Barlowe Family Tree
Mazrick
Shai'tan
- Location
- The Pit of Doom
Barlowe Family Tree
- Vanessa, 52 (Mother)- A-Rank Mage, Board Member at Daedalus Industries
- Ronald, 53 (Father)- B-Rank Mage, Senator and Presidential Candidate
- Samantha, 31 (Sister)- B-rank Mage, Ambassador to Archaeans
- Nicholas Farrow, 35 (Brother-in-Law)- B-rank Mage, Daedalus Representative
- Uruthal, 7 (Nephew)- B rank potential, Student
- Iris, 7 (Niece)- B rank potential, Student
- Richard, 26 (Brother)- A-rank mage, Researcher On the Frontier
Bethany 25 (Sister-in-Law)- Medium- Emma, 6 year old (Niece)- A-rank potential, Most Adorable Girl
- Carmen, 24 (Sister)- C-Rank mage, Diplomat to Archaeans
- Austin Lafritte, 22 (Brother-in-Law)- D-Rank Mage, Healer
- Bethany, 5 (Niece)- C-Rank Potential, Student
- Terrence, 22 (PC)- ?????, University Student
- Tala, 16 (Sister)- Current: C-rank Mage; A-rank potential, High School Dropout
- Laureline, 14 (Sister)- Current E-rank mage; C-rank potential, Student
- Simon, 11 (Brother)- Current E-rank mage; B-rank potential, Student
Last edited:
Mazrick
Shai'tan
- Location
- The Pit of Doom
That was actually an error on my part when writing up the tree. That's what I get for posting so early in the morning. Fixed now.
Samantha has a pair of twins: Uruthal and Iris; Carmen has a little girl named Bethany, named after Richard's deceased wife.
And vote closed. Update should be up soon.
Burning For You
Mazrick
Shai'tan
- Location
- The Pit of Doom
Wracked screaming, the crumbling of edifices, the rushing of a broken water main assault your ears. Dust everywhere Oppressive, coating your mouth, your nose, your eyes. You can feel sweat on your body, the ground rough beneath your feet. Your senses are razor sharp; someone turned the dial up to eleven and then snapped off the controls. Painful. And all of it falls away to background noise when you spot the creature that's clawing its way out of the rubble beside you.
A good ten feet from beak to tail, big enough to eat a horse and looking hungry enough, too. It squawks and clacks at you. Its scaled wings unfold, and then unfold again, and with a heaving flap, the dust clears around you. Talons glint in the absence of dust. You feel like someone poured a bucket of ice water over your head. The Phoenix, and you simply know that's what it is, blends in seamlessly with the golden morning sun, but equally so with the cratered, scarred cityscape which it illuminates. A majestic beast, in its element in any environment.
It gives you a furtive glance, and then it beats at the polluted air. It flies higher and higher. A piercing wail. It's heading towards the edge of the crater. Confused, disoriented, and not wanting to be alone, you rush after it.
The earth cracks under your feet. The world writhes and convulses. Boom.
Your momentum takes you into, and through, the lobby of two office buildings. You come to a stop halfway through a mahogany desk, with a Garfield mug and, thankfully, no occupant. You've overshot The Phoenix by about a block. The sound of metal twisting and concrete pulverizing immediately precedes a collapsing skyscraper. Your Heart's races. Stomach plummets. Throat goes dry. Power radiates from every cell. You can feel it pushing out from the core of your being, exerting a horrific pressure on your surroundings.
Have to be careful. No idea what's going on, or how to stop it. Just don't fuck up any more. You carefully peer out a window and take a look around. Buildings reduced to rubble. Cracks in the pavement turned into water fountains. Huge crater. Shattered corpses visible amidst the fleeing crowds.
Don't move. What caused this? Where did these powers come from? You're a mage!? Doesn't matter. Don't. Move. Can't hurt anyone else.
And then The Phoenix is there. This building, with its professional interior, collapses, too. Everything goes dark. Several tons of steel and concrete land on your head. Its heavy, but the weight of your presence keeps it from crushing you. Just stay here. Can't hurt anyone, and if a building falling on you doesn't so much as give you a nosebleed, you're not in any real danger… Stay calm.
You try to take a deep breath. No oxygen. No matter how strong you are, you still need to breathe!
Everything is dark. No sound penetrates this deep. A dark closet. No light. No sound. No air.
Forget it. If you leave now you'll just keep crushing everything you touch.
The air's not worth it.
Everyone dies sometime.
