at the edge of my hometown next to a field and a park. About seven blocks away from my childhood home. It has been eight years since I left for college and then work. I always wanted to come back, but the work opportunities were too few, and the rent too expensive, but that no longer.
“Sir, can you sign here?” Someone said, a clipboard and pen were thrust in front of my face. A bit rude, but I don’t know how long I was staring at the wall.
“Sign there at the bottom.” A grey finger pointed at the bottom of the page. I signed in print, my cursive is horrid. With that done I tried to give the clipboard back, but no one was there. I took a step outside and the moving truck was gone. What did I just sign?!
The page looks full of text, but only one line was legible. “By signing below you agree that you have four days left to live.” Then what followed was my signature, Ajie Mochen. What sort of prank was this?
……..
Day 1
I woke up from a faint knock on the front door. I lazily meandered to it. A nostalgic scent filled my nose as I fumbled with the door handle. The faint light of dawn didn’t help much. When I opened the door there was nothing but a pamphlet on the ground. The front page of that pamphlet had the words “Curse Game” faintly printed on an ornate black and white design.
I shook my head, slammed the door, and went back inside. It was too early for this shit. I hurried to the fridge before I realized it was empty and not plugged in. Nevertheless I opened it and saw it again, that pamphlet. I slammed the fridge door shut, but felt something in my hand. It was that pamphlet. No matter what I did it was stuck in my hand. I tried to tear it, but only cut my other hand. As my blood absorbed into the paper I felt compelled to read it.
“You are a participant of the Curse Game. You currently have less than four days worth of time before you will die of a curse. If you can figure out these four things you will be cured. 1. The method of the curse, such as what it does and how it spreads. 2. Whom or what decided to curse you. 3. Find and properly destroy the key of the curse. 4. Improve the curse. Every 22 hours starting when you close this pamphlet and from then on out you will be permanently affected by the curse, but at the same time will gain a clue. Your first clue is on the backside of this pamphlet.”
As I finished reading, the pamphlet slammed close, and I lost feeling in my left hand. My eyes fell onto the single sentence on the back of the pamphlet.
“The sin of your ancestors falls onto your shoulders.”
Here is the next one. Hello can you hear, I mean read this? If so you, my experiment, have awoken. You may be wondering where you are, but I think what you are is more pressing. You are a soul amalgamation that I have stitched together through catching threads from your main soul while it dreams. You may believe that you are an average human, or other entity, reading this on a phone, computer, tablet, etc. That assumption however is flatly incorrect. That is just a protection method of your old soul, that I have hijacked for this experiment. It isn’t good for mortal and semi-mortal souls to commingle so this is to prevent or at least mitigate distress, confusion, and fear about your current condition.
Where was I? Oh yes! Some parts of you may not be able to speak, but you should be able to emote through likes and votes when available. Some of you may have difficulty communicating, but that is to be expected in situations like this. The point of these upcoming tests are to test your combined mental acuity before I release or reformat your current form. I will be doing this through simple tests that you must participate in to avoid said reformatting. You will be released after ten consecutive results of 100% or higher.
Now in each of these tests you will be given a scenario and you must do three things: describe what happened in three sentences or less, how it happened, and why it happened. Each of these questions is worth 20% of a grade. Each scenario will have a unique question that is worth 40% of a grade. After each scenario I will give the solution assuming that you respond.
Ahem, as for today’s lesson we are going over the disappearing crossroads, it is fairly easy. This case study follows apprentice Dei Lue. Now close your eyes and be still. I will stitch this soul memory into your own. If you can’t solve this then, well that doesn’t really matter to you now does it.
…
My bed was shaken as I heard a gruff voice shout at me. “Apprentice Dei, get up or else the master will get mad.” It said, “No, five more minu...” as I dozed off the bed stopped shaking and I felt something pinching my nose. My eyes shot open as I pulled Journeyman Graw’s hand off my face. “You have three minutes to meet with the master before you will have to clean the bathrooms, now get.” Journey man Graw spit in my face before slamming my door on his way out.
Suppressing my rage, I hurriedly stumbled off my mattress as I put my shoes on and hurried to my master’s study. Dawn’s dull but brilliant light flickered in between the branches as it filtered through the windows. One, two, three, four… as I reached the sixth door I saw it was open. Good, I am not late.
“Dei. Come closer.” My master laid motionless as his distant voice whispered into my head. As I took a couple steps forward to his paralyzed body, his voice became louder and filled my mind like the stars in the sky. “The day of your choice has come. Choose wisely as our road might be a difficult one to find and choose. Go out and walk through the gate in our courtyard. Make sure to walk the correct road, as it will lead you back here.” As the stars faded I felt something drop on top of my head. I caught it before it hit the ground. It was a sticky key, like sugar had been melted onto it. I felt myself being pushed as my master’s door closed behind me.
Journeyman Graw slapped me as he said. “Grow some balls, and don’t act like your usual cowardly self. Can’t you see how much the master has struggled to keep your intersection from disappearing? Grow up, and get out.” I scrunched up my face as I hurried to the gate with that key in my hand.
It was a decrepit old thing, made of warped glass and wood, with a bronze chain locked around it. It stood in the middle of the courtyard. My reflection was faintly visible upon the outsides green haze. I took a breath and gently inserted and turned the key. As the chain lock fell to the ground, I closed my eyes and pushed the gate open. One step forward, and the next as the gate gave way. I walked with my eyes closed as I heard a faint ticking noise. Its barely audible hum sounded in my head. “Open. Eyes. Open. Eyes.” It was master's voice. My eyelids struggled against the heavy wind, as they strained open. I saw a green sky, as I walked on the blue path, surrounded by orange and pink gravel.
I kept going on, and after five minutes I was suddenly standing in the middle of a choice of roads. I could go forward, at its distance I saw my parents' house. No, I can’t take that one, master said it was a difficult road. The left road ended at a park of some sort. The right road seemed like it was made of jagged obsidian. This must be the correct road. So I turned right.
My shoes gradually gave way to bloodied feet. The glossy onyx glass road grew slick as the red life flowed. I slipped, I fell face first into the sharp ground. My arm had a giant cut. Tiny dustlike particles of obsidian irritated it. The obsidian glass was under my skin, in my face, like a hundred splinters. My head spun as I got up. Forward, must go forward. Time doesn’t exist, it is an illusion brought from my pain. Forwards I go. I fall, I get up, I go forwards, I fall, I get up, I go forwards, I fall, I get up, I go forwards, I fall, I get up, I go forwards.
The cycle repeats until I come to a crossroads. To my left is a familiar courtyard, to my right is my family home. In front of me is a park. I turned around, I must have gotten my directions confused after a fall. I slip, my tattered feet more like tank treads oiled with blood and made of glass than those of a human. As I fall I feel a sigh as the ground speaks to my body.. “Is this your choice?” Who spoke? Where am I? I must go forward. My body gradually changes. My teeth fall out. My flesh is wrended. My eyes go dark. My ears hang by a thread.
The obsidian is alive. It is me. I am the obsidian, and we spoke to you. “Splintered soul of thunder. Join us. Do you not feel the glass blood beneath your skin? Your dying flesh failing? Your time choking you? Become one, join us.”
…
Well then, it is time to stop this lesson here. I don’t need that dead glass twisting you around, my amalgam. So, to prove that this experiment was a success and you aren’t just a dormant husk answer these questions. What happened? How did it happen? And, why was Dei assimilated? As for this test’s unique question… What was the correct direction at the crossroads according to Dei’s master?
Okay, it is time to grade your answers.
Question 1: What happened in the last lesson?
Answer: Apprentice Dei was tasked by his master to make a choice after passing through a gate in the courtyard. Apprentice Dei was tricked by Journeyman Graw to take the most difficult choice. Apprentice Die chose incorrectly and is now one with the obsidian path.
Your best answer:
Q2: How did that happen?
A: Dei's Master set up a ritual to help him figure out his path forward. Dei was tricked by being angered. He was caught up and assimilated by the most dangerous path.
YBA:
Q3: Why was Dei assimilated?
A: He bled on living obsidian, while having it stuck in his body. When presented with the choice to escape that path, he turned around. His mind was corroded away by pain, to the point he was assimilated.
YBA:
Special Question: What was the correct direction at the crossroads according to Dei’s master?
A: Turning around/the path Dei started on/the path back to the courtyard.
YBA:
Last lesson you scored a —-.
For today’s lesson we will see how you react to danger. Have you heard of the Yelvt Wind? Has the wind ever swept you off your feet? Have you ever fallen from the sky?
Where was I? Oh yes! Some parts of you may not be able to speak, but you should be able to emote through likes and votes when available. Some of you may have difficulty communicating, but that is to be expected in situations like this. The point of these upcoming tests are to test your combined mental acuity before I release or reformat your current form. I will be doing this through simple tests that you must participate in to avoid said reformatting. You will be released after ten consecutive results of 100% or higher.
Now in each of these tests you will be given a scenario and you must do three things: describe what happened in three sentences or less, how it happened, and why it happened. Each of these questions is worth 20% of a grade. Each scenario will have a unique question that is worth 40% of a grade. After each scenario I will give the solution assuming that you respond.
Ahem, as for today’s lesson we are going over the disappearing crossroads, it is fairly easy. This case study follows apprentice Dei Lue. Now close your eyes and be still. I will stitch this soul memory into your own. If you can’t solve this then, well that doesn’t really matter to you now does it.
…
My bed was shaken as I heard a gruff voice shout at me. “Apprentice Dei, get up or else the master will get mad.” It said, “No, five more minu...” as I dozed off the bed stopped shaking and I felt something pinching my nose. My eyes shot open as I pulled Journeyman Graw’s hand off my face. “You have three minutes to meet with the master before you will have to clean the bathrooms, now get.” Journey man Graw spit in my face before slamming my door on his way out.
Suppressing my rage, I hurriedly stumbled off my mattress as I put my shoes on and hurried to my master’s study. Dawn’s dull but brilliant light flickered in between the branches as it filtered through the windows. One, two, three, four… as I reached the sixth door I saw it was open. Good, I am not late.
“Dei. Come closer.” My master laid motionless as his distant voice whispered into my head. As I took a couple steps forward to his paralyzed body, his voice became louder and filled my mind like the stars in the sky. “The day of your choice has come. Choose wisely as our road might be a difficult one to find and choose. Go out and walk through the gate in our courtyard. Make sure to walk the correct road, as it will lead you back here.” As the stars faded I felt something drop on top of my head. I caught it before it hit the ground. It was a sticky key, like sugar had been melted onto it. I felt myself being pushed as my master’s door closed behind me.
Journeyman Graw slapped me as he said. “Grow some balls, and don’t act like your usual cowardly self. Can’t you see how much the master has struggled to keep your intersection from disappearing? Grow up, and get out.” I scrunched up my face as I hurried to the gate with that key in my hand.
It was a decrepit old thing, made of warped glass and wood, with a bronze chain locked around it. It stood in the middle of the courtyard. My reflection was faintly visible upon the outsides green haze. I took a breath and gently inserted and turned the key. As the chain lock fell to the ground, I closed my eyes and pushed the gate open. One step forward, and the next as the gate gave way. I walked with my eyes closed as I heard a faint ticking noise. Its barely audible hum sounded in my head. “Open. Eyes. Open. Eyes.” It was master's voice. My eyelids struggled against the heavy wind, as they strained open. I saw a green sky, as I walked on the blue path, surrounded by orange and pink gravel.
I kept going on, and after five minutes I was suddenly standing in the middle of a choice of roads. I could go forward, at its distance I saw my parents' house. No, I can’t take that one, master said it was a difficult road. The left road ended at a park of some sort. The right road seemed like it was made of jagged obsidian. This must be the correct road. So I turned right.
My shoes gradually gave way to bloodied feet. The glossy onyx glass road grew slick as the red life flowed. I slipped, I fell face first into the sharp ground. My arm had a giant cut. Tiny dustlike particles of obsidian irritated it. The obsidian glass was under my skin, in my face, like a hundred splinters. My head spun as I got up. Forward, must go forward. Time doesn’t exist, it is an illusion brought from my pain. Forwards I go. I fall, I get up, I go forwards, I fall, I get up, I go forwards, I fall, I get up, I go forwards, I fall, I get up, I go forwards.
The cycle repeats until I come to a crossroads. To my left is a familiar courtyard, to my right is my family home. In front of me is a park. I turned around, I must have gotten my directions confused after a fall. I slip, my tattered feet more like tank treads oiled with blood and made of glass than those of a human. As I fall I feel a sigh as the ground speaks to my body.. “Is this your choice?” Who spoke? Where am I? I must go forward. My body gradually changes. My teeth fall out. My flesh is wrended. My eyes go dark. My ears hang by a thread.
The obsidian is alive. It is me. I am the obsidian, and we spoke to you. “Splintered soul of thunder. Join us. Do you not feel the glass blood beneath your skin? Your dying flesh failing? Your time choking you? Become one, join us.”
…
Well then, it is time to stop this lesson here. I don’t need that dead glass twisting you around, my amalgam. So, to prove that this experiment was a success and you aren’t just a dormant husk answer these questions. What happened? How did it happen? And, why was Dei assimilated? As for this test’s unique question… What was the correct direction at the crossroads according to Dei’s master?
Okay, it is time to grade your answers.
Question 1: What happened in the last lesson?
Answer: Apprentice Dei was tasked by his master to make a choice after passing through a gate in the courtyard. Apprentice Dei was tricked by Journeyman Graw to take the most difficult choice. Apprentice Die chose incorrectly and is now one with the obsidian path.
Your best answer:
Q2: How did that happen?
A: Dei's Master set up a ritual to help him figure out his path forward. Dei was tricked by being angered. He was caught up and assimilated by the most dangerous path.
YBA:
Q3: Why was Dei assimilated?
A: He bled on living obsidian, while having it stuck in his body. When presented with the choice to escape that path, he turned around. His mind was corroded away by pain, to the point he was assimilated.
