Oh man these snowflake emojis are cute.
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Blaze Gonnemann - character sheet
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Blaze Gonnemann, Emperor of Red
200% Health
Conditions
Resilient
- Duration: Permanent
- Effect: Become untiring, with no sustenance requirements, and have no vital organs beyond the heart and brain. Can consume the flesh of the living to slightly revert the effects of aging or repair harm done to the body. Otherwise treated as fully living. The best parts of Risen and mortal life combined.
Gunman's Banner
- Duration: Permanent
- Effect: +++++Heartlessness, +++++Mental Contamination, Form: Warfare Obsession. Willpower +s to resist.
Gunman's Alacrity
- Duration: Permanent
- Effect: All of fate's dictates bend to the will of the Gunman, whose charge is nothing less than absolute war. Aside from granting complete mastery of every field even slightly related to warfare, fate and reality themselves warp to the Gunman's will into the gun that he shoots his enemy with: his strikes are surer and stronger, his strategies more scathingly brilliant, his armies swifter and greater, and his factories more productive and efficient as they waste not even an ounce of steel to fuel his war-machine. All of these aspects are elevated on every axis, that he may finally call himself a true God of War.
Attribute Upgrades
- Strength: 452
- Constitution: 520 (+150 from Armor, 140% value)
- Agility: 485
- Intelligence: 692 (+220 from Step Up, 280% value)
- Wits: 380
- Wisdom: 80
- Charisma: 584
- Manipulation: 47
- Prowess: 90
- Spirit: 586 (150% value)
- Luck: 20
- Willpower: 778 (170% value)
- Protection: 100 (+150 from Armor, 140% value)
- Appearance: 10
The Defender's Armor
Originally, "the Plate."
+++++++++++++++Defensive Stats, ++Curse Mitigation, +40% to Protection and Constitution +s.
The Defender's Cameo - A twinkling star opal cameo, portraying the visage of a man in armor, dutifully holding onto a bayoneted rifle. Slotted into the chestpiece of the Armor. Offers near-complete immunity to Mental Contamination effects from the Gunman's mind.
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Maledict Interface
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Tarnish of the Hunted
First Mitigation: Plate Mitigation - Reduces the amount of drawn-in foes and opponents by 7.5%, reduces their detection range by 15%.Second Mitigation: Amulet Mitigation - Suppression roughly equal to 80%, so long as the amulet is fed regularly with the Essence of specific monstrosities and Ethereals, never more than three days of travel away. Must be fed at least once a month. The targets will rarely if ever be anything but non-trivial.- Malady Resolved/Completed.
Blight of the Wretch
- First Mitigation: Plate Mitigation - Reduces the first impression penalty by 8%, then a further 4% if the face wasn't visible.
- Second Mitigation: Dark Mitigation - Reduces the first impression penalty by 9.5%. Can suppress all Mitigation for the Blight at will, but instead of enabling stronger dislike, creates an active Brand-type effect that intimidates and cows.
- Third Mitigation: Essence Mitigation (incomplete) - Reduces the first impression penalty by 2%.
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Magic
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I. Colour Magic: Emperor's Red
- Essence Level: 25
- at this level, can drain physical, mental, abstract, conceptual, and meta-conceptual phenomena, as well as magic up to almost no limit
Specialized Functions:
- Essence Breakthrough I - Adds +.05 to Essence Level - The visage of the Emperor's Red, spreading like an infusion of blood in a void, stunned them.
- Essence Metastasis - +10% to Essence-Gathering Speed, adds +.01 to Essence Level, and unlocks Essence Preservation.
- Essence Preservation - Specific or unique types of Essence can be preserved, granting specialized functions. Preserved Essence types can be un-aspected at will, in order to produce generic Essence. For now, the aspectation of generic Essence is beyond the user's remit.
- Ave Imperator - Grants .25 Astral Rank, and a flat, absolute 10% resistance to external hostile effects of Rank. Doesn't unlock Accretion.
- Essence Breakthrough II - Adds +.1 to Essence Level - Look 'pon his terrible visage, and answer me! Who is he, the Emperor of Red, if not the Supreme?
- Axis of Expansion - Allows for ranged use of the Emperor's Red, improves the rate of manual cycling and progression by 15% to 20%.
- Essence Breakthrough III - Adds +.5 to Essence Level - And who is the Supreme, if not the Emperor?
- Essence Breakthrough IV - Adds +1 to Essence Level - And who is the Emperor, if not the Ruler of the Universe?
- Essence Breakthrough V - Adds +1.5 to Essence Level. Essence Level can never fall below a minimum value of 4.0. Should that ever happen, the nearby features of the world shall be automatically suctioned to restore the user. +.2 ISH to every aspect of the user.
- Ave Imperator II - Grants .75 Astral Rank and a flat, absolute 30% resistance to external hostile effects of Rank (doesn't stack with other resistances).
- Unification - As the antithesis of Essence, the power of Union allows the Emperor to combine the relative Essences of objects into one...
- Essence Breakthrough VI - Adds +2 to Essence Level.
- Essence Breakthrough VII - Adds +2.5 to Essence Level.
- Essence Breakthrough VII - Adds +3 to Essence Level.
- Essence Breakthrough IX - Adds +3.5 to Essence Level.
- Essence Breakthrough X - Adds +5 to Essence Level. Essence Level can never fall below a minimum value of 10.0. Should that ever happen, the user is restored automatically and retroactively from the least 'essential' source possible; often the enemy themself. This pierces most methods of resisting essence draining effects.
- Ave Imperator III - Grants 1 Astral Rank and a flat, absolute 50% resistance to external hostile effects of Rank (doesn't stack with other resistances.)
- Excelsior - Unlocks the Accretion magic system. All of the user's past, legendary deeds are retroactively accessed to increase their Rank.
- Exalted Essence - At his will, the user can perform acts of total-scale reality alteration by carefully modulating the relative essences of the things around him. He can access new abilities or powers with near-arbitrary effects.
