You are a dead thing, risen in death to spread death. You are cloaked in the stillness of death, a form that won't grow or age or decay, but you are not stillness. You are the hunger of death, the inevitability of the end that will come clamoring for all things. You are an ending, stilled to swallow as many others as possible before finally claiming yourself. You are nothing else. You can be nothing else. There is nothing else. Warmth and light and life for mere moments are as nothing before the endless immensity of the cold eternity. Only the end matters.
But that didn't stop you the first time, did it?
You lift yourself up off the ground, blinking. You think you were dreaming, but it's all bleeding away already. Shame, you were hoping to find out what you dreamed of, but no surprise. Your memory— You blink your bleary eyes into focus, staring at the stone beneath you.
"Ythona."
You let yourself breathe a little sigh of relief. Then you take another breath, and steel your voice.
"My name is Ythona, and I am a person."
Then you get up off the floor and crack your back. When you were newly risen, you couldn't do your normal morning rituals anymore, in the dim way you remembered them. But you had needed something to mark the start of a day, and you settled on that. A meager affirmation, but if you ever couldn't say it... Well, that's nothing you have to worry about anymore. Plus, now, you've been able to take a few of the older rituals back too. You look down at your feet and pick up the brush, scavenged from some long-abandoned home, and start to run it through your hair. The master hasn't exactly given you a bedroom, and certainly not a bed, but it's still a space of your own. A dark, dry place to sleep and stash a few things of yours. You don't have much, but it's enough to groom and dress yourself. Not that you have choice in your dress; a couple tunics and pants, all different shades of warm grey. Linen nobody bothered to dye. But it is dress, and not ruined by muck and damp. You just have to keep it that way.
As neat as you're going to be, you step past the hanging curtain and into one of the halls of your master's lair. He calls it a fortress, but frankly, it's more like a warren: tight winding tunnels branching off from the big spaces where the important things are. It's not exactly imposing, but then again you have no idea how he found a giant stone cave in this wetland. And somehow it hasn't flooded. So you'll shelve your complaints, although you might grumble about needing a new curtain just to use the spare as a blanket. Eventually. Best not push your luck too soon.
You still aren't very familiar with the place, but this route at least you can go without getting lost. There are ghouls idling in the tunnels for some reason or other. They reflexively fall in line behind you as you pass, and you have to expend the effort to reach out and make them stop. You hurry up, to get away from their notice before the command fades. You have to do something today. Just a patrol, the only task you ever get. Useless and unnecessary, but it's better than anything else you could be asked to do. You hope you don't have to—
You took a wrong turn. It must have been a ways back, and you just—why must the tunnels be so cramped and unremarkable? You've never been this way before, but it looks the same as anything else. You stop kicking yourself for still finding new wrong ways even now once you look where you are. It's a big room, but instead of a stone floor there's just... a massive mirror.
It's still water. You know it's only standing water. But it has to be clear to reflect like that, not just the wetlands flooding in. Where did it come from? What was it for? Was it really a safe cistern? Well, sickness in the water would hardly matter for the ghouls. Or for you, if it didn't spoil the taste. You take a deep breath, and look down at your own reflection.
It's hard not to recoil. Even though it's been years, you still feel like you look wrong. You're pallid, all the color and vitality have been leached out of you. Leeched, even. Your face is too thin, although thankfully not gaunt. Your hair is a mess, although at least now you've been brushing it. You open your mouth, and your teeth are too sharp and hardly white. But it's the sight of the horn that unnerves you every time. It's growing out of the right side of your head, reaching up to a rough and uneven tip. It's dark grey, gnarled and grooved, like the trunk of some ancient tree. Just the part of it standing above your head is as tall as your head, and its base goes almost halfway down your face. Little bits snake out even further, as if it has roots anchoring it to your face... Is it only your imagination, or are they a little closer to your eye now?
Not for the first time, you wonder about ripping it off, but you know you shouldn't. You don't really understand what it is, but it probably matters. It's rooted in the wound that killed you. It never healed, just... Scabbed over. But the scab didn't give way to new skin and scalp, or even to scar, it sprouted into whatever abomination this is. You have never seen a ghoul with anything like it, nor any of the other wights. You had thought about asking the master, but... You don't want to inspire him to cut you open to see if he can improve his own designs.
You sigh. How did you get here? Squatting in an overgrown cave, serving a 'master' who would probably kill you without a second thought if he felt like it. A madman trying to assemble an army of monsters to one day overrun the world, and you joined it. But it was the only real choice, wasn't it?
You stare at your reflection. You can't fault yourself. You would make the same choice again. But are you kidding yourself? If he finally makes you hurt someone... Will you tell yourself it was your only choice to live? Or will you refuse, stand by your principles and promises, and accept losing everything else? It was easier to commit to that when you only had to worry about losing yourself to the hunger.
Maybe you should just run out into the bog. But that didn't serve you well the first time, did it?