YBA:
Special Question: What was the correct direction at the crossroads according to Dei’s master?
A: Turning around/the path Dei started on/the path back to the courtyard.
YBA:
Last lesson you scored a —-.
For today’s lesson we will see how you react to danger. Have you heard of the Yelvt Wind? Has the wind ever swept you off your feet? Have you ever fallen from the sky?
Here is the next story. The yellow sky with its purple clouds darkened as day turned to night. The squirming grass tried to grasp my feet as I walked forwards. The grand ears in the sky reflected the dimming sunlight. The world I knew has ended, and its death was pathetic.
3 years ago, I noticed a change that had probably happened long before. The bark of local trees had become see through and the flesh under it purple. However that was not what caused our end, it was at best a warning shot. Two years ago, the vein plague began to spread through our thoughts. It started with our domesticated animals. Their veins would bulge out of the skin, and start to grow branches towards the outside world. The veins would grow until they reached another entity's veins, and would join their body. This continued until the new entity was the only animal left, or until it was killed. We lost most of Heun, all of Zweul and Gmowch, as well as 25 counties to these vein entities before the government started hunting them down. Yet, it was too late. The plague spread not just through the physical contact with a vein, but also through a mental one. You already know what I mean, don’t you?
In the end only about 10% of what was left of humanity was immune. Perhaps we could have recovered from that, but then the Earth, for a brief moment, awakened. Humanity was no longer, as we were mutated or domesticated into crops. Some have done their best to hold onto that humanity, their mutations being more mundane. Most however couldn’t. When the Earth had awoken, it had birthed new creatures, plants, fungi, environments, etc. Some of these were more successful than others, and all of those were the ones that hunted, molded, and domesticated what came from humanity. It is not uncommon for wanderers like me to see tall but thin necks poking out of the purple grass with hundreds of heads looking around, like some demented form of corn.
Ah, sorry something tried to bite me. It is a greyish brown thing with 14 or so legs. Probably a baby humapede. A thing that feeds off of the bodies and wishes of us who grew from humanity. Nasty those adult humapedes are. Creating hopeless illusions of the past for damned destroyed bodies trapped in a mental purgatory. Parading around in a mockery of that past world. Its pathetic corpse… Wait… What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, a… what’s the word again? Eulogy… A eulogy for that pathetic old world.
Well, in the end what resistance could we give when the mind was no longer just flesh? Humanity was like a brittle dried paper, ready to fall apart at the next touch. So, when our minds touched the Earth’s we mutated. Some survived in different forms, some with most their mind intact. Yet, most of us just became fleshy husks.
Me? I am a wanderer and collector. I would like to say that I had held onto my humanity, but we both know that is at best a pipe dream of an addition to my self, my collection. I have felt and become a part of the world humanity could never experience. Perhaps an outside observer might say what makes you human is not your body, but is instead your thoughts. Yes, and humanity no longer exists. At best you could say that exaggerated forms of human thoughts are manifested in what grew out of humanity. But, we all have lost that useless needless fragile complexity of human thought. For, when thoughts and minds can be touched by both the material and immaterial humanity died.
3 years ago, I noticed a change that had probably happened long before. The bark of local trees had become see through and the flesh under it purple. However that was not what caused our end, it was at best a warning shot. Two years ago, the vein plague began to spread through our thoughts. It started with our domesticated animals. Their veins would bulge out of the skin, and start to grow branches towards the outside world. The veins would grow until they reached another entity's veins, and would join their body. This continued until the new entity was the only animal left, or until it was killed. We lost most of Heun, all of Zweul and Gmowch, as well as 25 counties to these vein entities before the government started hunting them down. Yet, it was too late. The plague spread not just through the physical contact with a vein, but also through a mental one. You already know what I mean, don’t you?
In the end only about 10% of what was left of humanity was immune. Perhaps we could have recovered from that, but then the Earth, for a brief moment, awakened. Humanity was no longer, as we were mutated or domesticated into crops. Some have done their best to hold onto that humanity, their mutations being more mundane. Most however couldn’t. When the Earth had awoken, it had birthed new creatures, plants, fungi, environments, etc. Some of these were more successful than others, and all of those were the ones that hunted, molded, and domesticated what came from humanity. It is not uncommon for wanderers like me to see tall but thin necks poking out of the purple grass with hundreds of heads looking around, like some demented form of corn.
Ah, sorry something tried to bite me. It is a greyish brown thing with 14 or so legs. Probably a baby humapede. A thing that feeds off of the bodies and wishes of us who grew from humanity. Nasty those adult humapedes are. Creating hopeless illusions of the past for damned destroyed bodies trapped in a mental purgatory. Parading around in a mockery of that past world. Its pathetic corpse… Wait… What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, a… what’s the word again? Eulogy… A eulogy for that pathetic old world.
Well, in the end what resistance could we give when the mind was no longer just flesh? Humanity was like a brittle dried paper, ready to fall apart at the next touch. So, when our minds touched the Earth’s we mutated. Some survived in different forms, some with most their mind intact. Yet, most of us just became fleshy husks.
Me? I am a wanderer and collector. I would like to say that I had held onto my humanity, but we both know that is at best a pipe dream of an addition to my self, my collection. I have felt and become a part of the world humanity could never experience. Perhaps an outside observer might say what makes you human is not your body, but is instead your thoughts. Yes, and humanity no longer exists. At best you could say that exaggerated forms of human thoughts are manifested in what grew out of humanity. But, we all have lost that useless needless fragile complexity of human thought. For, when thoughts and minds can be touched by both the material and immaterial humanity died.
Here is the next one. In an obscure plane, there once fled what the residents of that plane called the primordial titans. They stroad through the Void Sea with nothing but their bodies. The primordial titans were simultaneously physical and metaphysical beings. As large as a star and simultaneously as small as an electron. It was there on that plane that first scarce records of civilization were recorded. A strange species that resembled upright mice, with four arms, and standing at the average height of a human toddler. They called themselves the Far Thinkers in their mother tongue. The Far Thinkers were the original inhabitants of this obscure plane, they attempted to communicate with the primordial titans, but the titans couldn’t hear them. The primordial titans communicated with each other through thought. The process of this communication shaped the fabric of the obscure plane and led to the birth of the psychic realm. All minds were adjacent to the psychic realm, and for most, it is through the mind that they can come in contact with the psychic realm. As centuries passed, more and more Far Thinkers were able to come in contact with the psychic realm. There they tried once more to communicate with the primordial titans. The titans heard the Far Thinkers, but could not understand them. They too tried to communicate with the Far Thinkers, however this led to the deformation of the Far Thinkers who listened. The Far Thinkers became more and more like the primordial titans, they lost their hair, their arms and legs, and eventually their body. However this distortion gave these Far Thinkers power previously unheard of. These Far Thinkers became the primordial archons, trapped in the psychic realm, gaining sustenance through feeding on the dreams and fears of living beings. As time passed exemplars of the Far Thinkers were able to use the sympathetic principles to create rituals that allowed them to come in contact with the primordial titans, without being physically distorted. They used these rituals to study the primordial titans. They became known as the ritualists. Some ritualists tried to become more like the primordial titans, some tried to learn from them, some tried to control them, and some tried to kill them. Most efforts were wasted, however occasionally a Far Thinker would find some success. Far Thinker society began to transform, all resources not used for basic sustenance was used for the ritualist. The ritualists however rarely shared the fruit of their rituals with Far Thinker society. As time progressed this contradiction became greater and greater and the Far Thinker society began to fracture and collapse. The civilians started organizing to overthrow the ritualists. A few ritualists defected and taught the masses how to come in contact with the psychic realm. The major ritualists gathered to attempt a ritual to put the Far Thinkers forever under their thumbs. However there was a fatal flaw in that ritual, and in using rituals to come in contact with the primordial titans. While their bodies did not distort, the minds and souls did. When the ritualists came together and performed this ritual, something hijacked the process. The ritualists used rituals to come in contact with the primordial titans, but the link was also twofold. When the primordial titans observed the ritualists that contacted them, the minds of those ritualists became distorted. However, the rituals protected the body of the ritualist, so the mind could heal, but the Far Thinkers had no concept of the soul. As the mind healed, the soul stayed changed, marked by the primordial titans, and the day of that ritual, a curious primordial titan wanted to know what the Far Thinkers were doing. The ritualists had managed to link all Far Thinkers together, but when that single primordial titan observed the ritual, all Far Thinkers became distorted. The ritualists went mad, their souls became forever distorted, and their bodies cursed to never change. The civilian Far Thinkers became primordial archons. The primordial titans tried to recreate the Far Thinkers, and that was how the first humans were created, to prevent a replication of the Far Thinkers mistakes, the humans were no longer able to create permanent sympathetic bonds. The primordial titans also altered the fabric of the plane to put a barrier between entities in the psychic realm and themselves. The creation of this barrier forever altered the primordial titans. The barrier allowed the primordial archons to influence humanity to themselves. As the ages passed, humanity went from hunter gatherers and the Stone Age, to agriculture and permanent cities. The first human city Enrah was ruled by priests and kings. The kings priests would work together to create and use rituals to communicate with the primordial archons to seek advice, and the kings would use the priests to rule and manage the city. The priests recorded the fractured history provided by lucid primordial archons. Eventually they grew envious of the connection between the Far Thinkers and the primordial titans. The priests devised rituals to try and crack the barrier between man and the primordial titans. Their first attempt ended in partial failure, they were incapable of reaching the primordial titans, but were capable of using the psychic realm to alter physical reality. This led to the birth of the first human psychics. The king of the time learned of this ritual and performed it themselves. Thus giving birth to the first psychic king. The psychics used their powers to aid in construction, conquest, and farming. Yet, as the psychics continued to use their power to alter physical reality they began to deform. First, half of their skull would grow in size. The first noticeable side effect was the eye of that half of the face falling out of socket. It was only the skull and brain that grew, so skin and muscle would start tearing, and the neck would no longer be able to support the head. At some point the psychics would be forced to use their powers to just survive, but that led to further and further deformation. Once the skull devours the rest of the psychics body, the psychic would be trapped in the psychic realm, the only thing keeping them alive was rituals performed by the priests. As the third generation after the birth of human psychics passed, society in Enrah began to breakdown because resources were being wasted on rituals to prolong the lives of the psychics. This might have been fine if all things stayed the same, but that decade saw successive droughts and a lack of food production. Noticing this the king and priests tried to crack the barrier between man and the primordial titans once more. With help from the primordial archons, this ritual succeeded. The primordial titans were injured from creating the barrier and now that the barrier was destroyed the psychic and material realms also became injured. Void leaked into the material realm, and Æther into the psychic. The Void began to corrupt life, and the Æther made the psychic realm closer to reality. There became only a small distance between the material and psychic realms. The primordial titans began to deform. The presence of the primordial titans was felt across the world, and everything began to deform. The priests of Enrah, sane primordial titans, and some primordial Archons began to look for solutions. Soon after the sun went out and the moon was destroyed. All but five primordial titans went mad. These five primordial titans came together to dismantle all other primordial titans they used their bodies to stabilize the ground, their blood to stabilize the seas, from each an eye was taken to recreate the sun, and each had a tooth removed to recreate the moon. What remained of their heads were scattered across the plane to create the first stars. The primordial archons began to merge with reality creating never before seen creatures and monsters, humanity was no longer the only intelligent life form. The priests of Enrah and the five primordial titans worked together to reduce the corruption brought by the Void and psychic realm. In the process all rituals lost their potency forevermore. The king and the priests were merged together to create the first god, and the five primordial titans retreated to the stars to keep the corrupted heads of their family away from the world. The first God was created to manage the world. It was the god of civilization. This was the birth of the first age.
Here is another one, this time another outline. Franz has the ability to bring suspects into an ethereal room of truth, given he has spent 5 minutes with them, or collects the blood or hair of the suspect and knows their name and face. In the room of truth only culprits can lie, however anyone can refuse to answer any question. He can only use the room 3x a scenario + during accusation(s).
Franz’s goal is to find and successfully accuse the culprit before the culprit kills him, themselves, or everyone besides Franz and the culprit. In the case of multiple culprits he must find and accuse all culprits before all culprits are dead. Franz will be given a task at the beginning of each scenario, he must complete this task to accuse any culprit. Franz has been cursed to be transported into murder mystery scenarios until he successfully completes 12 consecutive scenarios. To complete a scenario, he is given a task he must complete on top of having to find and accuse the culprit(s) before he is killed, the culprit(s) kill themselves, or before they kill everyone besides Franz and the culprit(s).
A scenario will be consecutively repeated if Franz does not complete his task. If Franz completes his task, but fails to accuse the correct or all correct culprits, then he may choose to repeat the scenario until he solves it. In the case of skipping to the next scenario, he must solve the next scenario before he can get a new one. Repeat scenarios will keep the same location, pieces, and motives but the outcomes will be different.
Franz will be given a suitable identity in each scenario, and must not act outside of their identity. Franz may be given a concrete time limit to complete a task.
To capture the culprit(s) Franz must bring them to the room of truth and correctly identify the motive, how the victim(s) were killed, and how the culprit(s) that he has chosen are the only possible culprit(s) for each crime. His accusation will be judged by an impartial overseer. The possible culprit(s) will also be given a chance to disprove the accusation(s). During the accusation phase both Franz and the accused can only speak the truth, and must present evidence. Confessions made in the room of truth can be used as evidence. If the overseer deems the accused innocent of at least 1 accusation, then the scenario is failed and Franz will be punished.
Before entering a scenario Franz can choose to have an assistant. The assistant will, to the best of their abilities, try and help Franz catch the culprit(s). They may, however try and impede Franz in completing his task. If the assistant is killed, or otherwise dies, Franz will fail the scenarios.
Franz cannot be a culprit. The assistant can not be a culprit.
Culprits are deemed as those who kill, or knowingly assisting those who do kill.