Range Speed Variance (draining, infusion, shifting):
[15,000%] Blood
[300%] Touch
[100%] Very Short-Range (1-1,500 gigameters)
[50%] Short Range (10-50,000 AU)
[8.5%] Medium Range (1-100 LY)
[4%] Long-Range (100-10,000 LY)
[.05%] Very Long Range (10,000-50,000 LY)
[.01%] Extremely Long Range (50,000-100,000 LY)
[.001%] Super-Long Range (100,000 LY - boundary of universe)
Note, in this context, a drain made at a rate of 10% for even a few moments is sufficient to leave an ordinary planet barren.
II. The Gunman's Gonne
Advancement Tier: Grandmaster
Gonne Form: Any Weapon
- Firing Modes: Any
- Magazine Capacity: Infinite
- Muzzle Velocity: x1,000,000+ Speed of Light (at baseline, can be accelerated up to a hundredfold of that amount without issue; can also be slowed down if needed)
- Effective Range: Infinite
Skill Advancements:
- Marksman Level: Unerring (100% accuracy within any completely arbitrary range within and outside of line of sight, always perfectly accounting for wind direction, wind speed, temperature, barometric pressure, gravity, the curvature of the planet, the target's movement, and fully accounting for all esoteric factors. No penalty for called hits to an area larger than a fermion. It's possible to accurately snipe Ant-Man hidden behind twelve planets and a number of defenses with one shot.)
- Strategist Level: Superhuman (intimate knowledge/awareness of all existing and not existing stratagems and tactics used in all manner of combat, including propaganda, information warfare, cybernetic warfare, guerilla warfare, esoteric warfare, corporate warfare, and other more obscure forms. The experience of a general with a transfinite number of campaigns under his belt, as both soldier and leader.)
- Engineering Level: Superhuman+ (capable of designing and constructing any form of weapon or war-related device on par with those used on a hyper-scientifically and thaumaturgically advanced utopia world, amplified further by exceptional intelligence and vast experience in related fields. In combination with other Advancements, can be used to create Armament-peer technology or greater.)
[Medic] - Grants expert-level awareness of biology and anatomy, sufficient to perform operations on allies. +++++Critical Potential when fighting enemies, letting the user make called hits on vulnerable organs in a creature's body.
[Field Surgeon] - +500% bonus to providing emergency care and rapidly healing crippling afflictions. With a simple application of kinetic force and bandages, a shattered femur can be partially ignored, or an injured heart set to beat once more. A further +750% bonus to mental afflictions; one slap to the face can knock a private out of a panicked state.
[The Conqueror] - The skills of an occupation commander and military policeman; finesse and knowledge of how to get away with systemic corruption and cover-up war crimes. Excellent awareness of how propaganda affects a populace and how to prevent a contested populace from rising up.
[The Constable] - Effective mastery of warfare logistics, planning out supply routes, and meshing logistics with grand strategy. Competence bonus when planning out an efficient war economy or selling war bonds.
[The Spymaster] - Unbelievable expertise in the realm of gathering information. Expert-level cold-reading and interrogation skills can assemble a web of intrigue that spans entire nations. Master of torture.
[The Maker] - Almost unbelievable experience in the fields crafting of items, objects, buildings, and artifacts, especially ones related to warfare, receiving a +500% bonus to all such actions and accelerating construction speed by an order of magnitude.
[The Builder] - Conjunctional with the Emperor's Red. A deep insight into the constructive arcane mysteries of the world, and the spiral of realm progression, allows the Builder to manipulate entire magical foundations.
[War-Call of The Battlefield] - ++++Gonne Power, ++++Gonne Control, unlocks the Gun-Katas of the Bullet Forge. Most of these spells are now redundant, and their list has been removed for brevity. To summarize, the Gunman may do essentially anything within the purview of shooting a gun, war, or combat, such as manifesting a thousand bullets in mid-air or conjuring loyal soldiers from the ether. The Advancement below is likewise redundant, but has been kept for purposes of academic record-keeping.
Call To War - A mechanism of steel. A revolution of the chamber. A flash of orange. A deafness in the ear. A charred field of corpses and blood. A life of regret and hate.
The Gunman's fate is to wage war, with anything he can; with gun in hand, with loader on hip, with the bone of his enemies, with the words of his people, with spirit, zeal, or with grit teeth. There is no being in the cosmos more suited towards destruction, hate, vengeance, and warfare than the Gunman, for the Gunman's fate and devotion are only towards combat. Any engagement, any mission, any theatre, any adversary: it matters not to the Gunman, whose home is the battlefield and whose only purpose is war.
Extensive study of the gun-katas of the Bullet Forge, and the war-calls of the Battlefield provides the user of the Gonne with tentative access to the Shard of the Gunman. Bonding with the shard is only possible for short periods of time, lest the user be entirely overtaken by the merciless and ruthless nature of its heart.
*While active, gain the ability to speak like this. Causes friendly practitioners of warfare and combat to defer to the Gonne's user; and opposition to quiver and falter at his voice and war-cry. Even when not speaking, the Gunman's Shard-Bearer emits a low-resolution aura that inspires fear, dread, and awe. This is natural.
*While active, temporarily boosts all knowledge, experience, and talent for any conceivable domain of warfare by a third, and inspires a minor combat instinct in any close battle-allies of the Gunman fighting on the same theater.
*The Gunman was a cruel fighter. There was no trickery he wasn't capable of, no tactic or strategy or unerring shot that he wouldn't pull off for the sake of victory, for the sake of completing his mission. +++Heartlessness, ++Mental Pollution.
*Even while not accessing the Shard of the Gunman, alters Progression speed for the Gonne to Fast, applying this Progression retroactively. There will be only a few years left before the subject of the Gonne transforms into the Gunman; seek asylum or a method to resist its pull before the transformation becomes irresistible.
III. Higher Tongue
Last Laugh - Once per ten millennia, speak this Verse and a being of power will intervene, spiriting you away to a place of relative safety, and repairing enough of your injuries, physical and spiritual, to render you functional again. This being will always be at least somewhat amiable and aligned with your interests.
Verse Length: Single word.