You can't remember when you came back. It's all just a red haze, up until you finally ran into that damn bog. And then... It bubbles back up to the surface, and you lose yourself in it.
You are not a monster. You have to remember that. You are a person. You mumble this through trembling lips as you huddle in a puddle of brown water. It's a divot in the ground, not quite deep enough for you to fit, but it keeps the sunlight off you. Where the light touches your face it warms your skin, just under your skin, too warm. You feel like it's about to start burning, that you'll suddenly catch alight like so much kindling, but you don't. It just makes you squirm and itch and finally you dig your hands into the ground below you to pull up mud. You only get dead moss and some other kind of sludge, but it's enough to slather on your face and mostly spare yourself.
You start crying. A part of you knows it's good you can still cry, but you wish you couldn't right now. So much is wrong, and you're just uselessly bawling. You feel like a small child, helpless and confused and afraid, not able to do anything but sob and wail. Everything hurts. Your body aches and stings and if you move the wrong way pain lances through you. You need to stay focused on just that. You can't think about the life you had torn away from you. You can't think about the devastation of the village, all the monsters milling around and feasting on people you knew, should have known. You can't think about how you can barely remember your neighbors, your friends, your family. You can't, you cannot, you must not think about how you're one of those monsters now.
But you have to. You have to because none of it, your body and mind and soul each being torn apart and put back together wrong, none of it hurts as much as the hunger. Your stomach is closed tight as a fist and sending waves of angry, needy pain coursing through you. It is taking everything you have not to double over and clutch at your abdomen, as if it would help. You're going to lose everything. The hunger is going to take over and you will lose your mind and just be like all the other things that killed you and probably everyone you love and there is nothing you can do about it. You can hold out and be hollowed out and left a monster, or you can give in and kill to eat by choice and make yourself a worse monster for it. Why did you have to come back? Why do you have to lose your life twice?
You can't stand it anymore and pull yourself out of the little pool of water. The damp on your skin doesn't really hold back the sunlight but you don't care. It's nothing compared to the hunger clawing at you. You force yourself to lumber forwards, legs feeling leaden, stumbling on the peat. But you keep going. You haven't lost yourself yet, and you'll get as deep into this damnable bog as you can first. Hopefully you'll never make it back out to threaten people. There's no real hope of that, but what else is there? You aren't going to give up and make others pay the price of your weakness. You are a better person than that.
By the time you stumble on the dead deer, you're too famished to question it. You don't even leave the bones.
You still aren't a monster.
You're staring into the sullen eyes looking out of the water. They don't really seem like they're yours. But they don't look like a monster's, either. Not like...
You spin on your heel to face the mass of ghouls crowding the room with you. Where did they all come from? They aren't here to drink. You grit your teeth and glare daggers and they don't care, of course, they don't even notice. You take a deep breath and shut your eyes. You don't know what in your recollections brought them over, and you don't want to think about it. You reach out, trying not to count how many of the presences you directly touch, and with more than a thought but less than a word you command them to leave.
You want to use the solitude to collect yourself, but you've dawdled enough. You have somewhere to be.
Welcome to And Should the Soil Not Take You! This is a Quest in an original fantasy setting, about life, undeath, putting things back together, and evil sorcery. It's a character-driven story, and should also feature action, mystery, exploration, and clever problem-solving. Exactly how much of each, we'll just have to see!
This is my first Quest. I'm new to this, and to this site at all for that matter, but I've had an interest in this kind of interactive fiction for a long time. I really like the idea of having reader engagement with a story right there next to it, and collaboratively making something that I couldn't have done just on my own. I tend to plan things out a lot, so going more by the seat of my pants should be fun. This won't lean too heavily on RPG gamebook elements; no rolling dice or explicit skill checks. Skill levels will be kept track of, though, reflecting general competency and specific capabilities. And I'll at least try dabbling with an XP system for it, but more on that below. I don't know how vote timing will go; it really depends on the amount and pace of activity. I'll figure out a working rhythm.
For a content warning, this Quest will touch on pretty heavy violence. Ghouls are people-eating monsters, and wights can take a lot of damage. I don't revel in that kind of stuff, so narrative description will be terse and in-character discussion will be to the point, but it will be there.
Ythona isn't a blank slate, but reader choices will help round out her personality, and of course shape the course she follows. So there's not going to be a character creation post exactly, but the next post will focus on customization. Not directly doing a 'build', but questions that will affect her history and her statistics. It's not going to include an explicit vote for appearance, but if people have ideas for exactly what Ythona should look like beyond the rather minimal description, feel free to voice them.
Ythona's knowledge of the wider world is pretty limited, at least at the start. That means yours is too. It should unfold as the story goes along. Feel free to ask specific questions, though, if something seems relevant or you're curious about something. Keep in mind I might not answer everything, but I do like sharing minutiae (and being prompted to figure out minutiae, for that matter). You can also ask about characters or the story overall, but those are likelier to get dodged.