To unlock the room of truth, Franz must complete his task.
On the first scenario any detective is in, it is mandatory for them to have an assistant. This assistant will be a detective who has successfully solved 3 or more scenarios. The assistant is to act as a guide, and to answer any questions pertinent to how to solve a scenario. This assistant cannot solve the scenario for the detective, nor can they point out clues that the detective has missed.
Supernatural abilities:
A maximum of one culprit will have what is seen as a supernatural ability. These abilities are:
Threat premonition: the culprit will be able to sense when they are in danger of life and being found out.
Disguise: The culprit can temporarily disguise as any other character in the scenario.
Invisibility: The culprit can turn invisible for 5 minutes a day, given that they are trying to hide.
Persuasion: The culprit can persuade a maximum of 1 other character, not including detectives and assistants, to become a culprit. The culprit will be able to make alibi’s easier. Will also typically be trusted.
Clue master: The culprit will know when a clue to their identity has been found. The culprit can create three contradictory clues per scenario. They can also destroy clues so long as each victim leaves at least one clue to the culprits identy.
Agility: The culprit is super humanly agile, and proficient in escape.
Telepathy: The culprit can read and speak to the minds of other culprits. They will be the prime culprit, and other culprits will not try to harm them.
Face taker: The culprit can seamlessly switch appearances and voices with a victim. The detective must accuse the face taker as a face taker, and point out their original identity.
Living dead: This culprit can die and revive under a different identity one time. The detective must accuse the living dead as such, and point out their original identity.
In the case of a repeated scenario there is only one ability that can be in play, but the holder of that ability may be different.
Interactive part: The audience can leave a comment on a chapter, and Franz may read it. He will be given access to these comments when he sleeps, or is in the room of truth.
Franz was once a mortician, he likes grape soda and reading. He is extremely socially awkward, and makes sure to put on disposable gloves whenever he might touch something that is slightly dirty. He always carries a box of such gloves. Why is he cursed: He removed 100 teeth from corpses under his care, for a ritual to speak better. His greatest strength is being unassuming. His greatest weakness is understanding others. He has been bullied and harassed by nearly everyone he knows for his inability to speak well. Sometimes he will say something extremely rude, sometimes he will be unable to speak when he wishes to, and when he does speak it is often paired with skipping or stuttering over words. He has always wished to have many friends, and outside of his mother, all of the people he talks to are from online forums. He avoids social media because he is scared of how many people can see what he says. One day his mother dies in a car accident, and at her funeral he cannot say a word. That night he vents on a forum and someone he knows links him to a ritual that needs 100 human teeth, a pound of silver wire, and a freshly pulled tooth from the ritualist. You are to peirce every tooth with the silver wire, with your tooth last, to pray to the toothed god, and then to pierce your cheeks with the wire. If the wire turns black, you have succeeded.
Scenario 1
Setting: Forest vacation resort, 15 people, mild flooding and isolated
Max time limit: 12 days.
Characters: Franz, detective.
Jonathan, assistant.
Suzy, culprit.
Sammy, accomplice.
Henry, retiree
Doris, retiree
Gary: Writer
Louis, doctor
Abigail, newlywed
Tomas, newlywed
Zack: photographer
Mason, staff
William, staff
Jenifer, staff
Yaren, staff
Motivation: Suzy and Sammy know Zack is loaded, and have been tracking him for a while now. Zack has 5k in cash on him, and a few items/artifacts that are each priceless. They fail in their robbery and kill Zack and Abigail who witnesses the incident. They cannot escape because of the weather. The next day, Suzy will either continue killing out of paranoia, or she will commit suicide out of distress. If she continues killing, Sammy will be the next victim then she will kill to hinder the investigation or commit sucide.
Task: Fully examine the resort building before night 1 ends.
CH1
Scene 1
Franz has a toothed wire piercing both his cheeks, and is bleeding out. An entity made of teeth is judging him.
Scenes 2-4
Montage of Franz failing to speak, or speak properly, each later and later in time. The first he is scolded for being rude 5 or 6 years old. The second he hesitates before speaking and is proclaimed as rude once more being called rude 12 years old. The third he doesn’t even try to speak, 16-18. Each scene will be interspersed with Franz’s mother trying to help him.
Scene 5
Franz finds some community in obscure web forms.
Scene 6
Franz is 22 and a mortician. His mother has died, and he was unable to say anything. Not when she was ill in the hospital, or when the few friends she had showed up.
Scene 7
Franz reads and decides to act out a ritual that can help him speak he found in the forums he visited.
Scene 8
Week 2. He has stolen 12 molars from corpses he was entrusted with. This time he decides to take four, instead of the one or two he had been.
Scene 9
Week 5. He is at 57 teeth stolen and is getting paranoid after a coworker says something about how the face of a corpse he worked on looked weird. He decides not to take more than 1 for a few days.
Scene 10
He has all 100 teeth and prepares the ritual.
Scene 11
He enacts the ritual and we are back at the first scene.
Scene 12
The Toothed God decides to punish Franz, and forces him to become a detective who must flawlessly solve twelve consecutive scenarios. All of this will be watched by an outside audience. However his punishment is ‘lenient’ in the fact that Franz will have access to the room of truth, comments by the audience, and an assistant if he decides to take one.
Franz’s goal is to find and successfully accuse the culprit before the culprit kills him, themselves, or everyone besides Franz and the culprit. In the case of multiple culprits he must find and accuse all culprits before all culprits are dead. Franz will be given a task at the beginning of each scenario, he must complete this task to accuse any culprit. Franz has been cursed to be transported into murder mystery scenarios until he successfully completes 12 consecutive scenarios. To complete a scenario, he is given a task he must complete on top of having to find and accuse the culprit(s) before he is killed, the culprit(s) kill themselves, or before they kill everyone besides Franz and the culprit(s).
A scenario will be consecutively repeated if Franz does not complete his task. If Franz completes his task, but fails to accuse the correct or all correct culprits, then he may choose to repeat the scenario until he solves it. In the case of skipping to the next scenario, he must solve the next scenario before he can get a new one. Repeat scenarios will keep the same location, pieces, and motives but the outcomes will be different.
Franz will be given a suitable identity in each scenario, and must not act outside of their identity. Franz may be given a concrete time limit to complete a task.
To capture the culprit(s) Franz must bring them to the room of truth and correctly identify the motive, how the victim(s) were killed, and how the culprit(s) that he has chosen are the only possible culprit(s) for each crime. His accusation will be judged by an impartial overseer. The possible culprit(s) will also be given a chance to disprove the accusation(s). During the accusation phase both Franz and the accused can only speak the truth, and must present evidence. Confessions made in the room of truth can be used as evidence. If the overseer deems the accused innocent of at least 1 accusation, then the scenario is failed and Franz will be punished.
Before entering a scenario Franz can choose to have an assistant. The assistant will, to the best of their abilities, try and help Franz catch the culprit(s). They may, however try and impede Franz in completing his task. If the assistant is killed, or otherwise dies, Franz will fail the scenarios.
Franz cannot be a culprit. The assistant can not be a culprit.
Culprits are deemed as those who kill, or knowingly assisting those who do kill.
To unlock the room of truth, Franz must complete his task.
On the first scenario any detective is in, it is mandatory for them to have an assistant. This assistant will be a detective who has successfully solved 3 or more scenarios. The assistant is to act as a guide, and to answer any questions pertinent to how to solve a scenario. This assistant cannot solve the scenario for the detective, nor can they point out clues that the detective has missed.
Supernatural abilities:
A maximum of one culprit will have what is seen as a supernatural ability. These abilities are:
Threat premonition: the culprit will be able to sense when they are in danger of life and being found out.
Disguise: The culprit can temporarily disguise as any other character in the scenario.
Invisibility: The culprit can turn invisible for 5 minutes a day, given that they are trying to hide.
Persuasion: The culprit can persuade a maximum of 1 other character, not including detectives and assistants, to become a culprit. The culprit will be able to make alibi’s easier. Will also typically be trusted.
Clue master: The culprit will know when a clue to their identity has been found. The culprit can create three contradictory clues per scenario. They can also destroy clues so long as each victim leaves at least one clue to the culprits identy.
Agility: The culprit is super humanly agile, and proficient in escape.
Telepathy: The culprit can read and speak to the minds of other culprits. They will be the prime culprit, and other culprits will not try to harm them.
Face taker: The culprit can seamlessly switch appearances and voices with a victim. The detective must accuse the face taker as a face taker, and point out their original identity.
Living dead: This culprit can die and revive under a different identity one time. The detective must accuse the living dead as such, and point out their original identity.
In the case of a repeated scenario there is only one ability that can be in play, but the holder of that ability may be different.
Interactive part: The audience can leave a comment on a chapter, and Franz may read it. He will be given access to these comments when he sleeps, or is in the room of truth.
Franz was once a mortician, he likes grape soda and reading. He is extremely socially awkward, and makes sure to put on disposable gloves whenever he might touch something that is slightly dirty. He always carries a box of such gloves. Why is he cursed: He removed 100 teeth from corpses under his care, for a ritual to speak better. His greatest strength is being unassuming. His greatest weakness is understanding others. He has been bullied and harassed by nearly everyone he knows for his inability to speak well. Sometimes he will say something extremely rude, sometimes he will be unable to speak when he wishes to, and when he does speak it is often paired with skipping or stuttering over words. He has always wished to have many friends, and outside of his mother, all of the people he talks to are from online forums. He avoids social media because he is scared of how many people can see what he says. One day his mother dies in a car accident, and at her funeral he cannot say a word. That night he vents on a forum and someone he knows links him to a ritual that needs 100 human teeth, a pound of silver wire, and a freshly pulled tooth from the ritualist. You are to peirce every tooth with the silver wire, with your tooth last, to pray to the toothed god, and then to pierce your cheeks with the wire. If the wire turns black, you have succeeded.
Scenario 1
Setting: Forest vacation resort, 15 people, mild flooding and isolated
Max time limit: 12 days.
Characters: Franz, detective.
Jonathan, assistant.
Suzy, culprit.
Sammy, accomplice.
Henry, retiree
Doris, retiree
Gary: Writer
Louis, doctor
Abigail, newlywed
Tomas, newlywed
Zack: photographer
Mason, staff
William, staff
Jenifer, staff
Yaren, staff
Motivation: Suzy and Sammy know Zack is loaded, and have been tracking him for a while now. Zack has 5k in cash on him, and a few items/artifacts that are each priceless. They fail in their robbery and kill Zack and Abigail who witnesses the incident. They cannot escape because of the weather. The next day, Suzy will either continue killing out of paranoia, or she will commit suicide out of distress. If she continues killing, Sammy will be the next victim then she will kill to hinder the investigation or commit sucide.
Task: Fully examine the resort building before night 1 ends.
CH1
Scene 1
Franz has a toothed wire piercing both his cheeks, and is bleeding out. An entity made of teeth is judging him.
Scenes 2-4
Montage of Franz failing to speak, or speak properly, each later and later in time. The first he is scolded for being rude 5 or 6 years old. The second he hesitates before speaking and is proclaimed as rude once more being called rude 12 years old. The third he doesn’t even try to speak, 16-18. Each scene will be interspersed with Franz’s mother trying to help him.
Scene 5
Franz finds some community in obscure web forms.
Scene 6
Franz is 22 and a mortician. His mother has died, and he was unable to say anything. Not when she was ill in the hospital, or when the few friends she had showed up.
Scene 7
Franz reads and decides to act out a ritual that can help him speak he found in the forums he visited.
Scene 8
Week 2. He has stolen 12 molars from corpses he was entrusted with. This time he decides to take four, instead of the one or two he had been.
Scene 9
Week 5. He is at 57 teeth stolen and is getting paranoid after a coworker says something about how the face of a corpse he worked on looked weird. He decides not to take more than 1 for a few days.
Scene 10
He has all 100 teeth and prepares the ritual.
Scene 11
He enacts the ritual and we are back at the first scene.
Scene 12
The Toothed God decides to punish Franz, and forces him to become a detective who must flawlessly solve twelve consecutive scenarios. All of this will be watched by an outside audience. However his punishment is ‘lenient’ in the fact that Franz will have access to the room of truth, comments by the audience, and an assistant if he decides to take one.
Here is the next one. Power info
The sympathetic principle is widely known and accepted. Like is attracted to and can affect like. There are various historical traditions that try to manipulate it. One constant is that humans by themselves cannot make permanent sympathetic connections. Often to artificially form one a practitioner needs to wait for an important date/time, use a metal like copper-silver-gold, use some sort of gemstone, and/or perform a complex ceremony. It is largely seen as either something for a researcher/government or as a marketing gimmick in modern day times, much as an ionic &/or magnetic talisman.
The psychic realm is a space where the mind sits, it is through interaction with the physical and psychic realms that consciousness develops. Each mind records information and makes connections between the info. The mind has a natural barrier that loosens when asleep. There are purely psychic entities in the psychic realm, they are not considered minds because they don’t have a body in the physical realm. The goal of these entities is often to gain a body. Psychics can use their mind to alter both the physical and psychic realms, however they will pay a physical price. One eye socket will grow too wide for the eye, then their teeth and tongue will fall out, and they will go deaf in one ear. If the psychic survives this legends say that then their skull will gradually grow and consume their body, before becoming a star.
Characters
Marius - MC. 20 yo. He is the president of the Occult Technology Club, a college club. He likes to read occult books and tries to combine that info with simple technology through ceremonies and rituals. He is best friends with Gustav and has known him for six years. He claims to be seeking immortality, but is actually just trying to be with friends. He is the prodigy type and is usually direct and to the point in conversation. He will never needlessly obfuscate information, and will always do his best to be direct and to the point.