Recharge Left: 9,988 years, 5 months, 12 days
Bolt From the Blue - An offensive stroke of startling profundity. The user fires a lance-sized blast of azure light from their chosen limb or appendage. Strikes with considerable speed and force, scaling with the user's physical strength, willpower, and intelligence. This Verse is resistant to being registered as an 'attack' even by its victim; a socially adroit user could slaughter an entire party of interlocutors without provoking retaliation. Slightly fatiguing.
Verse Length: A heartbeat (or faster)
Power Level: Around a hundred exajoules per casual release; easily busts a planet
Anti-Memetic Profundity: Capable of utterly fooling a creature with ISH 1.95 mental attributes, capable of somewhat fooling a creature with ISH 1.999 attributes, capable of slightly confusing creatures within the ISH 2-3 range
Step Up - Short-range teleportation and personal augmentation.
Intelligence Bonus: +220
Teleportation Range: Universal
Mass Threshold: Unlimited
Space-Bending Techniques:
- Object Translocation - Can freely translocate any non-self object that doesn't exceed the mass threshold to any other location within teleportation range; objects retain their velocity, but vectors can be altered. Can be used on sentients or items as granular as atoms.
- Subspace Pocket - Creates an item-oriented subspace pocket into which objects can be deposited or taken out. Internal volume is equal to teleportation range cubed, as well as the added size of the pocket dimension of the Perfect Storm.
- Long-Distance Transportation - A one-sentence charge-up is required. Casts this Verse as normal, but distance of teleportation is amplified x2,500 and doesn't require line of sight or awareness of the target. Also boosts teleportation by .7-1 ISH, letting it pierce warded demiplanes or sub-realms. Will never result in the caster clipping into an object.
- Multiversal Translocation - A four-sentence charge-up is required. Casts this Verse as per the effects of Long-Distance Transportation, but also lets the caster throw himself into another universe wholly, shifting their locality to a close ontological equivalent. Scrying techniques allow for greater aim. Slightly draining to cast.
- Multimanifestation - Can exist in multiple places at once if desired. The number of simultaneous manifestations is unlimited but requires the appropriate mental finesse and multithreading to keep track of them all, does not acquire such capabilities on one's own.
- Pocket Realm - Can now weave together space in order to create a spatial pocket realm, up to the cubed distance of the teleportation range of this spell. It can be accessed via portals, simple teleportation, and other means.
- Beast of Intellect - +50 Intelligence from Step Up.
- Beast of Understanding - +15 Wisdom +s, flat and applied externally. Receive a 10% competence bonus to the use of other magics and miscellaneous actions.
- Beast of Reason - All Intelligence +s from Step Up have their value increased by 250%.
- The Beast That Is Knowledge - +.4 Intelligence ISH, +.2 Wits ISH, +.2 Wisdom ISH.
Verse Length: One word
Long Verse: Four sentences to activate this as a passive enchantment for the next twenty years. The user may teleport without invoking the Verse as a passive ability, subject to a cooldown of 0.2 picoseconds. May not invoke the Verse normally while active, but can be canceled at will.
Stitch in Time - The user may skip, pause, or rewind time by a set amount. Entities of immense power may resist this Verse.
Most statistical aspects of this Verse are redundant, given the peak of Grandmastery the user has reached in Emperor's Red. Consider the user as someone having stupidly precise and powerful control over time.
Verse length: One word.
Perfect Storm - A Verse that can shift on demand to become one of a substantial collection of sub-Verses offering a broad variety of effects.
At this level of the Emperor's Red, relative essence-shifting allows for near-arbitrary changes, which permits for spells of near-arbitrary complexity or effect to be made. Essentially, consider the user a D&D Wizard of stupidly high level and versatile spell choice.
Always Handy - By incanting this Verse, the caster is able to transform a target at hand into an alternate form. Each item has a unique alternate form, shared with no other. Alternate forms share a common material make-up and represent similar levels of craftsmanship, technology, or complexity, but one form is always of size and weight appropriate to being carried in the caster's hand, while the other is bulkier and heavier such that, if it can be carried at all, it is much unwieldier.
Closed containers, regardless of contents, qualify as single objects, with the contains being safely transformed along with their vessel. Living things can be transformed as well, though successfully targeting an unwilling subject requires great skill.
Verse Length: One word to transform an object from its smaller form to its larger one, one phrase to transform from its larger form to its smaller one.
One For All, All For One
Mastery Level: Full
(May completely invest physical as well as abstract attributes, such as skills.)
One For All - A sacrifice and investiture of power, that it may be reaped later. The caster selects any number of targets and infuses them with a fraction of his mental and spiritual attributes, giving them freely away. The recipients become fractionally more intelligent and wise, their cognition accelerated around a tenth. They also become slightly luckier, more resolved, and enjoy improved protection from esoteric effects as well as improvements to their magical abilities. Their spirit is more indomitable and their essence more difficult to hurt or affect.
All For One - After a certain amount of time has elapsed, the caster invokes this Verse on the recipients of One For All. Although the recipients are virtually unchanged, he regains what he has sacrificed, as well as a small surplus dependent on the time elapsed between then and now.
Verse Length: One word.
Seen, Not Heard - A creation of silencing mist and distraction.
Upon casting, the caster releases or primes a compressed globe of dark blue gas - on impact or caster's order, it explodes and creates a distracting puff of glitter-filled mist. In the same manner that a bright light draws in bugs, this mist cloud draws in sentients to immerse themselves in it, or at least come towards it or stare at it.
Those who do as such, with the exception of the caster, become 'silenced.' The victims are unable to speak, gesticulate, write, or communicate in any form. This effect has the metaphysical imposition of disabling magic-casting of any kind; even a thought-activated system, if not annulled, shall be at least weakened. These orbs can hurt or even disable enchantments or magical beings, such as elementals. The explosive radius of the orbs, as well as their attraction effect, scale with the caster's Charisma and Manipulation.
Maximum Radius: 925 kilometers.
Attraction Effect: Requires 200 Willpower to minimally resist, 600 Willpower to be fully immune
Verse Length: One syllable.