If anyone feels like making any kind of art inspired by this, drawings or doodles or writing omakes, by all means, feel free. I really don't imagine I'll be that lucky, but in the grand tradition of this site I'll bribe you with XP to do it.
Also, don't worry about the story post numbering, it'll calm down.
I think I've rambled enough here. I'm hoping the story posts can largely speak for themselves. I'm really looking forward to telling this story, and I hope it works out. More than anything, I want this to be fun.
Physical Power [2] (0/800 XP) You are much stronger and faster than you look. Your raw physical prowess isn't beyond human limits, but it is probably more than you could have reached in life. You wonder if eating alright has to do with it; you are stronger than you were, now that you've been eating better. Or maybe that's only what passes for a superstition among the undead, and your growth for another reason.
Enhanced Perception [2] (165/800 XP) You have exceptionally keen eyes and ears. It's difficult to exactly tell, but you think you've been noticing things you before might have missed. Your vision in low-light is beyond most any human, but typical of a wight. Your extra sense, whatever you should call it, is sharper. It's grown more usual, the awareness of the wights and ghouls around you a familiar background which is only sometimes brought into sharper relief. You can't shut out your perception of others' power even when you want to. But with focus you can better pick up on the location and nature of whatever it is you're sensing.
Healing [3*] (0/1600 XP)
*Power: Temporary Healing You have a power that is, as far as you know, unique: most wounds you suffer close almost instantly, scabbed over by something disconcertingly like bark; and even lost limbs can be suddenly replaced with something spindly, brittle, and sharp; almost wooden, like your horn. Flesh and everything else will regrow to replace it, but while that is impossibly fast for a human, it is still a gradual process, depending on the nature of your wound and your power. Besides that, your healing is fairly exceptionally fast. You can speed up your proper healing with active effort, but the cost is power, and that means hunger.
Domination [2] (0/800 XP) Your control of ghouls may not be as typical as you thought. You've found the control surprisingly easy when you've really called on it, but haven't tested your limits. Your unconscious pull on ghouls is easily overshadowed by another wight, even though it takes you effort to suppress it yourself. Your active control has only rarely failed you, and isn't so easily wrested away. You can give fairly sophisticated commands, at least if they're one step.
Magic [X] (—) Your power comes to you naturally in several ways. You cannot channel it to other ends, and have no idea where to start.
Combat Skill [2] (200/800 XP) You don't have much combat experience per se. Still, hunting has given you experience with weapons (such as they were) and applying more finesse than sheer brute force. You have good hand-eye coordination. As well, taking as much punishment as you have has been its own teacher. You can better press on after taking a hit, and you think you have a good grasp on your limits.
Cooking [3] (0/1600 XP) You are a very good cook. You know a fair number of simple recipes from life, though ones using only readily-found ingredients are few, and your equipment is quite lacking; still, you know enough to make your meat rations into something properly palatable, with a little time and effort. You distantly remember that most dinners were left to you; not alone, of course, but you had taken over the main responsibility from your mother, you think. It was beyond difficult to practice much real cooking out in the wet of the bog, but still, it seems a lifetime's practice isn't lost so easily; even if yours was a short lifetime.
Physical Power [1] (0/400 XP) You have fairly average power for a wight. You are stronger and faster than you look, but are still on the level of an exceptionally athletic human. Maybe eating alright had to do with it, or maybe that's only what passes for a superstition among the undead.
Enhanced Perception [1] (0/400 XP) You have relatively keen eyes and ears, but for all you know, you did in life. Your vision in low-light is beyond most any human, but typical of a wight. The magic sense is new; it's uncanny, an awareness of strength and direction that doesn't quite fit into your usual picture of the world, but can't be shut off. It's generally very vague, which considering the exceptions, is maybe a good thing.
Healing [3*] (0/1600 XP)
*Power: Temporary Healing You have a power that is, as far as you know, unique: most wounds you suffer close almost instantly, scabbed over by something disconcertingly like bark; and even lost limbs can be suddenly replaced with something spindly, brittle, and sharp; almost wooden, like your horn. Flesh and everything else will regrow to replace it, but while that is impossibly fast for a human, it is still a gradual process, depending on the nature of your wound and your power. Besides that, your healing is fairly exceptionally fast. You can speed up your proper healing with active effort, but the cost is power, and that means hunger.
Domination [1] (0/400 XP) Your control over ghouls is typical of a wight, as far as you know. You haven't exactly gone out of your way to test it, but your control has rarely failed you when you actually called on it. Your unconscious pull on ghouls is easily overshadowed by another wight, but it takes effort to actually suppress it.
Magic [X] (—) Your power comes to you naturally in several ways. You cannot channel it to other ends, and have no idea where to start.
Combat Skill [1] (0/400 XP) You have little combat experience, per se—and you would rather not recall it. But hunting has given you experience with weapons (such as they were) and applying more finesse than sheer brute force. That is more than many wights.