You know this is the right thing to do—the only thing. It's still hard. Your body screams at you not to stay in this place, but you root yourself. You're not going to keep killing people. You can see the faces of the dead. You'll just stay here. You reject the air.
Maybe this won't be so bad. You know you're about to die down here, but for the first time in your life, you don't hurt. Peace comes over you.
The Phoenix has other plans. As hard as you've strained to still yourself, it rouses and begins tunneling upwards. You smell steel and concrete melting—hideous. It is the work of several long minutes to burn through all the rubble, but you dare not to budge an inch. You feel it wrap an appendage around you, and a moment later the sun is cutting into you again. The Phoenix tosses you onto broken pavement and clacks its beak. You just lie there, limp, still afraid to move.
The broken and fractured street is deserted. Good. No one else's going to get hurt. You ease just a fraction and take in a deep breath. No elation. The pit in your stomach is still there. Your ears are supernally sharp. Cries of "Mãe!" and "Meu deus!" and a hundred other desperate appeals and pained curses burst through the milieu. Columns of inky black smoke rise in the late afternoon. Water arcs out of broken pipes and fire hydrants.
The scale of the destruction is immense. It cuts with pinpoint precision across your heightened awareness. How many dead? Your hands shake. A thousand? You shake your head. Must be much much more. Tears sting at your eyes. The Phoenix clacks as it unfurls its wings, twice over, and then it begins to fl-
Everything goes dark. Force pushes down from the heavens. The air becomes magic. Unimaginable pressure slams you into the ground, through the concrete. An angry god is trying to squash you like a bug. Feels like someone's giving you a bear hug all over, all at once! Everything else in your immediate vicinity is utterly flattened. A moment of animal panic. With great effort, you swing your head to where the Phoenix should be. It too is smashed into the ground. A brilliant torch in the void, it is a beacon to hold close to your heart. Despite the visible cracks in its gleaming scales, its flames have never been more alive. It clacks loudly.
Ecstasy.
The grinding force grows stronger and stronger again. Breathing becomes a chore, but you're content to lay here. Can't hurt anyone if you're here! You don't think the attack affects anything or anyone not already caught in the destruction. The earth below is tightly packed. The Phoenix blazes with power. The only thing in this darkness. A living flame now, but you sense danger.
A second, stronger column of force slams down onto you and your shade. A light spearing through the cloak of artificial night. Searing pain burns through you. On pure instinct, you stand, your body trying desperately to move. You stumble. Your slight frame struggles against the enormous gravity threatening to pulverize you. Survival instincts win out. The trail, a ribbon of blood lancing through the daytime sky, arcs high and leads to the outskirts of the city.
It's funny. In all your cushy life, nobody ever so much as thrown a punch at you. You look down at the ragged hole that's been bored into your shoulder. Warm, wet, blood runs down your arm. The pain's familiar. But the anger that burns through you now is something new. You see red, and follow the line in the sky.
Everything blurs. No control. You blow through several city blocks in an instant. You overshoot your destination by a quarter of a mile, but your movement has the desired effect. The magic that had crisscrossed the sky is gone now. Everything is chaos. It's as if a meteor slammed into the city. All regret is incinerated and swallowed by desperation.
Ten figures stand their ground amidst the aftermath of your rampage. As you tighten your focus on them, you realize they're all armed and clad in matching black body armor. They bristle with weapons ranging from swords and spears to assault rifles. They bear matching golden squad patches on their left arms. They remind you of someone, but that connection is lost in a heat haze. You don't actually recognize their symbol, a blue circle with a yellow 'M' superimposed in the center.
A moment of confusion, panic.
Doesn't matter. They're moving. They're coming to kill. Or at least two of their number are. A pair of armored forms blur forward. Black helmets obscure their features. They move in perfect sync. Above and beyond their supernal speed, they move like world-class dancers, like Olympic gymnasts. Bronze sword gleaming with magic flashes from high and right. Silver spear singing with malice thrusts forward. It's a magnificent attack. Must've taken years of practice.
They're almost unimaginably fast. You're faster.
You throw an untested punch, perhaps the first punch you've ever really thrown with malice in your heart. You're not a particularly violent man. The clumsy jab misses them. The shockwaves and burst of concentrated air pressure do not. Their corpses are thrown through the air like ragdolls.
When the dust settles, half of the enemies are dead. Bloodied and battered remnants of armored figures are visible here and there. The grisly sight is something out of a horror movie. Shields of frozen air float between you and the surviving mages. The Phoenix pecks through a magically reinforced helmet, tears off a strip of meat, and tosses it back. Time stands still for a moment as you take it all in. You waver. You feel like you're about to wretch. The torch of your wrath gutters out, and you shake your head hesitantly, Wh-
These warrior-mages do not hesitate as you do.