Gustav - 20 yo. He is the tech guy of the Occult Technology Club. He is studying to be an electronic engineer. He builds the devices, Marius does the ceremonies. Best friends with Marius, and has known him for 6 years. His family is quite rich. He likes to tinker, and being in a club that allows that while being with a friend is why he joined the club. He is somewhat lazy, and likes to talk in circles. He wants to, and mostly has, create a place where he can relax and tinker. He will never eat food he doesn’t prepare himself, and will always rather be by himself than the head of a team/group.
Lui - 21 yo. She is the software girl of the Occult Technology Club. She is studying to be a software engineer. Gustav builds the device, and she programs it. An old member of the club, she tends to focus on her studies. She likes to run in the evening, and then go to the club. She bounces back in conversation. She wants to work with Famous Space Agency. She will never be late, and will always look for ways forwards.
John - 22 yo. A peripheral member of the Occult Technology Club. He knows a lot about the history of different occult cultures and histories. He is in his senior year, and has been focusing on his classes. When he is free he usually spends his time with Terence, his girlfriend, and occasionally is in the club room with her. He usually just sticks to a corner unless he hears something that catches his interest. He wants to get a well paying job and move in with Terrence. He will never not speak up if he thinks something is incorrect, and will always be afraid of taking action to change things himself.
Terence - 23 yo. She is a biologist and works with an algae farm. She is curious about the occult but has little training in it. She has already graduated and spends most of her time at work or with John. She is curious about the world and often asks questions. She wants to find more time to relax. She will never try to break with the norm, and will always try to keep her life peaceful.
Eraser -?? yo. Able to erase information and memory. Worked as an assassin for an extremist group. Is gradually forgetting who they are. They are showing drastic signs of psychic disease, elongated neck, enlarged skull, one eye socket significantly larger than the other. They want x’s notebooks because they think they might solve their issues and fix their memories. They are scared and backed into a corner with no qualms about doing anything they can to escape.
Groups
Occult Technology Club - Made up of four friends with various levels of interest in both the occult and technology. Marius is the leader of the club, Gustav is the electronics and device guy, and Lui is the software girl. John occasionally pitches in with his knowledge of different occult cultures, but is focusing on his studies. They create a device that allows them to ask questions and receive complex answers from the psychic realm, and send information through it. They use that knowledge to create various devices ultimately leading to ‘Wooden Immortality’. Once the immortality project became feasible they started to catch unwanted attention.
Runokiab - A government organization that monitors and regulates changes, unnatural interactions, and incidents within the psychic realm. They are tasked with capturing &/or eliminating psychics, preventing wide knowledge of the psychic realm, and developing technology, rituals, and weapons that interact or use a connection with the psychic realm.
Kotoribako? Cursed box, probably change name eventually.
Idea 1
An occult/psychic club comes across a book that introduces them to the psychic realm that overlaps their world. They create a devise using some of the info in the book that allows them to ask for & transmit information from the psychic realm.
Structure 1
Group comes across hidden info
Chapter 1
Scene 1
Characters: Marius + Gustav
Setting: Club Room
Goals: Establish relationship between Gustav and Marius, and the project.
What happens: Marius pulls a crystal out of a pressure vessel, there is a wire and what seems to be a metal plate inside it. On the plate is a drawing of an eye on one side, and a mouth on the other. Marius asks Gustav if he is ready to begin his end of their project. Gustav says probably, he will do his best, not to expect much, but he will do his best to get it done. Marius then asks him if Lui is ready, and he says probably, I am pretty sure she has a framework done, but will have to edit it to coincide with the device he made. Gustav asks if today was the day, Marius says yes, Gustav asks if he needs accompaniment, Marius says he needs to get through this himself, Gustav says not to be harsh on himself and says that it is almost time for Marius’s first class.
Scene
Chapter 2
Scene 1
Characters: Marius
Setting: Entrance Death Auction
Goals: Marius wants to get the notebook.
What happens: Marius heard that infamous person x died and that an auction was going to be held to sell off his stuff. Marius had been in contact with x before their death and wants to get a hold of a notebook that x said held some of their most important knowledge.
2
Characters: Marius + Crowd
Setting: inside and during auction.
Goals: Marius wants to get the notebook.
What happens: Marius after meeting with x’s friends joins the auction, it took a while but he managed to get a series of 13 notebooks for $15. After leaving he sees that a group in one of the corners of the auction hall is pointing at him.
3
Characters: Marius + Gustav + Lui
Setting: Clubroom
Goals: Marius wants to start reading the notebooks. Gustav and Lui want to finish building the Occult Clubs new Experiment/PC.
What Happens: After getting to the club room Marius tries to get the others to help him look through the notebooks, but they insist they can only do one thing at a time and that they need help with the current experimental machine. Marius says that he has already built the attachment and that the case is ready for the ceremony at anytime. Gustav then tells him he needs help attaching his ‘attachment’ to the motherboard, and asks why he couldn’t have made it compatible with an expansion slot. In the end Marius helps keep track of the parts as Gustav does his thing.
Scene 4
Characters: Lui, Gustav, Marius
Setting: Club room
Goal: They all want to test the experiment.
What happens: They boot up the PC and it opens to a black screen with a blinking green line. Looking similar to command prompt, but takes up the whole screen, and is the only thing available on the PC. Lui describes that this is the quickest UI she could code, and how it works. Essentially you type /query_card_slot_9 and it will give a response. If you want to ask a question you type /ask_card_slot_9**<Enter question>** then it will answer. After the explanation she sends a query, and it says that the card is connected. Then Marius asks to take over the PC and asks <What is the number of fingers Marius X is holding up behind his back?> It answers correctly. Gustav and Lui say that that question proves nothing, and they had already come up with the test they would perform. Gustav goes and grabs a notebook and writes a sentence on it. Lui then asks it <What did Gustav X write on notebook #13> and it responded <Gustav wrote -I want to eat rn, but I guess we have to do this test- in notebook #13 1 minute and 15 seconds ago>
Chapter 3
Scene 1
Characters: Marius
Setting: Clubroom
Goal: That night. Looking for the notebook before thinking to ask the Seer.
What happens: Marius is alone at the clubroom since it doubles as his dorm, he is looking for the notebook x mentioned. Unfortunately he doesn’t know how to start it so he calls Lui for help. She tells him to look at the time, she will help him tomorrow.
Scene 2
Characters: Marius and Lui
Setting: The next morning.
Goal: Set limits for the Seer chip.
What happens: Marius asks the Seer where the notebook he is looking for is. The seer says that it doesn’t have enough info. Marius says he is looking for the notebook x left for him. The Seer says that none of the Notebooks say or imply that they were left for him.
Main character sees the corner of a hidden power
Main character group discovers a revolutionary technology
They develop it in secret while slowly growing the team
They help the lives of team members and friends with discovery
They are discovered by hidden power but don’t know yet
Things start going wrong
They start making a final improvement to invention (might change)
The hidden power starts threatening them
They freak out and at the same time finish improvement
They use the improvement to escape
Cat and mouse as the hidden power tries to capture/kill team members
They start fighting back but must sacrifice the improvements made by invention (need to change)
They eek out a pyrrhic victory against hidden power
They gradually improve invention to reclaim what was lost
Final unsteady victory/defeat
The sympathetic principle is widely known and accepted. Like is attracted to and can affect like. There are various historical traditions that try to manipulate it. One constant is that humans by themselves cannot make permanent sympathetic connections. Often to artificially form one a practitioner needs to wait for an important date/time, use a metal like copper-silver-gold, use some sort of gemstone, and/or perform a complex ceremony. It is largely seen as either something for a researcher/government or as a marketing gimmick in modern day times, much as an ionic &/or magnetic talisman.
The psychic realm is a space where the mind sits, it is through interaction with the physical and psychic realms that consciousness develops. Each mind records information and makes connections between the info. The mind has a natural barrier that loosens when asleep. There are purely psychic entities in the psychic realm, they are not considered minds because they don’t have a body in the physical realm. The goal of these entities is often to gain a body. Psychics can use their mind to alter both the physical and psychic realms, however they will pay a physical price. One eye socket will grow too wide for the eye, then their teeth and tongue will fall out, and they will go deaf in one ear. If the psychic survives this legends say that then their skull will gradually grow and consume their body, before becoming a star.
Characters
Marius - MC. 20 yo. He is the president of the Occult Technology Club, a college club. He likes to read occult books and tries to combine that info with simple technology through ceremonies and rituals. He is best friends with Gustav and has known him for six years. He claims to be seeking immortality, but is actually just trying to be with friends. He is the prodigy type and is usually direct and to the point in conversation. He will never needlessly obfuscate information, and will always do his best to be direct and to the point.
Gustav - 20 yo. He is the tech guy of the Occult Technology Club. He is studying to be an electronic engineer. He builds the devices, Marius does the ceremonies. Best friends with Marius, and has known him for 6 years. His family is quite rich. He likes to tinker, and being in a club that allows that while being with a friend is why he joined the club. He is somewhat lazy, and likes to talk in circles. He wants to, and mostly has, create a place where he can relax and tinker. He will never eat food he doesn’t prepare himself, and will always rather be by himself than the head of a team/group.
Lui - 21 yo. She is the software girl of the Occult Technology Club. She is studying to be a software engineer. Gustav builds the device, and she programs it. An old member of the club, she tends to focus on her studies. She likes to run in the evening, and then go to the club. She bounces back in conversation. She wants to work with Famous Space Agency. She will never be late, and will always look for ways forwards.
John - 22 yo. A peripheral member of the Occult Technology Club. He knows a lot about the history of different occult cultures and histories. He is in his senior year, and has been focusing on his classes. When he is free he usually spends his time with Terence, his girlfriend, and occasionally is in the club room with her. He usually just sticks to a corner unless he hears something that catches his interest. He wants to get a well paying job and move in with Terrence. He will never not speak up if he thinks something is incorrect, and will always be afraid of taking action to change things himself.
Terence - 23 yo. She is a biologist and works with an algae farm. She is curious about the occult but has little training in it. She has already graduated and spends most of her time at work or with John. She is curious about the world and often asks questions. She wants to find more time to relax. She will never try to break with the norm, and will always try to keep her life peaceful.
Eraser -?? yo. Able to erase information and memory. Worked as an assassin for an extremist group. Is gradually forgetting who they are. They are showing drastic signs of psychic disease, elongated neck, enlarged skull, one eye socket significantly larger than the other. They want x’s notebooks because they think they might solve their issues and fix their memories. They are scared and backed into a corner with no qualms about doing anything they can to escape.
Groups
Occult Technology Club - Made up of four friends with various levels of interest in both the occult and technology. Marius is the leader of the club, Gustav is the electronics and device guy, and Lui is the software girl. John occasionally pitches in with his knowledge of different occult cultures, but is focusing on his studies. They create a device that allows them to ask questions and receive complex answers from the psychic realm, and send information through it. They use that knowledge to create various devices ultimately leading to ‘Wooden Immortality’. Once the immortality project became feasible they started to catch unwanted attention.
Runokiab - A government organization that monitors and regulates changes, unnatural interactions, and incidents within the psychic realm. They are tasked with capturing &/or eliminating psychics, preventing wide knowledge of the psychic realm, and developing technology, rituals, and weapons that interact or use a connection with the psychic realm.
Kotoribako? Cursed box, probably change name eventually.
Idea 1
An occult/psychic club comes across a book that introduces them to the psychic realm that overlaps their world. They create a devise using some of the info in the book that allows them to ask for & transmit information from the psychic realm.
Structure 1
Group comes across hidden info
Chapter 1
Scene 1
Characters: Marius + Gustav
Setting: Club Room
Goals: Establish relationship between Gustav and Marius, and the project.
What happens: Marius pulls a crystal out of a pressure vessel, there is a wire and what seems to be a metal plate inside it. On the plate is a drawing of an eye on one side, and a mouth on the other. Marius asks Gustav if he is ready to begin his end of their project. Gustav says probably, he will do his best, not to expect much, but he will do his best to get it done. Marius then asks him if Lui is ready, and he says probably, I am pretty sure she has a framework done, but will have to edit it to coincide with the device he made. Gustav asks if today was the day, Marius says yes, Gustav asks if he needs accompaniment, Marius says he needs to get through this himself, Gustav says not to be harsh on himself and says that it is almost time for Marius’s first class.
Scene
Chapter 2
Scene 1
Characters: Marius
Setting: Entrance Death Auction
Goals: Marius wants to get the notebook.
What happens: Marius heard that infamous person x died and that an auction was going to be held to sell off his stuff. Marius had been in contact with x before their death and wants to get a hold of a notebook that x said held some of their most important knowledge.
2
Characters: Marius + Crowd
Setting: inside and during auction.
Goals: Marius wants to get the notebook.
What happens: Marius after meeting with x’s friends joins the auction, it took a while but he managed to get a series of 13 notebooks for $15. After leaving he sees that a group in one of the corners of the auction hall is pointing at him.
3
Characters: Marius + Gustav + Lui
Setting: Clubroom
Goals: Marius wants to start reading the notebooks. Gustav and Lui want to finish building the Occult Clubs new Experiment/PC.
What Happens: After getting to the club room Marius tries to get the others to help him look through the notebooks, but they insist they can only do one thing at a time and that they need help with the current experimental machine. Marius says that he has already built the attachment and that the case is ready for the ceremony at anytime. Gustav then tells him he needs help attaching his ‘attachment’ to the motherboard, and asks why he couldn’t have made it compatible with an expansion slot. In the end Marius helps keep track of the parts as Gustav does his thing.
Scene 4
Characters: Lui, Gustav, Marius
Setting: Club room
Goal: They all want to test the experiment.