Cooking [3] (0/1600 XP) You are a very good cook. You know a fair number of simple recipes from life, though ones using only readily-found ingredients are few, and your equipment is quite lacking; still, you know enough to make your meat rations into something properly palatable, with a little time and effort. You distantly remember that most dinners were left to you; not alone, of course, but you had taken over the main responsibility from your mother, you think. It was beyond difficult to practice much real cooking out in the wet of the bog, but still, it seems a lifetime's practice isn't lost so easily; even if yours was a short lifetime.
'Skills' here reflect both the fundamental attributes and raw capabilities of a wight, learned skills and proficiencies, and particular talents of Ythona. More will be added as appropriate. Not everything will be tracked this way.
Brief explanations of the core attributes:
Physical Power: Unnatural strength is a gift of every ghoul, and wights as well. At base, this is stronger and faster than their muscles would indicate, but not outside the realm of human possibility. But it's well-known that some fell things can manage brute force clearly beyond any living soul.
Enhanced Perception: Wights have exceptionally sharp senses, and some senses no human has. At base, they can see very well in little light, and sense when supernatural power is nearby and in what direction. Some wights also have surprisingly far sight or sensitive ears, although few have the powerful nose of a ghoul. These natural advantages can be honed, and learning observance to actually use them matters as well.
Healing: Whatever force animates the undead compels their bodies in an echo of living physiology, requiring food and water and air and working through blood and muscle. In wights, this force is strong enough to repair their bodies. At base, wounds will scab and close themselves faster than any human could hope for, but still gradually, while minor scratches and scrapes might barely last. Some damage is too severe to heal; significantly, lost limbs will not regrow. And some damage which would eventually heal may kill the wight first. More powerful wights can have healing which is faster, or more potent.
Domination: Wights lead ghouls, it's in their nature. At base, a wight's mere presence will enthrall ghouls. They'll broadly mimic the wight's actions and respond to their emotions, clumsily approximating teamwork. With focus, a wight can actively command nearby ghouls with simple instructions. More powerful wights have greater power, and may control ghouls with more sophistication or spread simple influence far and wide.
Magic: Wights are inherently magical. All wights tap into this power in one way or another, as it resides behind all of their capabilities, it powers their very unlife. Some wights can manipulate this power more freely, producing effects like spells, at the cost of spending power. At base, a wight cannot do this, and learning it is not simple.
Combat Skill: Distinct from raw physical power, this covers learned skill in fighting, in any form. While some measure of experience may be generally applicable, a high rank corresponds to a specific kind of fighting and the knowledge and experience associated with it. At base, a wight has no more training or technique than a random human; if undeath has brought them into more fights, raw power inexpertly applied has seen them through.
Skills have ranks, representing the rough levels of competency. Numbers aren't everything, but this is where they come in. Skills are improved by spending XP on them; each lists the amount to 'buy' the rank. Note that these are the values needed to go from the previous rank to the next, not the cumulative amount needed overall. The descriptions here should help put the ballpark in context, but aren't ironclad law.
0: No training in a skill; exceptionally poor ability in an attribute. (0 XP)
1: Novice training in a skill; the general baseline level of an attribute. (200 XP)
2: Decently competent with a skill; an above-average attribute for a typical wight. (400 XP)
3: An impressive level of skill reflecting real dedication; an attribute of uncommon strength, enough to draw notice. (800 XP)
4: A skill familiar enough to almost be second nature; displaying an attribute of this level marks one out as a powerful wight in the informal hierarchy, for good or for ill. (1600 XP)
5: There's no such thing as true mastery of any skill, but this is close; an attribute of this level isn't peerless, but there can only be a handful, even here. (3200 XP)
6: There are some heights of power you cannot even dream of reaching. What would it take to get there? Could it possibly be worth it? (—)
X: You cannot use this skill at all; you entirely lack this attribute. You cannot learn it normally. You may require a teacher, a breakthrough, or special circumstances. You cannot put XP towards a skill with this 'rank'.
In addition to a rank, some skills may have other tags, such as specific sub-proficiencies, another focus, or an associated power. These may or may not have numbers, but those will serve just as a reference; they won't be micromanagement for the XP allocation.
This system is a little stolen from Now You Feel Like Number None, but that said it took it from something else so that makes it okay, right? Steal and steal-alike? More seriously, this sort of setup just makes sense to me. I toyed around with different XP thresholds, but the doubling just seems simplest and conducive to playing around more in the shallow end without being entirely prohibitive about ever getting out.
This is subject to change, but any change will probably be tweaks, not overhauls. I could bork things badly, but I'm really not expecting to.