Doubt Is The Beginning - Of wisdom.
This Verse creates a wide field that dispels illusions, mental effects, compulsions, dominations, and similar influences of the body and mind. This includes most effects or even mundane actions that attempt to deceive, manipulate, or control another person. It can be used during negotiations or conversations to avoid being out-maneuvered.
As a side-effect of performing this Verse, the caster's wisdom improves minimally and incrementally with each casting. However, it would require massive amounts of work to elevate one's wisdom to an appreciable level using this method.
Verse Length: A single word.
Seize the Day - Upon being invoked, this Verse imbues its caster with unnaturally good luck, a sprightly vitality, and charms them with restfulness.
For the rest of the following twenty-four hours, the caster is completely ensured to enjoy themselves in a simple and safe manner, with good fortune and companionship flocking to bring them some reprieve from whatever ails them. The caster will acquire a good mood and enjoy themselves within reasonable limit; all but the most heart-stricken and bereaved of people will see a ray of sunshine in their day.
The power of this Verse increases with the power of the caster's spirit and intelligence; a peak-human in both attributes would find himself arriving back in town only to be welcomed as a minor hero celebrated by the local populace, with a festival of modest indulgence awaiting him.
This Verse can be invoked freely once per month. Every successive casting after that is spiritually taxing, with the drain multiplying for every day of casting. A single week of this Verse can burn out even the mightiest of gods in the Realms into meager dust.
Verse length: A short phrase.
Pennies Saved - Upon the recitation of this Verse, the vast potential for training or ability use the caster doesn't actually perform can be stocked up, albeit inefficiently, as nebulous power in those same structures.
For instance, for every ten seconds of doing push-ups, training swordsmanship, or practicing his magic the caster didn't perform, he can reap the rewards at the conclusion of this Verse as if he'd done all of those activities for roughly five seconds, with the level of benefits roughly scaling upwards at a logarithmic rate proportional to the caster's willpower. This Verse lasts for 48 hours per use.
Verse length: Five sentences to cast this as a passive enchantment for the next three days.
Little Stroke - The caster must invoke this dramatic Verse as they are either performing or about to perform some form of attack. For a duration of ten seconds afterward, their chosen armament or spellcraft shines with dazzling, swirling azure light that seems to hold a core of nebulous pure white inside of it.
Anything struck by the attack while the effect of Little Stroke is active will suffer a permanent decrease to their overall power level, including their unrefined statistics as well as their mental stability, ontological importance, willpower, and overall magic. The level of this decrease is always exactly between 0.5 to 1% of their total power; no matter how far the caster pushes themselves or the power of this Verse, it may never increase above that number. No being will ever be reduced to ash or to complete weakness in less than a hundred successive strokes or attacks.
Some beings of might or power immeasurably higher than the caster's will be immune or highly resistant to this Verse, but this is exceptionally rare and would require specific preparation against this Verse in particular.
Somewhat onerous to cast in quick succession; five invocations of this Verse in less than a minute will tire a caster of peak-human spirit and willpower; twenty would tire an adept magus, and forty would exhaust a minor deity.
Verse length: One word.
Home Is Best - From the eastern and western directions, the caster focuses the astral currents to open a large gate edged with fine silver-blue runes.
Its size can be adjusted with sufficient casting skill in this Verse, to be made as small as a hand mirror or as large as the entry to a warehouse; by default, it is thrice as large as a common double-door.
The gate leads to a virtual realm on a floating astral island in the middle of a black void. A starting caster will emerge on an island that has the same rough living space as a common modern aircraft carrier, with no visible structures or features, but with a thin magical bubble of breathable atmosphere surrounding it. With enough practice in using this Verse (Extremely Slow Progression) the caster will find the Home Dimension bending more and more to their will.
No items created on the inside of the Home Dimension can be carried out, and the gate must never be closed while the caster is still inside, although people other than the caster may safely reside there if provided with ample supplies for their survival. Higher levels of practice may lift these requirements.
Verse length: A five-sentence Verse.
Dimension size: 60 thousand square kilometers
Dimension quality: good (high-quality construction, accommodations, modest healing and recovery bonus, teleportation, minor android servants)
Arm of Law - No mere utterance is this, but a tattoo-inscription, to be permanently sealed onto the chosen - preferably dominant - arm of its bearer, in a glowing viridian script that proclaims the letter of law to the universe. Henceforth, that particular arm shall glow with the verdant power of the chanter...
It's not quite a Verse on its own, but rather, a modified and improved version of a Verse by the same name.
As a result, the caster of this Verse obtains the following effects as permanent improvements to his competence:
*All of the actions taken using the tattooed Arm receive a +250% dexterity and coordination bonus; swifter, faster, and better.
*His chosen Arm gains +50 Protection and +50 Constitution, becomes immune to the ravages of heat and cold, tempests of time and space, and other effects. It becomes a nullifying shield against esoteric effects that fall below 2.25 ISH, and strongly resists effects under 3.8999 ISH.
*All Verses cast with the Arm's help see their effects increase in some appropriately ridiculous manner when possible, such as increasing offensive potential tenfold, boosting range, or similar. If such an increase isn't possible or it's undesirable, the Arm may instead make it possible to instantiate the Verse instantly, with a simple gesture.
*Furthermore, the bearer of the Arm may access the Imaginary Element of Fibrem Chanteur - Dictionair - at will, as if he possessed it naturally. Instead of emerging from the arcane quark-potential factor of his body's cells, the element comes from the runes inscribed upon his flesh.
*Conjuctional with Gonne: His Arm is the Arm of the Gunman - all actions with the Gonne, when it is held in the Arm, have their efficiency of speed as well as raw power boosted considerably, +.1 ISH.
And twelve other Verses.
IV. Surgecraft: Gunpowder
Gunpowder - The Gunman's own Element, it encompasses warfare and cinders, but also the supreme nature of the Gunman's overwhelming and cruel firepower. When the Gunman walked down the salubrious halls of the pauper-kings and their surrendered warriors, he never showed any mercy. There was never a shred of humanity underneath that caul of a simple murderer, who did the one thing he knew: devoted himself to war. Gunpowder manifests as a thick, crude gray powder, visually unappealing and smelling like a combination of sulfur, burned tinder, as well as, of course, actual gunpowder.