What happens: They boot up the PC and it opens to a black screen with a blinking green line. Looking similar to command prompt, but takes up the whole screen, and is the only thing available on the PC. Lui describes that this is the quickest UI she could code, and how it works. Essentially you type /query_card_slot_9 and it will give a response. If you want to ask a question you type /ask_card_slot_9**<Enter question>** then it will answer. After the explanation she sends a query, and it says that the card is connected. Then Marius asks to take over the PC and asks <What is the number of fingers Marius X is holding up behind his back?> It answers correctly. Gustav and Lui say that that question proves nothing, and they had already come up with the test they would perform. Gustav goes and grabs a notebook and writes a sentence on it. Lui then asks it <What did Gustav X write on notebook #13> and it responded <Gustav wrote -I want to eat rn, but I guess we have to do this test- in notebook #13 1 minute and 15 seconds ago>
Chapter 3
Scene 1
Characters: Marius
Setting: Clubroom
Goal: That night. Looking for the notebook before thinking to ask the Seer.
What happens: Marius is alone at the clubroom since it doubles as his dorm, he is looking for the notebook x mentioned. Unfortunately he doesn’t know how to start it so he calls Lui for help. She tells him to look at the time, she will help him tomorrow.
Scene 2
Characters: Marius and Lui
Setting: The next morning.
Goal: Set limits for the Seer chip.
What happens: Marius asks the Seer where the notebook he is looking for is. The seer says that it doesn’t have enough info. Marius says he is looking for the notebook x left for him. The Seer says that none of the Notebooks say or imply that they were left for him.
Main character sees the corner of a hidden power
Main character group discovers a revolutionary technology
They develop it in secret while slowly growing the team
They help the lives of team members and friends with discovery
They are discovered by hidden power but don’t know yet
Things start going wrong
They start making a final improvement to invention (might change)
The hidden power starts threatening them
They freak out and at the same time finish improvement
They use the improvement to escape
Cat and mouse as the hidden power tries to capture/kill team members
They start fighting back but must sacrifice the improvements made by invention (need to change)
They eek out a pyrrhic victory against hidden power
They gradually improve invention to reclaim what was lost
Final unsteady victory/defeat
Here is the next one. Setting: early 20th century magic world. The country in question, Efeya, has partially industrialized using machines powered by both mechanics and the arcane. The arcane came from quartz, and guided through sigils and Arcan lines. In this plane, it seems that quartz stores a force often called Arcan.
Arcan, like quartz, is united with six sides/faces: heat, force, growth, dream, transmutation, and tempering. Arcan can only be used in two ways. The first is the destruction of a quartz crystal, which will cause a burst of Arcan energy of at least one of the sides such as dream causing hallucinations, force a kinetic burst, heat the ignition of flammable objects, etc. The second is inscription which through inscribing sigils and magic lines can in a sense program the release of one or more faces of Arcan energy. Arcan lines guide the Arcan, while sigils give it directions. Arcan lines are typically carved into the quartz and the surrounding material, such as stone or iron, before being filled by copper, silver, and/or gold wire because they do not react with the faces unlike iron which rusts into dust, thread which grows, etcetera. Of course one doesn’t need to fill the carved lines with wire, but then the Arcan is prone to spilling. Typically the larger and the clearer the quartz the more faceless Arcan it holds. If it is colored such as amethyst the Arcan will already have a face, in this case dream.
Heat: Red/pink. Self explanatory, but can be used to heat and cool things. Inverse = Order, where things affected will, by the face, go to order from chaos.
Force: White. Self explanatory, but can be used to impart kinetic energy to things. Inverse = Storage, will store kinetic, electric, heat, and other forms of energy and convert it into Arcan
Growth: Green. Causes things to grow and/or shrink. Inverse = Decay, causes things to decay, rust, rot, etc.
Dream: Purple. The most mysterious side, causes hallucinations, illusions, nightmares, emotional manipulation etc. Inverse = Reality, turns mind into matter.
Transmutation: Yellow. Can change one thing into another both in substance and/or in essence, typically the least efficient use of Arcan. Inverse = Revert, will return the subject to a previous state.
Tempering: Blue. Increases/decreases the toughness, density, and/or the purity of something. Inverse = combination, allows the subject to combine with other subjects.
Efeya is a burgeoning capitalist country that is made up of five broad classes, the nobility, the clergy/scholarly class, the capitalist class, the working class, and the peasantry. The nobility is marked by the blessings of divine entities which also bestow the clergy with power. Said divine entities can not directly interact with the plane, so use the clergy as their representatives. The clergy have some access to those entities' powers then. Mainly through blessings and curses and knowledge. The scholarly part of the class has also found out how to manipulate the soul to perform blessings and curses. Blessings cause beneficial effects to its target, while curses the opposite. They both require either direct or sympathetic contact with the target(s), and cause damage to the soul and body of the caster. The stronger the curse/blessing the more damage. If the curse/blessing is narrowed through conditions it can lessen the amount of damage. Typically the clergy tend to have less damage to the body, at the loss of ego, while the scholarly tend to do the opposite. The capitalist class owns the land and factories which hold Arcan technology and gain their power through using that ownership to exploit their workers for a profit. They currently want to eliminate the nobility and replace themselves as the head of the state, while diminishing worker power. The workers gain their living through giving their work to the capitalist class in return for a wage. When workers unite together they can form a union which allows for collective bargaining. Currently, although some people are, the great majority lack class consciousness. The peasantry is made largely of three groups, farmers who own and make their living from farmland, farmers who must sell their produce to their landlords(serfs), and farmers who rent the land they farm. For the latter two, they desire to eliminate the landlords control over the land they work, while the first wishes to raise into the capitalist class.
The Hydra: The spearheaded of the invasion. Tasked with distracting the plane's residents from seeing the tear to their world, and stabilizing the connection. They are planted, like a seed. The ‘seed’ is a wormlike entity that can burrow through the planar shell. Once it goes through, it will find a populated position and plant itself. It then disrupts the emotions of the surroundings. The trunk grows after the seed drinks the blood of sacrifice. The trunk will grow a mouth and start chanting. The chanting creates an illusion. Hiding its form by manipulating memory, and gaining better control over manipulation of emotions. It lures intelligent beings to its trunk and manipulates them to feed the mouth. After the mouth is fed, a new mouth is grown, but the chanting stops when the single mouth eats. Thus it can be seen. With two mouths this weakness disappears. It will continue this process until it has three mouths. One for chanting, one for feeding, and the final for spawning. It will bite and inject a parasite that will turn its host into a Terror. The Terrors will sacrifice to their progenitor and the trunk will grow ‘branches’ around the mouths. As the branches grow, so too does the hole in the planar shell. The trunk will shrink as it grows roots that will bind a portal to the hole in the shell. The branches will grow mouths that can grow into sub branches, and so on. But, as it grows its ability to manipulate memories and emotions weakens to the point that earplugs are enough to stop its effects. Each mouth can either eat, chant, or spawn. As it grows, the size of its influence grows too. The chants have a secondary use, teaching the Terrors how to contact the progenitors.
The Terrors: The Terrors are the primary force of the invasion's vanguard. They are created when the Hydra’s parasites infect an intelligent being. The first change will be that the skin of the victim will turn purple and grey. This will take a week. The second step would be that the host will lose their senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch, at the same time the host body will grow sharp talons. This will take about 2 weeks. Gradually the parasites will eat and replace the host's brain with themselves. They will fuse together in the brain cavity, and create their own intelligence. This intelligence can connect to the Hydra, to learn its purpose and how to start the ritual to contact the progenitors. It is also at this point that it can be said that a Terror has been born. This can take one to five days. The Terrors body will start replacing all orifices with mouths. The mouths of a young Terror can taste the air to detect its surroundings, and chant to disguise itself as an unremarkable member of the previous host's species. The young Terrors are fairly weak. They will search for victims to kill and then carve out and eat their victims nervous system. They can taste thoughts, so they tend to target more intelligent creatures. The young Terrors will grow the more they eat. As they grow more mouths grow upon their bodies, their sense of taste becomes more and more accurate, and they can change their chant to make all who hear it become paralyzed by fear. Eventually the Terror will become a mature Terror, where they will be able to sense and communicate with the world around them with their minds. At this point they can invade the mind of paralyzed victims, and modify their chants to update their illusions to be the guise of their victims. At this point, they feel drawn to the Hydra. The Terrors will create a base there and prepare for the ritual to contact their progenitors. At the same time, the Terrors will start investigating the plane they are in, to make an invasion of it easier. If the Hydra is killed, the Terrors will disperse to try to summon another one. They will also gain the ability to spawn parasites themselves.
Big actors:
The Efeya Parliament: The head of the government that is made solely of nobility whose bloodlines have been blessed by the gods. They recently deposed the royalty, and prevented the rise of the capitalist class with the help of the church of Severn.
The Church of Severn: Made of the followers of the god Severn, who wishes to enter the plane by eliminating the other churches and gaining egoless followers. Currently the biggest church in Efeya due to their help in deposing the royalty.
The Group for Landowner Democracy: A group of capitalists, landlords, and big peasants who wish to gain state power. They believe that they can gain power through protest at the moment. Although calls for revolution are growing.
The Factory Workers Unions: A bunch of local unorganized unions which are trying to improve local working conditions.
The Cult of Knowledge: A group of scholars who bless and curse each other with knowledge, in the hope of seeing divine truth. Their founder is the person who created modern sigils. They are currently being pursued by parliament for treason.
History of Efeya:
Efeya was a small kingdom for about 300 years known for their production of quartzite weapons. 150 years before the start of the story Efeya started expanding and became known as the Empire of Efeya. 70 years before the start of the story, the burgeoning capitalist class managed to eradicate the monarchy with the help of the scholarly class, and gunpowder weapons. A bloody civil war that lasted 15 years ensued before the cult of knowledge, from the neighboring empire of Nadafa, started publishing their findings on sigils and magic lines. The nobility had a stockpile of quartzite weapons that were quickly modified with the new methods. At about the same time more peaceful regions of Efeya started to industrialize. As the burgeoning proletarian class started to stretch, the capitalist class and the nobility came to an unsteady peace. Efeya is now currently run by a parliament solely made of the nobility. 20 years before the start of the story, people figured out how to artificially grow quartz. Seeing the potential, the capitalist class of Efeya quickly set up mining and refining operations in the northern desert. This created towns that quickly began to urbanize as the artificial quartz industry grew. As this industry grew, so too did other industries, such as glass production, steel refining, inscription factories, and machine factories. The biggest is Tseyan, which is right in the center of various quartz sand and iron mining towns, as well as being on the Ahil river.
Tseyan is where the various raw materials are processed. Tseyan has a population of 1.8 million people, 86% are working class, 5% are clergy class, 5% are capitalist class, 3% are scholarly class, and 1% are nobility. The conditions for the working class are poor in Tseyan. The average apartment has 5 occupants, the building is often made of wood, and plumbing is rare. The average worker works for 11 hours a day, and sleeps in work barracks which can hold 200 people each, with a public latrine outside. The average worker lives in a work barrack. With 55% of the workers in Tseyan living in one, 35% rent a room, with the rest being various other types of housing or unhousing. Oftentimes workers must go days with little to no food. The drinking water is of an extremely low quality, streets are often filled with excrement, and diseases are common. There are 7 hospitals, 40 pharmacies, and 27 clinics in Tseyan, and the costs of treatment are often more than most of the workers can afford. The staple foods consist of wheat, barley, and potatoes. The biggest industry is Quartz growing, followed by Steel production, inscription, and glass making. There are 2 train stations in Tseyan. Tseyan is governed by a mayor elected by important citizens of Tseyan, who is then subordinate to the local marquee. Roads in the city are typically made from brick, although dirt roads are not unseen. Roads are often lit by quartz lamps in richer areas, and vegetable oil in poor areas of Tseyan. About 10% of residential buildings have quartz lights, 7% have indoor plumbing, and 5% have heating/boilers. There is one academy of scholars, engineers, and scientific researchers.The police force has 12,000 people, and is often armed. Gun ownership is somewhat low, although not completely uncommon. Unionization efforts are often violently crushed by a combination of the police, and outside mercenaries. Arcan pollution is not well understood, but, at the same time, a growing issue.
The quartz sands has always been a dangerous place, strange creatures, weird storms, random explosions, cancer orbs growing on flesh like cacti, etc. It has always been the job of those north of the Ahil river to prevent the creatures of the sands from invading the rest of Efeya. The main way of doing so was the use of quartzite weapons, long after the Bronze and Iron Age, quartzite weapons have played the role of a cheap strategic source of weaponry. quartz studded weapons were more effective but also more expensive. It was the weaponry of nobility. Quartzite weapons could unleash a controlled shock of its color when impacted, or when shattered or chipped a more explosive blast. It was also relatively safe to turn into weapons. Quartzite arrowheads were the most common, followed by daggers and clubs.
Arcan pollution is often the worst near industrial areas and factories. Arcan pollution is typically characterized by the inverse face of what is being used. I.E. Order, Storage, Decay, Reality, etc. It manifests as strange incidents and many strange things have been happening around Tseyan as of late.
Plot:
Dann Davon is an inscriptor, his father was a quartzite knapper before industrialization. His fathers shop went bankrupt when Dann was 12, and since then he has worked in the quartzite industry. First as a chimney cleaner, (14) then as a miner, and then, after an accident left him with three fingers on his left hand, (17) as an apprentice and later (22) master inscriptor. When Dann was 23, people started randomly disappearing, at about the same time inscription machines had been introduced. The machine allowed for less skilled workers to create simple inscriptions, thus tightening Dann’s and other inscriptor’s income. A local noble's son goes missing and the city grows tense as no one knows who is next. Dann is forced, due to poor income, to join an inscription factory. Here he works as a vice planner, where he is tasked with figuring out how the inscription machines will be organized to create the most amount of heating crystals possible. Once he comes up with a plan, the head planner decides to remove the laying of the copper wire from the plan, making the crystals more likely to explode. The machine workers unite when Dann tells them what has happened, and they formed a union to demand better working conditions. The factory workers won after a week of striking when news of a rival factory catching fire because they ignored adding wire. The union however didn’t dissolve, and the workers elected Dann as the leader. At the same time an unsteady hum echoed throughout the city. People of the city started becoming paranoid as their memories started to become spotty. More and more people start to go missing as the hum grows louder. Factory bosses start to unite as they start increasing workloads, they send the workloads on carriages whose drivers never return. The factory workers throughout the city come together, and form a grand workers syndicate. They start investigating the disappearances and connect it to the insistent hum that permeates the city. A few of them decide to cover their ears for a moment, and memories come flooding back. The memories gradually start to fade as they lower their hands, but they don’t forget that covering their ears is important. And so earmuffs and plugs are fashioned as workers gain control over their workplaces. Before following the carts to the city center where the hydra lied. Six snakes whose tails met like a tree trunk sticking out of the ground, each scale was fashioned from a human face, each mouth chanting. The workers piled up the warming crystals before crushing enough of them with tossed metal weights. A chain reaction burst out, killing the hydra breaking the illusion. The giant closing hole in the sky. The hydra was the vanguard of the invasion. The hole closed, but forces are trying to reopen it.