Fanart, beastofburden: +50 XP to Physical Power
Fanart, beastofburden: +25 XP to Physical Power
Fanart, Eternal_0bserver: +75 XP to Physical Power
Fanart, beastofburden: +10 XP to Enhanced Perception
Fanart, x_lksk: +25 XP to Physical Power
Fanart, x_lksk: +25 XP to Physical Power
Arc 1 XP, +400 to Domination, +200 to Physical Power
Fanart, beastofburden: +50 XP to Enhanced Perception
Fanart, djd: +50 XP
Fanart, beastofburden: +75 XP to Enhanced Perception
Fanart, djd: +25 XP
Fanart, beastofburden: +10 XP to Enhanced Perception
Fanart, beastofburden: +20 XP to Enhanced Perception
Stories, ForwardRewind: +60 XP to Combat Skill, +20 XP to Enhanced Perception
Arc 3 XP, +360 to Enhanced Perception, +440 to Combat Skill
You aren't going to hurt people, and you certainly aren't going to eat them. You promised that at the start, and the resolve still burns inside you now. But resolve alone couldn't sate the hunger. You needed to eat something to sustain yourself. How did you find it in that awful mire?
[] Scavenged. It served you once. It was just barely possible to find enough dead animals in the bog to support you. They weren't in appetizing shape, but you couldn't get sick, and you were always hungry enough to look past it. You just had to keep a look out for the hidden meals as you wandered, trying to avoid wild ghouls; they wouldn't leave anything behind for you. If it was shameful to dig in muck for carrion, at least you didn't have to hurt anything. You didn't eat well.
[X] Hunted. The bogs aren't complete wastes. Things live here, from bugs and frogs and things that seem like giant rats, up to deer and moose, though you rarely ever saw those. You got skilled at hunting, if not exactly in the usual way. Trees were never common, but you could get enough wood to make tools, so you didn't have to kill with bare hands. It helped. Sometimes feral ghouls chased your prey away, and that stung, but at least it always reminded you how you were better than them. You ate comfortably well.
[] Cannibalized. Ghouls seem to find their way to you. At first it disturbed you, and you tried to run, or to hide... But they would always find you. And then they followed you. You could almost feel it, you were leading them, without even trying. You couldn't stand that feeling of your mind touching theirs. And you didn't have to. You killed them. They were just ghouls, and they didn't even defend themselves, so spellbound by your presence. The first time... You couldn't help yourself, you started to eat. It quickly became habit. You thought of it as putting the bodies to rest, the only way you could in this bog. If you buried them, something else would dig them up and eat them instead. You ate very well.
It took longer than it should have for you to realize you weren't a ghoul. You knew there was a world of difference between you and the feral creatures, of course. But you simply thought of yourself as luckier, holding onto your self only by chance. And you suppose chance is all it was. But you really are something more. You eventually dredged up old scary stories of wights, but they were not merely thinking, talking ghouls. Some were wicked and clever monsters, wielding strange powers that varied from tale to tale. Others were said to be lords and masters of ghouls, leading their lesser brethren to despoil whole settlements. (Not, you reflected bitterly, that it took a wight to manage that.) You were hesitant to think of yourself as such a thing, but eventually it became clear. What pushed you over the edge?
[] Nothing. You just couldn't deny it forever. You had already faced that you were an undead abomination, this wasn't any different. You would no sooner lead a horde of ghouls than you would join one. What did a new word matter? You're still just Ythona. (Besides your mind, you really seemed like only a ghoul with a mysterious head growth. Since meeting your master, you have awakened to some powers as a wight. You're generally skilled, but have nothing that seems particularly unique.)
[] Your eye. You don't exactly understand. Maybe one day the roots in your head dug a little too deep. Maybe you just weren't strong enough. But one night you woke up with the ability to sense the power around you, and even see it, to put it in space. With your right eye, specifically. Your left eye can't do it. That doesn't really matter, in fact it's even useful at times, to focus on a faint presence or block out an overwhelming one, but... Why? (The sight in both eyes is supernaturally keen, but only your right eye sees the supernatural itself. Any wight can detect nearby magic and other power, with a vague sense of strength and direction, and so can you. But you can visualize magic and other power precisely if you're looking towards it, and can tell the living, dead, and undead apart at a glance. With effort, if you close your left eye, you can see only power, to avoid distractions or pinpoint presences behind obstacles. Closing your right eye and focusing can shut off the extra sense entirely.)
[] Your hand. It wasn't on purpose. It wasn't exactly an accident either, but you couldn't possibly have expected success. Dawn was nearing, and there wasn't any pond or puddle around. You were too tired to keep searching for a good spot to shelter from the sun, but not so tired to accept inevitably waking up not-really-burning. So you tried to dig a hole, pulling up the sedge and moss to claw at the peat. It was not going well. Finally, in frustration and the pain of first light, you started punching the peat. And then it all exploded in a spray of chunks and water. You stared at your hand, and the feeling of strength buzzing just under the skin, like sunlight but not unpleasant, somehow familiar. You tried to will more of it out and then your pathetic hole exploded again and you could almost hide in it. But your stomach was screaming at you, and you had to stumble out in the sun to find something to eat. (Many wights can work magic, though not all. You're one of them, just barely, and can concentrate and shape power. It's not elegant, and it costs you in hunger, but you can throw it around. Concussive force with a flash of wasted power. With practice or training, maybe you can refine that force, or find something less brutish.)