Counts as a 25-Arete Element due to its nature. However, it costs nothing to take; all costs are on the house, kid.
Blaze's Imaginary Element is determined by his innermost nature.
- Can produce blasts of great force and size, at overwhelming vectors. The entire world is but ash in front of the Gunman's tread, permitting the Elementalist to transmute the very world's features into a canvas of the Gunman's battlefield. Defensive properties exist but are somewhat limited.
- At will the Elementalist can ignite all of the gunpowder they've accumulated, or a specific store of gunpowder in a region, person, object, etc. In doing so, the gunpowder explodes into a fiery conflagration and shockwave of prodigious force.
- Even un-ignited, a raw blast of Gunpowder made directly into someone's face can be lethal, acting with the raw deadliness of shrapnel.
- Spread into the air and breathed in, Gunpowder will automatically infuse itself into the body of an enemy. It can also be used to poison water and food. It can never be unfused unless the user of this Element wills it. Its effects can also be suppressed in a similar fashion.
When infused into people, it has many effects that the Elementalist can choose from a great myriad of options. Usually, these effects are negative but can be beneficial when used on allies. Most of its effects can be similar to chemical or biological weapons, but also with an umbrella of vast and terrifyingly umbral metaphysical possibilities. Sow confusion and chaos, induce mass hallucinations, disrupt order, inspire in-fighting, create berserker units, increase aggression, inflict chemical burns, create a biohazardous virus, etc. It can be used to weaken resolve and force an enemy to cough up more Gunpowder, in order to spread it. It can be used to worsen mental states, inspire depression or suicide, and lower morale on massive scales. More properties can be learned or trained, in order to torture or weaken enemies, such as making the Gunpowder in their bodies into a glasslike substance, crunchy and brittle, producing internal bleeding continuously.
Infused into an object, it pushes its integral nature towards warfare. A sword becomes sharper, and a suit of armor protects better. A gun or cannon's greatest destructive properties are brought to the forefront, transforming each shot into an annihilating strike against the enemy. An android will develop new weapons and terrifying software features to out-fight any enemy it faces, while an Armament might undergo a transformation into a conquerer's form...
Can be used to form semi-sentient golem-androids, each one a terrifying and adept fighter, but also a suicide bomber capable of detonating at a moment's notice. Golems who manage to apprehend an enemy non-lethally will feed them body parts to perpetuate and spread their Element. Can be given less war crime-y orders.
- Due to Gunman's nature, ++++++Mental Contamination.
- Speeds up Gonne Advancement to 2x its current speed.
"Do you think even the worst person can change? How laughable - no. Men are corrupt and evil by their very nature. There can be no half-measures. You tear out the cancer and let them deal with the aftermath. The scar serves as a reminder to others."
V. Accretion
A farmer's boy. A sword of fable. A perilous quest. Death or glory.
- Base Rank: 11.3
- +2.5 Offensive Rank
- +2 Defensive Rank
- +1.5 Warfare Rank
- +1 Leadership Rank
- +150% Rank Gain
- +50% to the effects of Rank when fighting a war
- +100% to the skill of wielding Rank
[Wholeness Rightly Assumed] - All Rank is doubled for the purposes of recovery from harm or defending against effects that attempt to alter the fundamental self of the Gunman, and then further tripled when aiding magics or special effects of regenerative power.
[As Planned] - Competence bonus to creating and adjusting schemes.
[Feat: Breathless] - Gain +.25 Astral Rank.
[Feat: Bloodied] - Gain +.25 Astral Rank.
[In Ruins] - An echo of the Gunman, lingering and resentful. ++Willpower, +Gonne Power, +.75 Astral Rank.
[Feat: Twenty-One Guns] - Gain .5 Astral Rank.
[Feat: Perfect Soldier] - After bonuses, adds +.35 Astral Rank.
[Always Has Been] - +100% to the skill of wielding Rank. The Gunman perfects usage of his armaments that it may serve him better in the ultimate destruction of his foes.
[Feat: Perfect Gunman] - +.375 Astral Rank, +50% to Rank Gain, +.5 Warfare Rank, +.5 Offensive Rank.
[Feat: Perfect Killer] - +.375 Astral Rank, +50% to Rank Gain, +1 Warfare Rank, +1 Offensive Rank.
[Feat: Self-Defense] - +.2 Astral Rank, +50% to Rank Gain, +1 Defensive Rank.
[Call To War] - As he walked the starlit ways, and the halls of the pauper-kings, and the princes of the everwhere, the Gunman never stopped his tread - banner in hand, gun tied around his hip, he'd intended to march onto infinity and to deliver glory to himself, and never anyone else - and above all, to murder.
As a result of the Call To War, the Gunman may now complete campaigns of warfare against a started target: either an individual of sufficient power or a polity entire, in which he successfully conquers or destroys the offending element. Full completion of a campaign grants bonuses associated with the defeated target, as well as rather considerable increases to both Astral Rank and the power of the Gonne.
Also gives +1.25 Astral Rank.
[Gunman Red Universe Emperor]
I am the Lord of the Double Wand of Power; the wand of the Force of Coph Nia--but my left hand is empty, for I have crushed an Universe; & nought remains.
- Book of the Law
As galaxies twist in whirling concert to shoot quasar beams at the enemy, to wash the foe in a mire of primordial quark-gluon plasma, the Gunman stands proud as their Emperor, with his arms folded, the scarlet cape of conquered universes unfurling on his back. As soon as he picks up the Gun that he wields, all the foes of his universe shall sing as they are undone, in cosmic fire and stellar ash, their atoms dissipating no more than a mere illusion in the heat of crumbling universes, the power of the Emperor.