They attack as one. Two shields slam into you. You're sent flying. Three balls of fire scour you as you careen through the air. Hot. Your hair singes, skin blisters, the wound on your shoulder cauterizes. You slam into a pile of debris with an impressive thud. The earth craters. Black light, or rather the absence of light, smashes into you. Much stronger than earlier. Bones creak. Some of the smaller, more fragile ones break. Teeth gnash. Your scream is raw. It echoes obscenely in your own ears.
Let them kill you.
The arrival of the Phoenix rekindles a spark of defiance. They're attacking it. Going to kill you and it! You can see its majestic form alive with both bright flame and frigid black force. It swoops down to protect you. They throw barbed nets over it, and bind its glorious wings. Never alone. The gravity well shifts for a moment. More time than you need.
The silver spear of the enemy rests nearby. As instinct takes over once more, you grab it. The weapon turns to liquid light in your hands. For one perfect moment, everything focuses on the tip of the spear. It's a high unlike anything you've ever felt. There's a discharge. You feel tired as you throw the weapon. It shatters through a triple layered shield effortlessly.
All is white.
You come to some time later. You're in a massive crater. The Phoenix is perched nearby, eating. The very soul of fire. You shiver from the cold. It chatters at you, and runs its long tongue through your hair, slicking you with blood.
You're surrounded.
Thirty faceless mages, all in various types of armor and bearing dangerous looking weapons, encircle you. Malevolence and violence hang heavy in the air.
What do you do?
[] Just sit there in shock.
[] Run. Get away.
[] Defend yourself.
[] Write-in
A good ten feet from beak to tail, big enough to eat a horse and looking hungry enough, too. It squawks and clacks at you. Its scaled wings unfold, and then unfold again, and with a heaving flap, the dust clears around you. Talons glint in the absence of dust. You feel like someone poured a bucket of ice water over your head. The Phoenix, and you simply know that's what it is, blends in seamlessly with the golden morning sun, but equally so with the cratered, scarred cityscape which it illuminates. A majestic beast, in its element in any environment.
It gives you a furtive glance, and then it beats at the polluted air. It flies higher and higher. A piercing wail. It's heading towards the edge of the crater. Confused, disoriented, and not wanting to be alone, you rush after it.
The earth cracks under your feet. The world writhes and convulses. Boom.
Your momentum takes you into, and through, the lobby of two office buildings. You come to a stop halfway through a mahogany desk, with a Garfield mug and, thankfully, no occupant. You've overshot The Phoenix by about a block. The sound of metal twisting and concrete pulverizing immediately precedes a collapsing skyscraper. Your Heart's races. Stomach plummets. Throat goes dry. Power radiates from every cell. You can feel it pushing out from the core of your being, exerting a horrific pressure on your surroundings.
Have to be careful. No idea what's going on, or how to stop it. Just don't fuck up any more. You carefully peer out a window and take a look around. Buildings reduced to rubble. Cracks in the pavement turned into water fountains. Huge crater. Shattered corpses visible amidst the fleeing crowds.
Don't move. What caused this? Where did these powers come from? You're a mage!? Doesn't matter. Don't. Move. Can't hurt anyone else.
And then The Phoenix is there. This building, with its professional interior, collapses, too. Everything goes dark. Several tons of steel and concrete land on your head. Its heavy, but the weight of your presence keeps it from crushing you. Just stay here. Can't hurt anyone, and if a building falling on you doesn't so much as give you a nosebleed, you're not in any real danger… Stay calm.
You try to take a deep breath. No oxygen. No matter how strong you are, you still need to breathe!
Everything is dark. No sound penetrates this deep. A dark closet. No light. No sound. No air.
Forget it. If you leave now you'll just keep crushing everything you touch.
The air's not worth it.
Everyone dies sometime.
You know this is the right thing to do—the only thing. It's still hard. Your body screams at you not to stay in this place, but you root yourself. You're not going to keep killing people. You can see the faces of the dead. You'll just stay here. You reject the air.
Maybe this won't be so bad. You know you're about to die down here, but for the first time in your life, you don't hurt. Peace comes over you.