[X] Your arm. You try not to think back to it, but a ghoul attacked you once. You woke to sharp pain and the most withered and gaunt ghoul you had ever seen had its teeth in your shoulder. Eating your arm like it thought you were already a corpse. You tried to wrench it off and it just kept biting and your right arm wouldn't move. And then suddenly it could and you crushed the monster's neck in a haze of panic and pain and hunger. When you finally came to your sense, you saw your own arm on the ground. Something else had burst out of your side, dark grey and gnarled, bent in the shape of a slender arm, bloody claws in place of fingers. It looked like carved driftwood, riddled with curved grooves, but... It looks like your horn, now sprouting out of your side, as if it was going to replace all of you. Looking at your arm now, you would never know, but you can't forget that sight. (Where a ghoul's wounds will never heal, any wight's will. Inhumanly fast, but still gradual. Not so for you. Wounds close almost instantly, scabbed over by something disconcertingly like bark. Even lost limbs can be suddenly replaced with something spindly, brittle, and sharp. Flesh and everything else will regrow to replace it... eventually.)
You didn't keep track of the time very diligently. But you think it was three years that you spent in that mire, going by the seasons. There was little to do but survive. You came up with little things to do, games to play and songs to sing, but nothing that stuck for long. You imagined building things, but you didn't really have anything to build with, and couldn't stay in one place for very long. You thought about trying to leave the bog, but you didn't know the way out anymore. And what would there be for you out there? People would mistake you for a dangerous monster. And you couldn't possibly disguise yourself, even without the thing sticking out from your head. And you had all but given up on finding another wight like yourself. They probably weren't so stupid or self-loathing to wander forever in the bog.
So when you saw a person in the distance, it almost had you transfixed. Someone walking purposefully, not shambling aimlessly or sprinting wildly after prey. Someone wearing robes, not nothing or tattered rags caked in dirt. Someone holding a walking stick, topped by a wooden whorl, something made and decorated. You didn't even know what to do but stare and then the person turned towards you. Looked right at you. Started heading towards you.
You were almost panicking. You knew you should have ran. Surely the person was coming to kill you. Why would anyone come into this accursed bog but to cleanse it of things like you? But you couldn't. You couldn't run away from a person, you couldn't accept a fate of pointlessly wandering forever and ever. You had to say something, anything, to greet this person and save yourself and ask for help and all you could do was croak.
Then the person was upon you and he was looking down on you and he was smiling. You could feel his power, an icy touch, bony fingers dancing over your ankles, a pit yawning open beneath your feet to swallow you whole. It was all you had not to fall to your knees before him, and you are so sure he knew.
He spoke of an army he was gathering. Enough ghouls to storm the world. Wights, like you, to lead them. He said you could share in the spoils. You could grow, master the power you had barely tapped. You could take a torch to this world that has spurned you, left you abandoned in a wasteland for an accident of—Well. Not birth, is it? His voice was soft and sweet and dripping with venom.
He asked you, "Would you like to serve me?"
And you said yes.
And he took you away and has never cared about you since.
He promised you meals you didn't want and power you didn't need. And yet you accepted. Why?
[] Fear: He could destroy or enthrall you at a moment's notice. There was no choice but to serve him. There still isn't. You will carve out your own little life in his shadow, and temper his designs where you can. It's the most you can do. You won't die again.
[] Anger: He wasn't really offering you anything. He was barely even talking to you. You accepted, bowed the head, so he wouldn't crush you. You let the tyrant keep you under his thumb and so you fell beneath his notice, no more than a prop soldier. Now you can pay back that outrage, and every other indignity, bit by bit. He is too self-absorbed to ever discover your petty spite and insubordination, but it will still hurt him.
[X] Loneliness: He offered you something else, though he hadn't realized it. He offered you a place. Without him, you would still be alone, without companions or purpose. It was three years of emptiness, of nothing, no voice but your own. You are not stupid; he is evil and cares nothing for you. But he is someone, and he has brought you to others. You cannot bring yourself to hate him. And you will not run from the only home you could ever have.
[] Disgust: He promised you living humans to eat and their corpses to marshal as thralls, once his army had finished growing. Did he really expect you to gleefully condemn innocents to death and worse? Did he really believe you must want to lash out at the world? You are a person, and he is a monster who must be stopped. You don't know how, but if you hope to ever find a chance, you needed to follow him. You can't give up hope now. You'll see this through.
You don't fully remember your first life. Too much of it is lost to you, clouded in a haze or in tatters you can't piece back together. Faces and names elude you. You don't have a lifetime of memories, not even close. But you have far more than nothing, and you hold onto it dearly.