Gives +2 Defensive, +1 Offensive, and +1 Leadership Rank. Also +1 Astral Rank, and may now manifest the Shroud of the Universe Emperor, a guardian's power of effulgent defense which shields one's allies from ten billion supernovae, turning them aside back at the enemy. The environment under the Shroud's protection is hazardous for those foes who may survive advance deeper in, the world itself burning at their touch to transform them into self-burning plasmic torches, often winking out of existence within moments as their very essence burns down to a husk.
[Feat: Notch] - Conjunctional Advancement with the Gonne. As he completes his first major campaign against the dark lord in the Voyaging Realm, the Gunman carves a notch into the Gonne to represent the advancement of his ideology - a first campaign, for the first notch. +1 Rank, +Gonne Power.
As thanks for defeating the dark lord of the Darkest Valley of Penumbral Shade, be awarded a conceptual bonus when fighting against evil, granting +.1 ISH to all offensive and defensive maneuvers in such a contest, as well as +15 to every physical statistic. The Vorpal Blade's true power is now unsealed.
[Second Notch] - A second campaign, fought against the Ruhun-progenitor beasts of the Kterxical Plane... +1 Rank, +Gonne Power.
As a result of overcoming and purging the wildling mutants, receive an enhanced form of bodily regeneration, sufficient to instantly heal a chunk of flesh that had been flash-vaporized on a molecular level with a spell of highly esoteric power; all biological processes of the hero's body are considerably amplified and invigorated.
[Third Notch] - A third campaign, fought against the Astrals of the realms beyond... +1 Rank, +Gonne Power.
As the consequence of curbing the invading ancestors of the ithilyoraei, the Gunman may now selectively count as half-Astral and half-Elf when this would be conceptually advantageous, otherwise remaining as he is at the present moment. Also makes the Gunman findross-neutral selectively. +50% to effects of Rank when at war.
[Fourth Notch] - A fourth campaign, fought against the machine army of the otherworld... +1 Rank, +Gonne Power.
As he defeats the armies of automata, the Gunman shreds them apart to receive a portion of their durability and cold intellect. +15 Intelligence, +.3 ISH Intelligence, +15 Protection, +.1 ISH Protection. +30% to the value of Intelligence +s.
VI. Soul Evocation: The Gunman
[Fire in the Sky] - The Gunman's power, willingly given to his inheritor and scion. An ability to simply fire a gun and murder.
*Acquire the Soul Evocation of the Gunman, whose march is the end of worlds, whose gun is the end of civilizations. Achieve an instinct for warfare, letting you sense conflict within an effectively infinite range, or the range of your perception - whichever is greater - and to instantly transport yourself towards it, as if you had been there all along.
*It is now possible to Fire the Gun, a deed equivalent in its power to a Shattering Blow, completely annihilating the ontological body and framework of most creatures and damaging even ones vastly beyond the Gunman's usual reach, at the cost of immense power drain. A gun turned in the direction of Heaven can raise the fires of hell against it.
*All those killed by the Gunman permanently and partially add to his total power, giving the Gunman a flickering portion of their bodily strength, mental acuity, and spiritual depth, often with greater benefits for slaying greater opponents.
*It's now possible to speak like this, a method of speech conferring the principle of Gunman, which is the destruction of the enemy through whatever means necessary and possible - it dissolves morale and will to fight rapidly in an enemy, saps them of their power, and breaks their formations.
*As a result of his nature, the Gunman must pursue conflict at whatever cost, and whatever the theater. ++++Mental Pollution, Willpower +s to resist.
*20 +s to various physical statistics.
*+100% Health.
VII. The Ordinal Spiral
A magic system that is known for being one of the most optimal paths leading into the very heart of magic. It is the most efficient and fastest of such paths, available to any ontologically coherent mind.
Below are the Ordinals chosen by Blaze Gonnemann in his studies of the Ordinal Spiral.
1st Ordinal - Seeker
2nd Ordinal - Construct
3rd Ordinal - Examine
4th Ordinal - Dispel
5th Ordinal - Augury
6th Ordinal - Legion
7th Ordinal - Terrascape
1st Attainment: (Legion) Decreases the maximum number of Legion Form clones to four, but in return, all of the clones are only slightly lesser when compared to the caster's outlined baseline.
8th Ordinal - Oathsworn
9th Ordinal - Nexus
10th Ordinal - Vindicate
11th Ordinal - War
12th Ordinal - Radiance
As can be seen in the outline above, Blaze's study of the Ordinal Spiral favors versatility over raw power rather heavily, on the basis of the fact that he is using Ordinalism to expand his portfolio of effects - he skillfully avoids the Ordinals that have some kind of overlap with other magics he already has in order to expand his overall power, with the exception of ones that he believes would stack together well enough to make it worth it (such as War, which he knows would stack with his other magics no matter how unlikely or outrageous - a considerable boon. Or at least it was, at the moment he learned to cast it.)
And other magic systems, most of which haven't been considerably practiced outside of their first few steps - most considerably, Blaze has acquired the necessary materials to induct himself into both the magics of the Diagram as well as Cultivation, but did not yet have the time or will to "play around" with either system...
Attack of the Titans
Ahead of them spanned the unconquered wastelands that surrounded, like a gray ring of ash, the former inner administrative zone of the Sanctuary Realm. It was the final straight to the Sanctuary Fortress, as well as the end of the line in their brief quest to reach it. As they approached, deadlier and more fearsome Shadow Beasts came out of the chasms of bleeding darkness around them, dead soldiers rising in response to their presence and picking up armaments of corrupted and stolen power; monsters of horrific strength and esoterically chaining power that could've ended a hundred lives with each stroke of their nightmarish talons. All of them were creatures that Paulette could scarcely comprehend, seeing them and understanding a sliver of their existential might, feeling only a deep, instinctive terror at their unearthly appearance.
And yet, none of them posed a significant obstruction to Blaze, who simply gunned them down with spells and his signature handgun as if they were no more than a swarm of spiders fighting against the flaming cone of exhaust at the back of a starship, burning to a crisp within seconds under the sheer density of his Rank and the deadly power of his unerring shots, each one taking hundreds of their immortal lives, with dozens of shots per second. Every gunshot punctuated the death of a dozen minor gods of darkness and monsters that could have triumphed over sunlit realms. It didn't even seem like Blaze was particularly exerting himself as he cleaned up the entire region within moments, leading them onward with no actual pause in their steadfast march.