The Phoenix has other plans. As hard as you've strained to still yourself, it rouses and begins tunneling upwards. You smell steel and concrete melting—hideous. It is the work of several long minutes to burn through all the rubble, but you dare not to budge an inch. You feel it wrap an appendage around you, and a moment later the sun is cutting into you again. The Phoenix tosses you onto broken pavement and clacks its beak. You just lie there, limp, still afraid to move.
The broken and fractured street is deserted. Good. No one else's going to get hurt. You ease just a fraction and take in a deep breath. No elation. The pit in your stomach is still there. Your ears are supernally sharp. Cries of "Mãe!" and "Meu deus!" and a hundred other desperate appeals and pained curses burst through the milieu. Columns of inky black smoke rise in the late afternoon. Water arcs out of broken pipes and fire hydrants.
The scale of the destruction is immense. It cuts with pinpoint precision across your heightened awareness. How many dead? Your hands shake. A thousand? You shake your head. Must be much much more. Tears sting at your eyes. The Phoenix clacks as it unfurls its wings, twice over, and then it begins to fl-
Everything goes dark. Force pushes down from the heavens. The air becomes magic. Unimaginable pressure slams you into the ground, through the concrete. An angry god is trying to squash you like a bug. Feels like someone's giving you a bear hug all over, all at once! Everything else in your immediate vicinity is utterly flattened. A moment of animal panic. With great effort, you swing your head to where the Phoenix should be. It too is smashed into the ground. A brilliant torch in the void, it is a beacon to hold close to your heart. Despite the visible cracks in its gleaming scales, its flames have never been more alive. It clacks loudly.
Ecstasy.
The grinding force grows stronger and stronger again. Breathing becomes a chore, but you're content to lay here. Can't hurt anyone if you're here! You don't think the attack affects anything or anyone not already caught in the destruction. The earth below is tightly packed. The Phoenix blazes with power. The only thing in this darkness. A living flame now, but you sense danger.
A second, stronger column of force slams down onto you and your shade. A light spearing through the cloak of artificial night. Searing pain burns through you. On pure instinct, you stand, your body trying desperately to move. You stumble. Your slight frame struggles against the enormous gravity threatening to pulverize you. Survival instincts win out. The trail, a ribbon of blood lancing through the daytime sky, arcs high and leads to the outskirts of the city.
It's funny. In all your cushy life, nobody ever so much as thrown a punch at you. You look down at the ragged hole that's been bored into your shoulder. Warm, wet, blood runs down your arm. The pain's familiar. But the anger that burns through you now is something new. You see red, and follow the line in the sky.
Everything blurs. No control. You blow through several city blocks in an instant. You overshoot your destination by a quarter of a mile, but your movement has the desired effect. The magic that had crisscrossed the sky is gone now. Everything is chaos. It's as if a meteor slammed into the city. All regret is incinerated and swallowed by desperation.
Ten figures stand their ground amidst the aftermath of your rampage. As you tighten your focus on them, you realize they're all armed and clad in matching black body armor. They bristle with weapons ranging from swords and spears to assault rifles. They bear matching golden squad patches on their left arms. They remind you of someone, but that connection is lost in a heat haze. You don't actually recognize their symbol, a blue circle with a yellow 'M' superimposed in the center.
A moment of confusion, panic.
Doesn't matter. They're moving. They're coming to kill. Or at least two of their number are. A pair of armored forms blur forward. Black helmets obscure their features. They move in perfect sync. Above and beyond their supernal speed, they move like world-class dancers, like Olympic gymnasts. Bronze sword gleaming with magic flashes from high and right. Silver spear singing with malice thrusts forward. It's a magnificent attack. Must've taken years of practice.
They're almost unimaginably fast. You're faster.
You throw an untested punch, perhaps the first punch you've ever really thrown with malice in your heart. You're not a particularly violent man. The clumsy jab misses them. The shockwaves and burst of concentrated air pressure do not. Their corpses are thrown through the air like ragdolls.
When the dust settles, half of the enemies are dead. Bloodied and battered remnants of armored figures are visible here and there. The grisly sight is something out of a horror movie. Shields of frozen air float between you and the surviving mages. The Phoenix pecks through a magically reinforced helmet, tears off a strip of meat, and tosses it back. Time stands still for a moment as you take it all in. You waver. You feel like you're about to wretch. The torch of your wrath gutters out, and you shake your head hesitantly, Wh-
These warrior-mages do not hesitate as you do.
They attack as one. Two shields slam into you. You're sent flying. Three balls of fire scour you as you careen through the air. Hot. Your hair singes, skin blisters, the wound on your shoulder cauterizes. You slam into a pile of debris with an impressive thud. The earth craters. Black light, or rather the absence of light, smashes into you. Much stronger than earlier. Bones creak. Some of the smaller, more fragile ones break. Teeth gnash. Your scream is raw. It echoes obscenely in your own ears.