You know your name is Ythona. If you close your eyes and think back, you can hear it spoken by voices you almost know. Voices who cared about you. Family. Friends. You can remember the shape of your life, the gaps where the voices must have gone, but not which ones where. You remember laughter and joy, tears and sorrow, shouting and anger... None of the meaning, but it's enough. You can remember playing games and telling stories, but not the rules or the words.
You weren't special, you don't think. You can remember being cold, and tired, and hungry. Not always; you also remember being warm, rested, and actually full—even just that thought makes your stomach rumble. You can remember toil, little chores, entire days spent working until a late supper. You helped with whatever people needed, but you were good at something. You had a knack. You smile to yourself. You have a knack.
[] What human skill have you hung onto?
—[X] Cooking (Write-in)
[X] Cannibalized.
[X] Your arm.
[X] Disgust.
[X] Foraging!
even if the hunger is for meatstuffs, foraging seems like a nice skill to have.. being able to identify local flora and fungi feels like something she could have picked up in her past life. might help make her meals less miserable too 🍀
Calling it now! Got back a little later than I expected.
So our winners are [X] Hunted; [X] Your Arm; [X] Loneliness; and [X] Cooking.
I generally find this gauche, but I think I'll edit Post -1 to indicate the winning votes so any later readers don't have to dip out of Threadmarks just to find out the backstory, and I don't need to make the numbering even sillier than it already is. Then I'll get the character sheet posted and should have Post 1 up tonight.
Adhoc vote count started by DoobleDeeDooble on Feb 2, 2023 at 7:37 PM, finished with 20 posts and 19 votes.
Going to go with a bold numbering on the threadmark title here, but I like the idea of omakes going in Apocrypha. Also, I know it looks like I totally ignored this but I swear that was because of it having briefly been sent to the Shadow Realm for probably moderation approval reasons.
These are really cool! And it's a whole four of them! I think I'll give out 50 omake XP for you to spend on a skill of your choice; or skills, if you wanted to split it. You can do that now (well, once the character sheet is up, anyways) or wait for a bit to see how things are going. Not totally sure about the numbers for omake XP yet still, but we'll see how that goes.
It would be interesting to see other interpretations (drawn or written) but I don't know if anyone has any. I won't go that long before settling on a fuller appearance description for Ythona, though; either by finally writing it or picking The Best One by my own standards or some pseudovote; something to think about, anyways.
The last pale sliver of sunlight is swallowed up behind a dark curtain of towering clouds, and you sigh in relief. Hopefully it will stay hidden away for the rest of the day. You understand you have to earn your place, but must you really bother with these pointless patrols in daylight? You could observe the complete lack of anything out of place just as easily at night. Your eyes are certainly good enough. And it's not like you would miss any intruders that way, there would never be any! Who would ever willingly head out into this empty bog? Other than yourself.
It is awful going out on patrol. You thought it would get better after a few times, and it still hasn't. It's so hauntingly familiar, trudging through the mire. You know where you are going, and you have somewhere to come back to after, and you make sure to keep those thoughts in mind. But the sights drudge up memories of three years of aimless wandering, and it hurts your heart. And you have to do it alone.
You glance over at the four slavering ghouls prowling beside you. Worse than alone. You have always hated being around the things. It was bad enough the way they just follow your lead by themselves, but having to actively direct a pack... You don't know why they're so empty. The breath of unlife fanned the flame of your self back to a brilliant pyre, so why are theirs only smouldering embers? Undead took their first life and undeath denied them their second. Purely by chance. It wasn't fair. You wondered who they used to be. A woman and three men... What lives did they lead? You would never know, except a good guess at the ending. They were gone, and only the things remained.
Mindless bodies, barely enough animal instinct to search in vain for prey that wasn't there. That much was clear just from their dull, vacant eyes, but you have much more than that. You can rifle through their almost-thoughts without really even trying; it's just orders you put there (follow me, don't chase prey) and that ever-present, oh-so-familiar hunger. It's nagging at the back of your mind, stoking your own hunger. You haven't eaten yet today... You ignore that pull. It's only four of them.
You grimace. You really wish you could have gone without the ghouls. Who are you kidding? You wish you hadn't had to go at all. At least it will be better on the way back, once you can see your master's fortress in the distance. Home on the horizon... Instead of wandering through that seemingly endless bog for however long; probably little more than an hour, but still. Now the ground under your feet is finally starting to dry out, but the relief that brings is overshadowed by the sight, in the distance, of your destination. An abandoned village, out of the bog but still ghoul-infested wastes all the same. What your master expects anyone to pick around there for, you can't fathom. You suppose it's not your place to question his strategic decisions, but you can't really help from doing it.
It's something of a distraction as you get closer to the village. You manage to keep yourself occupied with silly thoughts, and it takes some of the edge off, just barely. The sun even plays nice, only peeking out from the clouds a few times. That admittedly makes every little bout of unfiltered sunlight a nasty surprise, but better that than suffer it the whole while. It hits the ghouls harder, making them whimper and hiss. It rouses your sympathy, despite everything.