The workers start their war against its children and the many forces of reaction in Efeya.
Characters:
Dann Davon: Starts the story at 12 years old. Is the son of Aut Davon. He likes to play with the neighborhood kids, and dislikes being in one place for a significant period of time. When he was 5 his mother passed, his father has gradually grown more and more distant as his business starts to fail. He has gone through 4 years of schooling and is literate and can do simple math.
Aut Davon: Starts story at 38 years old. He loves to create things, and dislikes being disturbed. The job of quartzite knapping has been passed down father to son in the Davon family for 5 generations. He is desperate as quartzite weapons are becoming outdated with ‘modern’ firearms and gunpowder weapons, and the rapid industrialization of the quartz growing industry.
Stoss Setz: A 16 year old who signed up for mining the sand. He is quiet, and likes to hum. Is illiterate and sending money to his 3 younger siblings.
Jan Mit: A 13 year old who signed up for mining sand. He is average, likes to play, but is serious when the time calls for it. His parents sent him here.
Fwer Akn: A 15 year old who signed up for mining sand.
Kidori: Is 20 years old and is the supervisor/instructor for the 5 boys. He is stern, but caring. His father was head supervisor 3 years ago before he retired.
Chapter 1
Scene 1:
Characters: Dann Davon
Setting: Monologue
Goal: Dann describes his childhood and important moments before setting up scene 2.
Scene 2:
Characters: Dann Davon, Aut Davon.
Setting: Aut Davon’s quartzite workshop
Goal: Aut Davon takes Dann by the shoulder and tells him that they can’t afford the school anymore.
Scene 3:
Characters: Dann Davon
Setting: Monologue
Goal: Dann describes how his father’s business started to fail and how he had to start working so they could afford their future.
Scene 4:
Characters: Dann Davon, His Aunts and Uncles, a priest of Severn, and a handful of his dad’s friends.
Setting: Funeral at home
Goal: Bring the reader close to the present.
Scene 5:
Characters: Dann Davon
Setting: At his home.
Goal: Dann receives a letter saying that his house is being repossessed due to missed payments and the death of the owner.
Scene 6:
Characters: Dann Davon
Setting: Recruitment office
Goal: Have Dann describe the sand mines, and have signs up.
Chapter 2
Scene 7:
Characters: Dann Davon, Stoss Setz, Jan Mit, Fwer Akn, and Kidori
Setting: Train Carriage
Goal: Introduce the vibes of the newer characters
Plot 2:
The progenitors have released a hydra seed into the swirling chaos of the Abyss.
Arcan, like quartz, is united with six sides/faces: heat, force, growth, dream, transmutation, and tempering. Arcan can only be used in two ways. The first is the destruction of a quartz crystal, which will cause a burst of Arcan energy of at least one of the sides such as dream causing hallucinations, force a kinetic burst, heat the ignition of flammable objects, etc. The second is inscription which through inscribing sigils and magic lines can in a sense program the release of one or more faces of Arcan energy. Arcan lines guide the Arcan, while sigils give it directions. Arcan lines are typically carved into the quartz and the surrounding material, such as stone or iron, before being filled by copper, silver, and/or gold wire because they do not react with the faces unlike iron which rusts into dust, thread which grows, etcetera. Of course one doesn’t need to fill the carved lines with wire, but then the Arcan is prone to spilling. Typically the larger and the clearer the quartz the more faceless Arcan it holds. If it is colored such as amethyst the Arcan will already have a face, in this case dream.
Heat: Red/pink. Self explanatory, but can be used to heat and cool things. Inverse = Order, where things affected will, by the face, go to order from chaos.
Force: White. Self explanatory, but can be used to impart kinetic energy to things. Inverse = Storage, will store kinetic, electric, heat, and other forms of energy and convert it into Arcan
Growth: Green. Causes things to grow and/or shrink. Inverse = Decay, causes things to decay, rust, rot, etc.
Dream: Purple. The most mysterious side, causes hallucinations, illusions, nightmares, emotional manipulation etc. Inverse = Reality, turns mind into matter.
Transmutation: Yellow. Can change one thing into another both in substance and/or in essence, typically the least efficient use of Arcan. Inverse = Revert, will return the subject to a previous state.
Tempering: Blue. Increases/decreases the toughness, density, and/or the purity of something. Inverse = combination, allows the subject to combine with other subjects.
Efeya is a burgeoning capitalist country that is made up of five broad classes, the nobility, the clergy/scholarly class, the capitalist class, the working class, and the peasantry. The nobility is marked by the blessings of divine entities which also bestow the clergy with power. Said divine entities can not directly interact with the plane, so use the clergy as their representatives. The clergy have some access to those entities' powers then. Mainly through blessings and curses and knowledge. The scholarly part of the class has also found out how to manipulate the soul to perform blessings and curses. Blessings cause beneficial effects to its target, while curses the opposite. They both require either direct or sympathetic contact with the target(s), and cause damage to the soul and body of the caster. The stronger the curse/blessing the more damage. If the curse/blessing is narrowed through conditions it can lessen the amount of damage. Typically the clergy tend to have less damage to the body, at the loss of ego, while the scholarly tend to do the opposite. The capitalist class owns the land and factories which hold Arcan technology and gain their power through using that ownership to exploit their workers for a profit. They currently want to eliminate the nobility and replace themselves as the head of the state, while diminishing worker power. The workers gain their living through giving their work to the capitalist class in return for a wage. When workers unite together they can form a union which allows for collective bargaining. Currently, although some people are, the great majority lack class consciousness. The peasantry is made largely of three groups, farmers who own and make their living from farmland, farmers who must sell their produce to their landlords(serfs), and farmers who rent the land they farm. For the latter two, they desire to eliminate the landlords control over the land they work, while the first wishes to raise into the capitalist class.
The Hydra: The spearheaded of the invasion. Tasked with distracting the plane's residents from seeing the tear to their world, and stabilizing the connection. They are planted, like a seed. The ‘seed’ is a wormlike entity that can burrow through the planar shell. Once it goes through, it will find a populated position and plant itself. It then disrupts the emotions of the surroundings. The trunk grows after the seed drinks the blood of sacrifice. The trunk will grow a mouth and start chanting. The chanting creates an illusion. Hiding its form by manipulating memory, and gaining better control over manipulation of emotions. It lures intelligent beings to its trunk and manipulates them to feed the mouth. After the mouth is fed, a new mouth is grown, but the chanting stops when the single mouth eats. Thus it can be seen. With two mouths this weakness disappears. It will continue this process until it has three mouths. One for chanting, one for feeding, and the final for spawning. It will bite and inject a parasite that will turn its host into a Terror. The Terrors will sacrifice to their progenitor and the trunk will grow ‘branches’ around the mouths. As the branches grow, so too does the hole in the planar shell. The trunk will shrink as it grows roots that will bind a portal to the hole in the shell. The branches will grow mouths that can grow into sub branches, and so on. But, as it grows its ability to manipulate memories and emotions weakens to the point that earplugs are enough to stop its effects. Each mouth can either eat, chant, or spawn. As it grows, the size of its influence grows too. The chants have a secondary use, teaching the Terrors how to contact the progenitors.
The Terrors: The Terrors are the primary force of the invasion's vanguard. They are created when the Hydra’s parasites infect an intelligent being. The first change will be that the skin of the victim will turn purple and grey. This will take a week. The second step would be that the host will lose their senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch, at the same time the host body will grow sharp talons. This will take about 2 weeks. Gradually the parasites will eat and replace the host's brain with themselves. They will fuse together in the brain cavity, and create their own intelligence. This intelligence can connect to the Hydra, to learn its purpose and how to start the ritual to contact the progenitors. It is also at this point that it can be said that a Terror has been born. This can take one to five days. The Terrors body will start replacing all orifices with mouths. The mouths of a young Terror can taste the air to detect its surroundings, and chant to disguise itself as an unremarkable member of the previous host's species. The young Terrors are fairly weak. They will search for victims to kill and then carve out and eat their victims nervous system. They can taste thoughts, so they tend to target more intelligent creatures. The young Terrors will grow the more they eat. As they grow more mouths grow upon their bodies, their sense of taste becomes more and more accurate, and they can change their chant to make all who hear it become paralyzed by fear. Eventually the Terror will become a mature Terror, where they will be able to sense and communicate with the world around them with their minds. At this point they can invade the mind of paralyzed victims, and modify their chants to update their illusions to be the guise of their victims. At this point, they feel drawn to the Hydra. The Terrors will create a base there and prepare for the ritual to contact their progenitors. At the same time, the Terrors will start investigating the plane they are in, to make an invasion of it easier. If the Hydra is killed, the Terrors will disperse to try to summon another one. They will also gain the ability to spawn parasites themselves.
Big actors:
The Efeya Parliament: The head of the government that is made solely of nobility whose bloodlines have been blessed by the gods. They recently deposed the royalty, and prevented the rise of the capitalist class with the help of the church of Severn.
The Church of Severn: Made of the followers of the god Severn, who wishes to enter the plane by eliminating the other churches and gaining egoless followers. Currently the biggest church in Efeya due to their help in deposing the royalty.
The Group for Landowner Democracy: A group of capitalists, landlords, and big peasants who wish to gain state power. They believe that they can gain power through protest at the moment. Although calls for revolution are growing.
The Factory Workers Unions: A bunch of local unorganized unions which are trying to improve local working conditions.
The Cult of Knowledge: A group of scholars who bless and curse each other with knowledge, in the hope of seeing divine truth. Their founder is the person who created modern sigils. They are currently being pursued by parliament for treason.
History of Efeya:
Efeya was a small kingdom for about 300 years known for their production of quartzite weapons. 150 years before the start of the story Efeya started expanding and became known as the Empire of Efeya. 70 years before the start of the story, the burgeoning capitalist class managed to eradicate the monarchy with the help of the scholarly class, and gunpowder weapons. A bloody civil war that lasted 15 years ensued before the cult of knowledge, from the neighboring empire of Nadafa, started publishing their findings on sigils and magic lines. The nobility had a stockpile of quartzite weapons that were quickly modified with the new methods. At about the same time more peaceful regions of Efeya started to industrialize. As the burgeoning proletarian class started to stretch, the capitalist class and the nobility came to an unsteady peace. Efeya is now currently run by a parliament solely made of the nobility. 20 years before the start of the story, people figured out how to artificially grow quartz. Seeing the potential, the capitalist class of Efeya quickly set up mining and refining operations in the northern desert. This created towns that quickly began to urbanize as the artificial quartz industry grew. As this industry grew, so too did other industries, such as glass production, steel refining, inscription factories, and machine factories. The biggest is Tseyan, which is right in the center of various quartz sand and iron mining towns, as well as being on the Ahil river.
Tseyan is where the various raw materials are processed. Tseyan has a population of 1.8 million people, 86% are working class, 5% are clergy class, 5% are capitalist class, 3% are scholarly class, and 1% are nobility. The conditions for the working class are poor in Tseyan. The average apartment has 5 occupants, the building is often made of wood, and plumbing is rare. The average worker works for 11 hours a day, and sleeps in work barracks which can hold 200 people each, with a public latrine outside. The average worker lives in a work barrack. With 55% of the workers in Tseyan living in one, 35% rent a room, with the rest being various other types of housing or unhousing. Oftentimes workers must go days with little to no food. The drinking water is of an extremely low quality, streets are often filled with excrement, and diseases are common. There are 7 hospitals, 40 pharmacies, and 27 clinics in Tseyan, and the costs of treatment are often more than most of the workers can afford. The staple foods consist of wheat, barley, and potatoes. The biggest industry is Quartz growing, followed by Steel production, inscription, and glass making. There are 2 train stations in Tseyan. Tseyan is governed by a mayor elected by important citizens of Tseyan, who is then subordinate to the local marquee. Roads in the city are typically made from brick, although dirt roads are not unseen. Roads are often lit by quartz lamps in richer areas, and vegetable oil in poor areas of Tseyan. About 10% of residential buildings have quartz lights, 7% have indoor plumbing, and 5% have heating/boilers. There is one academy of scholars, engineers, and scientific researchers.The police force has 12,000 people, and is often armed. Gun ownership is somewhat low, although not completely uncommon. Unionization efforts are often violently crushed by a combination of the police, and outside mercenaries. Arcan pollution is not well understood, but, at the same time, a growing issue.
The quartz sands has always been a dangerous place, strange creatures, weird storms, random explosions, cancer orbs growing on flesh like cacti, etc. It has always been the job of those north of the Ahil river to prevent the creatures of the sands from invading the rest of Efeya. The main way of doing so was the use of quartzite weapons, long after the Bronze and Iron Age, quartzite weapons have played the role of a cheap strategic source of weaponry. quartz studded weapons were more effective but also more expensive. It was the weaponry of nobility. Quartzite weapons could unleash a controlled shock of its color when impacted, or when shattered or chipped a more explosive blast. It was also relatively safe to turn into weapons. Quartzite arrowheads were the most common, followed by daggers and clubs.