Let them kill you.
The arrival of the Phoenix rekindles a spark of defiance. They're attacking it. Going to kill you and it! You can see its majestic form alive with both bright flame and frigid black force. It swoops down to protect you. They throw barbed nets over it, and bind its glorious wings. Never alone. The gravity well shifts for a moment. More time than you need.
The silver spear of the enemy rests nearby. As instinct takes over once more, you grab it. The weapon turns to liquid light in your hands. For one perfect moment, everything focuses on the tip of the spear. It's a high unlike anything you've ever felt. There's a discharge. You feel tired as you throw the weapon. It shatters through a triple layered shield effortlessly.
All is white.
You come to some time later. You're in a massive crater. The Phoenix is perched nearby, eating. The very soul of fire. You shiver from the cold. It chatters at you, and runs its long tongue through your hair, slicking you with blood.
You're surrounded.
Thirty faceless mages, all in various types of armor and bearing dangerous looking weapons, encircle you. Malevolence and violence hang heavy in the air.
What do you do?
[] Just sit there in shock.
[] Run. Get away.
[] Defend yourself.
[] Write-in
Last edited:
[X] Run. Get away.
-[X] Find a means of contacting your mother.
-[X] Find a means of contacting your mother.
Mazrick
Shai'tan
- Location
- The Pit of Doom
Sure. S rank mages using the Enhance spell can reach that physical level.
- Location
- Australia
Well, would like to point out that presumably they have been standing there waiting for us to wake up.
If they wanted to kill us, the best time has passed.
I'm not saying they won't kill us, or try to, but my guess is that they are a group of everyone with the power and inclination to try to stop a possible mad Mage with a very high kill count that could be assembled in a short time.
They are waiting for us to act first though.
If they were our captors, I do not think they would have.
Jumping to our feet and preparing to fight is probably a dangerous choice when surrounded by a large group of people investigating mass destruction that have probably (rightly) concluded that we are at fault.
Running is probably almost as bad, given a bad swing of the fist pulps people.
We are grieving and confused, unsure if we even deserve to live due to the risk of killing more. Honestly, sitting there in shock then trying to talk to them is not a bad idea. However I do want to be slightly more proactive.
[X] Try to calm yourself.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
I want to add in a bunch of stuff about being non threatening, talking from a distance, asking for parents etc, but experience has taught me to keep Maz votes simple and just discuss it in thread.
If they wanted to kill us, the best time has passed.
I'm not saying they won't kill us, or try to, but my guess is that they are a group of everyone with the power and inclination to try to stop a possible mad Mage with a very high kill count that could be assembled in a short time.
They are waiting for us to act first though.
If they were our captors, I do not think they would have.
Jumping to our feet and preparing to fight is probably a dangerous choice when surrounded by a large group of people investigating mass destruction that have probably (rightly) concluded that we are at fault.
Running is probably almost as bad, given a bad swing of the fist pulps people.
We are grieving and confused, unsure if we even deserve to live due to the risk of killing more. Honestly, sitting there in shock then trying to talk to them is not a bad idea. However I do want to be slightly more proactive.
[X] Try to calm yourself.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
I want to add in a bunch of stuff about being non threatening, talking from a distance, asking for parents etc, but experience has taught me to keep Maz votes simple and just discuss it in thread.
Last edited:
[X] Try to calm yourself.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
Mazrick
Shai'tan
- Location
- The Pit of Doom
Rather low voter turnout this go around. I'll keep the vote open for at least 6 more hours. Longer if the vote is tied or if there's fruitful discussion afoot. As always, any questions regarding the quest are more than welcome. Hope you all enjoyed the quest thus far!
- Location
- Bulgaria
[X] Try to calm yourself.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
- Location
- USA
[X] Try to calm yourself.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
- Location
- Virginia
[X] Try to calm yourself.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
-[X] Talk to the mages and find out what's going on.
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
Wow. I didn't expect the reveal of our powers to be so...dramatic? I mean, I assumed we were just going to be a blank with a magical pet, not One Punch Man.
I hope this level of "aaah, everything is blowing up" is only temporary. Poor Terrence is going to have some pretty serious issues just dealing with the destruction he caused already.
I hope this level of "aaah, everything is blowing up" is only temporary. Poor Terrence is going to have some pretty serious issues just dealing with the destruction he caused already.