You spare the four ghouls another glance, and notice they're excited. Bent forward and tense, staring intently at the houses ahead, pawing at the air. They see the buildings and think they mean prey. Smarter than you thought, but stupid all the same. The village has certainly been picked clean by now, even the bones.
Did any of the ghouls with you come from this village? Probably not, but you can't help but wonder. Ghouls ravaged it, that much is clear. You can see it now, a feral horde drifted in at night. Nothing like tactics, just hatred of sunlight. Several packs had wound up following the same scents and came together, simple bad luck. They came from the same direction you did, out from the bog. A farmer saw and ran into the village to rouse everyone, but he didn't know just how many there were. People hid inside as they always did, while the able scrambled to ready themselves for defense. But there were too many, with too little notice, and the defenders faltered. Some fell, some ran, some tried to regroup but it was too late. Ghouls spilled into the town, packs starting to circle houses. The lucky were ready to run, but everyone else was surrounded. What a pointless, disgusting tragedy.
You trace a path into the village. There are no tracks left from then, of course, but you feel like you know the way. It feels almost wrong to bring ghouls along it, but there's no harm left to be done. You stop in front of a squat little house, no different from any of the others. Wooden walls and a thatched roof, two doors, a square hole with a wooden hatch to serve as a window. A whole pack surrounded it, you think. Trying to get in to the food. Ghouls couldn't tell doors or the hatches on windows apart from the rest of the walls, but eventually they would batter one down or tear one open by chance. Six ghouls tried to smash their way in, testing for weak spots... You can almost see them. Five came pouring through the door when it broke. The sixth... had been left slumped in the window, no longer moving. Sure enough, the door beside the window had been torn off. You step inside, willing your ghouls not to follow you. Five was enough.
Why five? Why the sixth in the window? Why this house? Why do you know? Your stomach tenses as you look at the smashed, ravaged interior. It was a home once, but it is only a room full of detritus now. You can almost recognize things. You ball your fists. This is your home. What's left of it. You're sifting through hazy memories of what happened, and what you must have imagined was happening as you huddled in your home, waiting for rescue. But rescue didn't come. The monsters broke in, and you died. Then you woke up, and you fled, and almost forgot this place. It's not fair. This is too cruel. You knew you had died to ghouls, of course, but... You find your home again, and there is nothing. There is nothing! Everything is broken, unrecognizable, or pilfered and you can't even remember what ought to be there. It might have been better if you hadn't recognized your old home at all! Then you could at least imagine finding a record of your first life some day. You want to smash something in outrage, and instead dig your nails into your palms hard enough to draw blood.
You are seething, and you can feel the monsters outside being whipped into a frenzy because of it. You shut your eyes, suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly, and let the outrage ebb. You're still angry, and sad, but calm enough to keep a handle on the ghouls. That will have to do. This will have to do, you realize. You wish you had more time to come to terms with your home—your old home. But you have a schedule, and the master might not approve of dawdling in your rounds. And it won't be lost forever; you will remember this time, and can come back to salvage whatever solace you can in what's left. At a better time, and without parking ghouls outside this house. You take a few more deep breaths, and then finally relax your hands. The indents in your palms close up, and you absently lick the beads of blood off your claws. A pang of hunger bolts through you; dumb mistake.
You turn around, and your eye falls on something just beneath the window. A short stick of wrought iron, brought to a point. Something to poke at fires. What a simple use for material so precious. But... Not just that. A memory stirs. You fought with it. Stabbed the ghoul coming through the window. You were trying to lure them all to that end, but then one of them broke the door, and a fire iron wasn't enough, and... Here you are. Again. Your chest tightens, as if your heart is in a vice. You feel like it's about to be crushed, and you'll die here a second time. You can't just stand here staring. You need to do something.
[] Take the poker.
You held this before. It didn't save you. But... It meant something. There was another door, you could have fled, but you didn't. You must have stood and fallen for a reason, not just for your life. Maybe it can help you remember that. You need to know. Your old self needs to be known again.
[] Run away.
You want to remember your life, but not this. This you forgot for a reason. It's only pain and blood and death, you can't bear to relive that. It can only hurt you, even more than these ruins already have. You need air, you need space, you need to leave.
i love you ythona (Ythona Sketches) [beastofburden]
it's worth it to try to remember what we were fighting for, if it was something other than just life! because we need that now!
(also regarding the omake XP, i'll put those 50 points towards Physical Power.)
And calling it! I hope nobody minds the lack of a forecasted end time on this one.
[X] Take the poker. carries the day and you can expect the next update to be literally right now because I had the writing bug shortly after posting it, and had basically prepared both possible updates. And then it was pretty clear which one to put the polish on. This will be the last hurrah of updating super quick after the votes close, though. Things are going to get more contingent.
Scheduled vote count started by DoobleDeeDooble on Feb 3, 2023 at 2:06 AM, finished with 16 posts and 16 votes.