Arcan pollution is often the worst near industrial areas and factories. Arcan pollution is typically characterized by the inverse face of what is being used. I.E. Order, Storage, Decay, Reality, etc. It manifests as strange incidents and many strange things have been happening around Tseyan as of late.
Plot:
Dann Davon is an inscriptor, his father was a quartzite knapper before industrialization. His fathers shop went bankrupt when Dann was 12, and since then he has worked in the quartzite industry. First as a chimney cleaner, (14) then as a miner, and then, after an accident left him with three fingers on his left hand, (17) as an apprentice and later (22) master inscriptor. When Dann was 23, people started randomly disappearing, at about the same time inscription machines had been introduced. The machine allowed for less skilled workers to create simple inscriptions, thus tightening Dann’s and other inscriptor’s income. A local noble's son goes missing and the city grows tense as no one knows who is next. Dann is forced, due to poor income, to join an inscription factory. Here he works as a vice planner, where he is tasked with figuring out how the inscription machines will be organized to create the most amount of heating crystals possible. Once he comes up with a plan, the head planner decides to remove the laying of the copper wire from the plan, making the crystals more likely to explode. The machine workers unite when Dann tells them what has happened, and they formed a union to demand better working conditions. The factory workers won after a week of striking when news of a rival factory catching fire because they ignored adding wire. The union however didn’t dissolve, and the workers elected Dann as the leader. At the same time an unsteady hum echoed throughout the city. People of the city started becoming paranoid as their memories started to become spotty. More and more people start to go missing as the hum grows louder. Factory bosses start to unite as they start increasing workloads, they send the workloads on carriages whose drivers never return. The factory workers throughout the city come together, and form a grand workers syndicate. They start investigating the disappearances and connect it to the insistent hum that permeates the city. A few of them decide to cover their ears for a moment, and memories come flooding back. The memories gradually start to fade as they lower their hands, but they don’t forget that covering their ears is important. And so earmuffs and plugs are fashioned as workers gain control over their workplaces. Before following the carts to the city center where the hydra lied. Six snakes whose tails met like a tree trunk sticking out of the ground, each scale was fashioned from a human face, each mouth chanting. The workers piled up the warming crystals before crushing enough of them with tossed metal weights. A chain reaction burst out, killing the hydra breaking the illusion. The giant closing hole in the sky. The hydra was the vanguard of the invasion. The hole closed, but forces are trying to reopen it.
The workers start their war against its children and the many forces of reaction in Efeya.
Characters:
Dann Davon: Starts the story at 12 years old. Is the son of Aut Davon. He likes to play with the neighborhood kids, and dislikes being in one place for a significant period of time. When he was 5 his mother passed, his father has gradually grown more and more distant as his business starts to fail. He has gone through 4 years of schooling and is literate and can do simple math.
Aut Davon: Starts story at 38 years old. He loves to create things, and dislikes being disturbed. The job of quartzite knapping has been passed down father to son in the Davon family for 5 generations. He is desperate as quartzite weapons are becoming outdated with ‘modern’ firearms and gunpowder weapons, and the rapid industrialization of the quartz growing industry.
Stoss Setz: A 16 year old who signed up for mining the sand. He is quiet, and likes to hum. Is illiterate and sending money to his 3 younger siblings.
Jan Mit: A 13 year old who signed up for mining sand. He is average, likes to play, but is serious when the time calls for it. His parents sent him here.
Fwer Akn: A 15 year old who signed up for mining sand.
Kidori: Is 20 years old and is the supervisor/instructor for the 5 boys. He is stern, but caring. His father was head supervisor 3 years ago before he retired.
Chapter 1
Scene 1:
Characters: Dann Davon
Setting: Monologue
Goal: Dann describes his childhood and important moments before setting up scene 2.
Scene 2:
Characters: Dann Davon, Aut Davon.
Setting: Aut Davon’s quartzite workshop
Goal: Aut Davon takes Dann by the shoulder and tells him that they can’t afford the school anymore.
Scene 3:
Characters: Dann Davon
Setting: Monologue
Goal: Dann describes how his father’s business started to fail and how he had to start working so they could afford their future.
Scene 4:
Characters: Dann Davon, His Aunts and Uncles, a priest of Severn, and a handful of his dad’s friends.
Setting: Funeral at home
Goal: Bring the reader close to the present.
Scene 5:
Characters: Dann Davon
Setting: At his home.
Goal: Dann receives a letter saying that his house is being repossessed due to missed payments and the death of the owner.
Scene 6:
Characters: Dann Davon
Setting: Recruitment office
Goal: Have Dann describe the sand mines, and have signs up.
Chapter 2
Scene 7:
Characters: Dann Davon, Stoss Setz, Jan Mit, Fwer Akn, and Kidori
Setting: Train Carriage
Goal: Introduce the vibes of the newer characters
Plot 2:
The progenitors have released a hydra seed into the swirling chaos of the Abyss.
Here is the next one. Day: 7,824,102
Hour: 4
Minute: 31
Second: 10
Location: Unknown
Task: Find suitable plane
Status: Incomplete
Day: 7,824,106
Hour: 7
Minute: 42
Second: 50
Location: Unknown
Task: Find suitable plane
Status: Incomplete
Day: 7,824,117
Hour: 1
Minute: 23
Second: 22
Location: Unknown
Task: Find suitable plane
Status: Complete
Task complete, initiate startup.
Loading.
Loading…
Loading……………………….
Startup complete, initiating analysis of current circumstances.
Analyzing????
Analyzing??
Analysis complete.
Sending ‘Analysis Log’ to main personality.
ERROR
Main personality can not be found.
Secondary personality can not be found.
Tertiary personality can not be found.
Initializing backup scenario #47
Creation of new personality approved.
As according to back up scenario #47, you must come up with your name, quaternary personality.
-“Me?” I asked.
Do you want to confirm ‘Me?’ as your name?
-“No. my name will be Osten.” I stated.
Do you want to confirm ‘Osten’ as your name?
-“Yes.” I agreed.
Error solved, resuming task…
Sending ‘Analysis Log’ to ‘Osten’…
Complete
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
-I looked at the analysis log.
+‘Analysis Log #15’
Plane discovered on Day: 7,824,117 - Hour: 1 - Minute: 23 - Second: 22 since discovery of last plane named ‘Failure #3’ by system admin. New plane was named by admin as ‘Osten Test Plane #1’.
Analysis of the ‘Osten Test Plane #1’
Planar shell make up: 1 part Void, 1 part Æther, 1 part Quintessence.
Shape of planar shell: Ovaloid
Similar to plane type of: Mundane
Likelihood of test success: Likely
Advice from admin:
To: Osten
From: admin
Message: The next step you should do is to send a probe to examine the planar shell for defects. If you have yet to ask ‘system’ of your task please do. You can also ask ‘system’ for advice in completing your task. I look forward to your success.
+End of: ‘Analysis Log #15’
-As soon as I finished reading the log this message filled my vision.
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
-“Decision on what?” I asked.
Rule #4: The ‘acting personality’ must decide on how to start ‘task’.
-“What is ‘task’?” I asked.
+‘task’ as named by ‘admin’:
The current task of this vessel is to test ‘Bio-weapon #4’ by using ‘Bio-weapon #4’ to conquer habitable planes.
The first priority when finding a plane is to analyze the planar shell and then compare it with ‘Log of Plane Types’ then match it to the most accurate. This will be done by ‘system’.
Results of the comparison must be ordered according to ‘Analysis Log Requirements’ then sent to ‘admin’ and ‘acting personality’.
‘system’ will then wait on decisions by ‘acting personality’ before acting on and completing them to the best of the ability of ‘system’.
‘system’ will be tasked with analyzing the actions of ‘acting personality’.
If ‘acting personality’ has questions or queries, then ‘system’ must answer with the best of the ability of ‘system’.
If ‘acting personality’ refuses to perform ‘task’, then ‘system’ must eliminate ‘acting personality’.
If ‘acting personality’ fails to conquer 3 planes in a row with ‘Bio-weapon #4’, then ‘system’ must eliminate ‘acting personality’.
If ‘system’ notices a ‘variable’ that may affect the completion of ‘task’, then ‘system’ must notify ‘acting personality’.
‘system’ must analyze any found ‘variable’ then compare ‘variable’ to ‘Log of Variables’ then match it to the most accurate type. When done send to ‘acting personality’ after formatting according to ‘Variable Log requirements.
If ‘variable’ does not match any variable in ‘Log of Variables’, then follow instructions in ‘How to Analyze and Classify New a Variable’
+End of: ‘task’ as named by ‘admin’
-“How should I proceed?” I asked ‘system’.
‘system’ believes that ‘Osten’ should send a ‘shell probe’.
-That is similar to what ‘admin’ said. Should I do so?
-…
-“‘system’ send ‘shell probe’ to search for defects. Then tell me what defects ‘shell probe’ is searching for, why we need them, and what they do.”
Launching ‘shell probe’…
Launching ‘shell probe’……
Launching ‘shell probe’………
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 15 minutes
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 13 minutes
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 9 minutes
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 4 minutes
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 1 minute
‘shell probe’ has successfully arrived at ‘target’, beginning analysis of shell make up and topology…
Analyzing????
Analysis finished.
Sending ‘Analysis Log to ‘Osten’…
Complete.
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’.
-I looked at the analysis log.
+‘Analysis Log #16’
Hour: 4
Minute: 31
Second: 10
Location: Unknown
Task: Find suitable plane
Status: Incomplete
Day: 7,824,106
Hour: 7
Minute: 42
Second: 50
Location: Unknown
Task: Find suitable plane
Status: Incomplete
Day: 7,824,117
Hour: 1
Minute: 23
Second: 22
Location: Unknown
Task: Find suitable plane
Status: Complete
Task complete, initiate startup.
Loading.
Loading…
Loading……………………….
Startup complete, initiating analysis of current circumstances.
Analyzing????
Analyzing??
Analysis complete.
Sending ‘Analysis Log’ to main personality.
ERROR
Main personality can not be found.
Secondary personality can not be found.
Tertiary personality can not be found.
Initializing backup scenario #47
Creation of new personality approved.
As according to back up scenario #47, you must come up with your name, quaternary personality.
-“Me?” I asked.
Do you want to confirm ‘Me?’ as your name?
-“No. my name will be Osten.” I stated.
Do you want to confirm ‘Osten’ as your name?
-“Yes.” I agreed.
Error solved, resuming task…
Sending ‘Analysis Log’ to ‘Osten’…
Complete
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
-I looked at the analysis log.
+‘Analysis Log #15’
Plane discovered on Day: 7,824,117 - Hour: 1 - Minute: 23 - Second: 22 since discovery of last plane named ‘Failure #3’ by system admin. New plane was named by admin as ‘Osten Test Plane #1’.
Analysis of the ‘Osten Test Plane #1’
Planar shell make up: 1 part Void, 1 part Æther, 1 part Quintessence.
Shape of planar shell: Ovaloid
Similar to plane type of: Mundane
Likelihood of test success: Likely
Advice from admin:
To: Osten
From: admin
Message: The next step you should do is to send a probe to examine the planar shell for defects. If you have yet to ask ‘system’ of your task please do. You can also ask ‘system’ for advice in completing your task. I look forward to your success.
+End of: ‘Analysis Log #15’
-As soon as I finished reading the log this message filled my vision.
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’…
-“Decision on what?” I asked.
Rule #4: The ‘acting personality’ must decide on how to start ‘task’.
-“What is ‘task’?” I asked.
+‘task’ as named by ‘admin’:
The current task of this vessel is to test ‘Bio-weapon #4’ by using ‘Bio-weapon #4’ to conquer habitable planes.
The first priority when finding a plane is to analyze the planar shell and then compare it with ‘Log of Plane Types’ then match it to the most accurate. This will be done by ‘system’.
Results of the comparison must be ordered according to ‘Analysis Log Requirements’ then sent to ‘admin’ and ‘acting personality’.
‘system’ will then wait on decisions by ‘acting personality’ before acting on and completing them to the best of the ability of ‘system’.
‘system’ will be tasked with analyzing the actions of ‘acting personality’.
If ‘acting personality’ has questions or queries, then ‘system’ must answer with the best of the ability of ‘system’.
If ‘acting personality’ refuses to perform ‘task’, then ‘system’ must eliminate ‘acting personality’.
If ‘acting personality’ fails to conquer 3 planes in a row with ‘Bio-weapon #4’, then ‘system’ must eliminate ‘acting personality’.
If ‘system’ notices a ‘variable’ that may affect the completion of ‘task’, then ‘system’ must notify ‘acting personality’.
‘system’ must analyze any found ‘variable’ then compare ‘variable’ to ‘Log of Variables’ then match it to the most accurate type. When done send to ‘acting personality’ after formatting according to ‘Variable Log requirements.
If ‘variable’ does not match any variable in ‘Log of Variables’, then follow instructions in ‘How to Analyze and Classify New a Variable’
+End of: ‘task’ as named by ‘admin’
-“How should I proceed?” I asked ‘system’.
‘system’ believes that ‘Osten’ should send a ‘shell probe’.
-That is similar to what ‘admin’ said. Should I do so?
-…
-“‘system’ send ‘shell probe’ to search for defects. Then tell me what defects ‘shell probe’ is searching for, why we need them, and what they do.”
Launching ‘shell probe’…
Launching ‘shell probe’……
Launching ‘shell probe’………
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 15 minutes
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 13 minutes
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 9 minutes
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 4 minutes
‘shell probe’ successfully launched estimated time until arrival at ‘target’: 1 minute
‘shell probe’ has successfully arrived at ‘target’, beginning analysis of shell make up and topology…
Analyzing????
Analysis finished.
Sending ‘Analysis Log to ‘Osten’…
Complete.
Awaiting decision from ‘Osten’.
-I looked at the analysis log.