Maybe Paulette was scared of him, but she also felt a glimmer of hope at seeing the purge he'd performed against the monsters. Maybe his words, back from when he'd executed the Viscount of Edendale for treason, were true - maybe they would rebuild this world, one brick at a time?
-
Attack of the Titans
-
"We're pretty much there," he announced to the small battlegroup he'd taken with him, Paulette included due to his claim that he was the man best qualified to keep her safe - although he called it a company, it was over four-hundred people, all outfitted in strange armor and weapons.
A few more steps up the surrounding hills, around the chasms, led them into sight of the Sanctuary Fortress. Although he could've taken them inside effortlessly, Blaze claimed that he wanted to clean this place out and take it, not merely go inside it.
"Spread out and clear this place," he ordered, before turning to Paulette, as the troops dispersed and started gunning down abomations. None of them were a fraction of his own power and skill in doing so, but with his gifts, were able to do so nearly effortlessly. "Are you okay?"
"I'm... uhm, yes. I think I'm okay. Are we here to see my parents?"
"In a fashion," he said, before thinking. "As you might've guessed, your parents are dead. Depending on what killed them, I may be able to resurrect them. If not, I... I'll think of something. Nothing is permanent in the face of true power, not even entropy, and I have eons to become god."
"You're guilty."
It wasn't enough to provoke a flinch, but she imagined it must've felt similar to him. Maybe he was simply too good at hiding it.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You feel, uhm, guilty," Paulette corrected herself. "Because you were supposed to be the Supreme Commander of Sanctuary, but then you left on your own to chase adventure. And I think you were feeling guilty even back then, but never had the courage to return, until recently."
He remained silent to the accusation, and that spoke more about his feelings than any mere word could've, if placed in there. She thought about it for a moment.
"But, I don't get it. If you can teleport that far, why not come back here every now and then to check up on the situation? Why not, uhm, do that instead of the escape pod thing? It seems stupid."
"You're a smart kid," Blaze remarked, clearly intending for it to be a compliment, but without any of the usual vivacity in his tone. Only sadness. "It's clear you've inherited your father's superhuman intellect, as well as his propensity to deliver questions or remarks that cut right through pretense and down into the heart of things. It's why I left."
A behemoth-titan rose from its slumber, turning over the mountain it had been sleeping under. It opened its maw and roared to the open skies, a cacophonous and strident noise, like the cry of a siren. As it was about to charge them, and its skin flaked off to reveal it was hundreds of its children, Blaze merely raised his gun and shot it once, obliterating more than four-fifths of its body mass and scattering the rest across the plains behind it, blood like falling rain. A casual devastation.
After a moment of silence, provoked by the event, Paulette cleared her throat and continued demurely.
"Because of my father?"
"No... It's more complicated than that. I didn't want to settle down - I wasn't ready," he said. "And I didn't want to live here, either. I didn't consider it home; I wanted to adventure out and live, have fun. And Chanteur, your father, could see that, and he'd keep... prodding me from time to time, as if to see if I was still awake. After some time, I realized that I wasn't. I realized that I wasn't really living, or at least, that's what I'd thought at the time, so I left. As for the escape pod thing, I wanted to cryogenically freeze myself so we could have an epic reunion, but clearly that... failed."
"Now you're here though," she said, weakly. "So, I guess that matters? You're saving us."
"Sure, kid," he chuckled. And then he raised his gun, a strange viridian light gleaming under his armor's plates. "I am."
You See, Big Girl
"The revolution was a mistake."
"Which one? French? American? Russian?"
"Agricultural."
---
Around me, I could see armies of soldiers and workers, using recovered machinery to rebuild parts of the Realm. In other places, a new line of terraforming mobile suits is working hard to seal up the chasms into the underground. And like that, I was slowly restoring the Sanctuary Realm. Soon, the dead would rise again.
Around my neck shone the Rings in a necklace of stars, on a taut chain of mythril knotted with gold. The Ring of Horror, with its ashen-gray countenance, surrounded by its brethren of Silence, Secrets, and Ages, in colors of dark blue, dark green, and pristine white.
There is one thing left to do, however. And that's acquiring vengeance.
After I'm done with that, I'll take this stupid diary, encode it in a pattern that makes a nice story when read in a specific order, and then I'll drop it somewhere. Maybe in the Astral sea, to fly off into some unknown locality. Maybe it'll reach some alternate version of Japan and a mangaka will turn my life's story into a best-selling manga while studying the Verses at the same time, or maybe it'll drop in the hands of a general in another world who'll learn from its contents to conquer his entire planet, or maybe it'll be something else. It doesn't matter anymore - I keep moving forward.
I descended. The earth parted around me, a yawning pit opening in my advance, ground itself pushed away and burnished at the power of Rank and sufficient telekinetic force to sunder continents and shift tectonic plates, rock and indomitable stone pulled away as I drilled, deeper and deeper. As the earth became immovable, too powerful for me to destroy more than chunks at the time, I started to toss down bolts of scintillating azure magic, each one a hundred nuclear detonations whose energy was compressed into a spear - a bolt - of tight, narrow force, as thick as my forearm. I fired these bolts, digging hundreds of meters, and then detonated them remotely to upset the foundation and move further deep. In a few minutes, I must've been at least twenty kilometers below the surface of the earth.
-
You See, Big Girl
-
Abominations swarmed around me, as the mortal world slumbering above fell away. These were formless nightmares, eldritch and impossible; existing in neither space nor time, and outside of the conception of ten-dimensional angularity, but within the liminal something-and-nothing between all of these ideas, as shadows of greater beings cast upon the walls of the caves by the light of my human awareness. All of them oozed a raging madness, their presence sufficient to turn a well-adjusted man into a pile of ash; one of superhuman resolve into a gibbering wrack.
I didn't react, merely shooting them down as they came into my awareness, gunshot after gunshot marking the death of billions of horrors and miseries. I could feel their deaths rippling out across the universe, Astral creatures turning their faces in abeyance as if suddenly noticing what I was doing.