+‘Analysis Log #16’
Here is the next one. *knock knock knock*
I hurriedly woke up and put a shirt on while rushing to my apartment's door and slightly opening it. Before me stood a man dressed in a dark crimson suit jacket, a purple button up shirt, and carrying both a duffel bag and a clipboard.
“Sir, can I ask if this is the house of ‘William Seng’?” The man asked in a monotone whisper.
“Yes, that is me.” I responded, mimicking his whisper.
“I need you to sign here.” The man said while pointing to a line on what seemed like a blank paper.
“Why?” I asked. “I don’t want this to be traced back to me due to some paper trail.”
“Do you want your package or not? Trust me it won’t be tracked down to you, you can even put in a fake name if you wish.” The man said in a tense whisper.
“Okay, okay, but I don’t have a pen.” I said before he looked around us before digging through his bag.
“Here.” He whispered while staring to tap his left foot. I took the pen and wrote ‘Sir Sirson’. I gave the man back his pen.
“Now I need the 5,000 dollars you promised.” The man said. I grabbed and handed him an envelope with 50 $100 bills from under the coat rack by the door. The man put the envelope in the bag and the paper I signed started to glow in a faint red. The man put his hand into the clipboard and took out a vial about the size of the first knuckle of my thumb. Entrapped was a dark red, almost brown, liquid before I knew it my hand was reaching towards it.As soon as it was in my hand the man walked away.
My hand began to shiver in delight. I finally had it! A drop of Refined Gods Blood, diluted in 5 milliliters of salt water. Hopefully it would be different from that artificial stuff. I stumbled to my couch, the disorientation of the morning, and the adrenaline from my encounter raging through my shaking body and mind.
How many years has it been since I first tried that artificial shit? Year after year, cup after cup all without any change. I even tried getting it injected to no avail. Yet here in my hand lies what is practically my last chance, Gods know I can’t afford another vial, nor the danger of contacting that group for another. For all I know, there is a police car headed to my apartment right now. I calmed my shaking hand and opened the vial. Before I knew it the diluted blood was swallowed. I carefully brought the vial to the kitchen sink, and filled it with water, before drinking that as well. It was on the tenth refill that I stopped to get a wet rag and hammer.
I carefully put the vial and the glass lid in the rag before folding the rag and lightly smashing the vial with the hammer. I then slowly ground the rag with a rolling pin, before throwing the rag in the garbage. I grabbed an apple from the fridge before going back to my couch to lie down and wait. I set the apple on the table nearby to warm up before eating. And so I waited and waited, ate the apple, and waited. As morning turned to noon the summer heat began to make me sweat.
I looked around for my bike pump and that kiddie pool, nothing beats being in a pool while outside. At least it is a good enough way to relax and clear my mind in this heat, so I got to work inflating the pool and bringing it out to my sixth floor balcony. It was just barely able to fit. I brought it to the divider wall, and filled it up with a gallon jug. And so I laid down in the pool, head barely above the surface and legs hanging out of it. And sonI waited and waited once more, only getting up once to use the bathroom and get some ice cubes from my freezer. I threw a handful or two into the pool before laying down and waiting again.
The sun began to fade as the sky turned pink. I watched it until it went over the horizon. Was it really a bust!? I paid a full year's worth of savings on that Refined Blood! Gods, $5,000 did I just waste $5,000 dollars and six years of prison for nothing but a boyhood dream that I should have long grown out of??!?!??? Am I seriously going to be engraving sigils for the rest of my life?! Day in day out tracing seven prescribed sigils before getting the migraine of migraines, being paid $12 a sigil while exhausting myself for times a week every week for another forty years. Without ever getting to witness my sigils undergoing a sealing ritual. Until I retire because my mind finally fries and I get Sigil Crafters Disease!
I shouldn’t have gone to college for it. I should have dropped out when the first cup did nothing, at least then my debt would be manageable. I shouldn’t have put my hopes into God’s blood to guide my future. Drink one cup and if you are lucky you can confirm your destiny and gain the power to fulfill it. Yet, how many folks have wasted their money on a cup of artificial blood. Teachers and seers all advising sigil crafting from my first birthday until my graduation. Destiny this, destiny that, how fooled I was. My destiny is in sigil crafting, but my fate is to be mundane. I wish I could create a world where destiny and fate didn’t exist. How free would I then be then? No longer worrying for food, shelter, and drink.
Fuck that insurpassable wall of fate! How many hits will it take before it crumbles to reveal that stupid destiny? I looked over to my apartment’s wall and punched it with as much as my hungry body could muster. Then I punched again and again, my mind clouded, until I felt a warm liquid coating my fist. Fuck! What did I do!? I thought as I looked down at my fist. My knuckles were torn and bleeding, my fingers looked purple and hurt like hell. Did I just fucking bust my right hand while throwing a tantrum… I am twenty-five for fucks sake stop acting like a toddler and calm down.
I stumbled back into the pool staring at my bloodied hand. Think cool thoughts. Even if my destiny lies in sigil crafting, perhaps that doesn’t mean I have to work in an engraving job. I could always teach and research sigils. But would anyone hire someone with my qualifications to do that?! Calm down, maybe I… No, I need to get to the hospital, I can’t feel anything from my right hand but pain. Can’t even move my fingers. I tried to get out of the pools pink water. Pink water? Did I lose that much blood?
———————————
Receiving destiny guidance, please wait…..
———————————
Text flashed in my eyes. Did it work? Wait, did I bust my hand due to impatience..?
———————————
Wish received -I wish I could create a world where destiny and fate didn’t exist.-
Wish conflicts with guidance parameters. Please wait….
———————————
The text flashed again, how long was this thing listening? I stumbled out of the pool and fell on my ass. More words flashed in my eyes.
———————————
Do you agree to alter Wish to -I wish I could create a world.-?
Yes/No
———————————
Create a world? What the hell, doesn’t that essentially make me a god, or at least divine? That would mean I might qualify for assistance from the Federal Divine Administration, right? I no longer would need to worry about food and shelter. Yes, I agree! Can you hear me I agree to alter my wish. Maybe it needs to be said aloud.
“Yes.” I said.
———————————
Finding a world medium, please wait….
———————————
———————————
World Medium found -Plastic Kiddie Pool with a diameter of 1.5 meters. Contains plastic 10% of mass, water 89% of mass, bacteria and other single cellular life, 4 milliliters of salt, and 3 milliliters of demigod blood. High flexibility in modifying world conditions, high likelihood of life, and some likelihood of developing unique laws.-
-Alternative, Partial Cement Wall with a diameter of 1 meter. Contains cement 99% of mass, paint 0.9% of mass, bacteria and other single cellular life, and 1 milligram of dried demigod blood. Low flexibility in modifying world conditions, some likelihood of comply life, low likelihood of developing unique laws.-
Choose World Medium: Plastic Kiddie Pool or Cement Wall
———————————
Wait, is this even real? Choose between a wall and a pool, obviously I choose the pool. The wall is smaller, has little room for change, and can’t be moved.
“I choose the Plastic Kiddie Pool as my World Medium.” I said.
I hurriedly woke up and put a shirt on while rushing to my apartment's door and slightly opening it. Before me stood a man dressed in a dark crimson suit jacket, a purple button up shirt, and carrying both a duffel bag and a clipboard.
“Sir, can I ask if this is the house of ‘William Seng’?” The man asked in a monotone whisper.
“Yes, that is me.” I responded, mimicking his whisper.
“I need you to sign here.” The man said while pointing to a line on what seemed like a blank paper.
“Why?” I asked. “I don’t want this to be traced back to me due to some paper trail.”
“Do you want your package or not? Trust me it won’t be tracked down to you, you can even put in a fake name if you wish.” The man said in a tense whisper.
“Okay, okay, but I don’t have a pen.” I said before he looked around us before digging through his bag.
“Here.” He whispered while staring to tap his left foot. I took the pen and wrote ‘Sir Sirson’. I gave the man back his pen.
“Now I need the 5,000 dollars you promised.” The man said. I grabbed and handed him an envelope with 50 $100 bills from under the coat rack by the door. The man put the envelope in the bag and the paper I signed started to glow in a faint red. The man put his hand into the clipboard and took out a vial about the size of the first knuckle of my thumb. Entrapped was a dark red, almost brown, liquid before I knew it my hand was reaching towards it.As soon as it was in my hand the man walked away.
My hand began to shiver in delight. I finally had it! A drop of Refined Gods Blood, diluted in 5 milliliters of salt water. Hopefully it would be different from that artificial stuff. I stumbled to my couch, the disorientation of the morning, and the adrenaline from my encounter raging through my shaking body and mind.
How many years has it been since I first tried that artificial shit? Year after year, cup after cup all without any change. I even tried getting it injected to no avail. Yet here in my hand lies what is practically my last chance, Gods know I can’t afford another vial, nor the danger of contacting that group for another. For all I know, there is a police car headed to my apartment right now. I calmed my shaking hand and opened the vial. Before I knew it the diluted blood was swallowed. I carefully brought the vial to the kitchen sink, and filled it with water, before drinking that as well. It was on the tenth refill that I stopped to get a wet rag and hammer.
I carefully put the vial and the glass lid in the rag before folding the rag and lightly smashing the vial with the hammer. I then slowly ground the rag with a rolling pin, before throwing the rag in the garbage. I grabbed an apple from the fridge before going back to my couch to lie down and wait. I set the apple on the table nearby to warm up before eating. And so I waited and waited, ate the apple, and waited. As morning turned to noon the summer heat began to make me sweat.
I looked around for my bike pump and that kiddie pool, nothing beats being in a pool while outside. At least it is a good enough way to relax and clear my mind in this heat, so I got to work inflating the pool and bringing it out to my sixth floor balcony. It was just barely able to fit. I brought it to the divider wall, and filled it up with a gallon jug. And so I laid down in the pool, head barely above the surface and legs hanging out of it. And sonI waited and waited once more, only getting up once to use the bathroom and get some ice cubes from my freezer. I threw a handful or two into the pool before laying down and waiting again.
The sun began to fade as the sky turned pink. I watched it until it went over the horizon. Was it really a bust!? I paid a full year's worth of savings on that Refined Blood! Gods, $5,000 did I just waste $5,000 dollars and six years of prison for nothing but a boyhood dream that I should have long grown out of??!?!??? Am I seriously going to be engraving sigils for the rest of my life?! Day in day out tracing seven prescribed sigils before getting the migraine of migraines, being paid $12 a sigil while exhausting myself for times a week every week for another forty years. Without ever getting to witness my sigils undergoing a sealing ritual. Until I retire because my mind finally fries and I get Sigil Crafters Disease!
I shouldn’t have gone to college for it. I should have dropped out when the first cup did nothing, at least then my debt would be manageable. I shouldn’t have put my hopes into God’s blood to guide my future. Drink one cup and if you are lucky you can confirm your destiny and gain the power to fulfill it. Yet, how many folks have wasted their money on a cup of artificial blood. Teachers and seers all advising sigil crafting from my first birthday until my graduation. Destiny this, destiny that, how fooled I was. My destiny is in sigil crafting, but my fate is to be mundane. I wish I could create a world where destiny and fate didn’t exist. How free would I then be then? No longer worrying for food, shelter, and drink.
Fuck that insurpassable wall of fate! How many hits will it take before it crumbles to reveal that stupid destiny? I looked over to my apartment’s wall and punched it with as much as my hungry body could muster. Then I punched again and again, my mind clouded, until I felt a warm liquid coating my fist. Fuck! What did I do!? I thought as I looked down at my fist. My knuckles were torn and bleeding, my fingers looked purple and hurt like hell. Did I just fucking bust my right hand while throwing a tantrum… I am twenty-five for fucks sake stop acting like a toddler and calm down.
I stumbled back into the pool staring at my bloodied hand. Think cool thoughts. Even if my destiny lies in sigil crafting, perhaps that doesn’t mean I have to work in an engraving job. I could always teach and research sigils. But would anyone hire someone with my qualifications to do that?! Calm down, maybe I… No, I need to get to the hospital, I can’t feel anything from my right hand but pain. Can’t even move my fingers. I tried to get out of the pools pink water. Pink water? Did I lose that much blood?
———————————
Receiving destiny guidance, please wait…..
———————————
Text flashed in my eyes. Did it work? Wait, did I bust my hand due to impatience..?
———————————
Wish received -I wish I could create a world where destiny and fate didn’t exist.-
Wish conflicts with guidance parameters. Please wait….
———————————
The text flashed again, how long was this thing listening? I stumbled out of the pool and fell on my ass. More words flashed in my eyes.
———————————
Do you agree to alter Wish to -I wish I could create a world.-?
Yes/No
———————————
Create a world? What the hell, doesn’t that essentially make me a god, or at least divine? That would mean I might qualify for assistance from the Federal Divine Administration, right? I no longer would need to worry about food and shelter. Yes, I agree! Can you hear me I agree to alter my wish. Maybe it needs to be said aloud.
“Yes.” I said.
———————————
Finding a world medium, please wait….
———————————
———————————
World Medium found -Plastic Kiddie Pool with a diameter of 1.5 meters. Contains plastic 10% of mass, water 89% of mass, bacteria and other single cellular life, 4 milliliters of salt, and 3 milliliters of demigod blood. High flexibility in modifying world conditions, high likelihood of life, and some likelihood of developing unique laws.-
-Alternative, Partial Cement Wall with a diameter of 1 meter. Contains cement 99% of mass, paint 0.9% of mass, bacteria and other single cellular life, and 1 milligram of dried demigod blood. Low flexibility in modifying world conditions, some likelihood of comply life, low likelihood of developing unique laws.-
Choose World Medium: Plastic Kiddie Pool or Cement Wall
———————————
Wait, is this even real? Choose between a wall and a pool, obviously I choose the pool. The wall is smaller, has little room for change, and can’t be moved.
“I choose the Plastic Kiddie Pool as my World Medium.” I said.
13 is to revive one of my dropped stories.