Even in the upper world, people reacted, if not always consciously, suddenly aware that some of their irrational phobias or nightmares disappeared, letting them sleep soundly or think more calmly. A man with arachnophobia crushed a spider under his heel without fear; a man who feared darkness didn't bother flicking on the switch. There was no more reason for such irrational impulse among them because fear itself was being sheared away with forceful artillery shots on the most fundamental level of reality.
And then, instead of growing tougher, the earth became softer, as I passed by the plate of horror, the middle rim between here and the underworld.
As I came upon the other side and stood on the ceiling of the underworld, I saw the vast black sun darkening the sky. Anthelios, in all his terrible glory.
An exertion of Rank rippled across the world, ripping stone from fundament, logic from the air, meaning from the empty words; and it rippled up like a shaft of crushing, grinding, shredding, a coruscating force like a tunnel of destruction; principles and realms were ripped from the air, their dark lords vanquished.
"Consider this," I said - and all the darkness in this universe and beyond heard me well - raising a fist, "a declaration of war."
And then we fought. Or more accurately, I marched up in the direction of the sky, and I murdered. They sent their monsters after me - demons of impossible fractal dimensionality, skeletons wreathed in hellfire, devils clad in red leather and bat's wings, stoic lunar saints in hauberks of armor wielding greatswords. None of them were a match for me, cut down or shot down faster than they could appear, bullets ramming into their spawning pools in order to stem the flow like a bandage applied to a wound, accumulating billions of corpses in moments. As they realized how useless this was, the first of them came for me - one of the Moon Maidens, she of being lost.
The Maiden of Loss wasn't a particularly tough opponent. She utilized otherworldly black magics and archery to fight me, imbuing her arrows with horrific power and then firing them across the light-years between us. However, she was no match for me - her arrows couldn't even scratch my plate at their strongest, and if they could, I was fast enough that I'd be able to simply evade them with no trouble. She was... surprisingly weak; one of the Goddesses of the Haunted Realm, and now, nothing more than a child with a toy weapon in front of me. There was nothing particularly interesting or challenging about her.
I wasn't disappointed, but I was somewhat sober in the realization of how much had changed since I arrived here - since I became like this. I knew that I would achieve godlike power one day, but to go this far?
I raised the Gonne, shaking my head, and decided to be moderately merciful - I aimed between the eyes and squeezed the trigger.
She was killed. And then her four fellows, the Moon Maidens of Slumber, War, Mysteries, and Death - goddesses of horrific darkness, shot down like dogs, coming out of the woodwork to avenge their youngest sister. There was nothing any of them could to me. The Goddess of Slumber failed to lull me; I was far greater at commanding War than the Goddess of War, and I knew more Mysteries in the Haunted Realm than anyone. The Goddess of Death was conquered with no more difficulty than the previous ones, because I was immortal - beyond and above death; its commander, rather than its subject. Her scythe broke as my sword cut it.
And he finally faced me himself. I'd like to say our battle was long and epic. A duel of fates and ages, deciding the future of the world. I would like to say that it was difficult to watch him without shaking in fear, as he descended. The man wreathed in darkness, six-armed, spirits of the dead at his side - everyone I killed and everyone I would kill in the future, as ephemeral shadows. He raised up a sword, spear, and shield made of pure darkness and anti-sunlight, their presence thrusting into my spirit like blows of a weapon, intent on turning me into no more than simple dust.
But honestly, that's not true. None of it was true. There was no challenge to this, either. It was an ignoble way to end the journey that I had been on.
I fired once, with my dominant hand, and his false spirits collapsed into the ether they came from. The bullet rammed into his chest and nearly killed him, coming out of the other side. We flew across the Astral currents of the naked underworld, horror collapsing around us into unaspected essence as I drained him and his very realm. Around us, the world no longer existed - it hadn't 'existed,' really, as a mortal would define it for quite some time. I was in some higher plane, maybe in the Realm of Forms - a concept of essential warfare fighting the concept of endless horror. And yet, I was greater than him, because my march would never end.
In moments, he was barely greater than an Ethereal, like one of the vampire counts that I would have killed in my first year of adventuring. A weak, pathetic wreck, screaming as I held onto his collar with my fists, his meager fire unsurpassing mine.
"And this is for my friends. See you in hell, Ant."
I punched him in the face, and he collapsed into a thousand fragments, scattering ash and dust. Much like the enemy in my mind, he was gone, proven to be an illusion. A thin figment of fear that never actually existed, but had fooled me into thinking it did.
It felt kind of stupid to conclude it like that.
After scanning the Realm of Horror for any further enemies, I saw there was nothing. Most of the creatures down here were dead, and those who were not, had bent the knee in utter obedience - recognizing me as their new ruler. I could sense as a new notch ripped itself into the Gonne's side. The fifth tally mark.
It had been my shortest war yet, and yet meaningful enough to qualify.
There was nothing left for me down here.
After that, I spoke a Verse and teleported back to the surface, sealing up the hole I'd created before any of the surviving fragment-remnants of horrific entities could crawl out. The sun above had returned to its ordinary, pale radiance - no longer destroying life or impeding its growth.
Back in the Sanctuary Fortress, Paulette was already waiting for me. She wasn't playing with toys, I noticed - something to be expected for an orphan that had to pretty much fend for herself for some time - but rather, speaking with one of the few workers that I might call competent, asking him questions about how the machinery worked.
I chose not to intervene in their conversation. I disrupted their attention in order to walk past them, down below the stairs. There was still much work to be done - I needed to find Eshvalkar, and then I would have to bring back Hortense and Chanteur. They, of all of us, deserved to live the most.
All I feared was the tearful reunion. I'd have some explaining to do...
Anyway, I hope ilbgar can match this. We'll need a lot of omake power to win this vote, it seems.
Wordcount: 9.2k
Anyway.
*Aobaru also receives the benefits and drawbacks above.
@DarkSideBard, as you may recall, you still owe me a single Aobaru-related vote marker. Vote for this.
