It might have not even been that.
It might have been doubting the chains of dogma he was raised in and going back to the massacre site to look for a helot, just trying to find a corpse.
Exalted: Out Of The Eater
- Thread starter TenfoldShields
- Start date
It might have not even been that.
It might have been doubting the chains of dogma he was raised in and going back to the massacre site to look for a helot, just trying to find a corpse.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
I'm kind of surprised by the Wolf Kingdom's.... peculiarities. They almost certainly have that 'barbarian' thing where their hosts are their whole society at arms styled like Rome's earliest legions, with the richly panoplied elders in the back and then the grizzled middle-aged and then the pennyiless impetuous youngsters in the front, all corralled together and set in lines by the societal expectations of warrior-hood and by harsh tribal laws. This is compounded by the actual ancestors and household ghosts marching side by side with the living. So there's no way the soldiers could indulge in uh "helot pork" without the consent and permission of the upper echelons and the Wolf King, much in the same way that pillage and battle-loot would be officiated over and systematically gathered together and divided up according relevant unit and the social order instead of some wild uncontrolled free-for-all.
So the question then becomes why would the Wolf King ever set out and give his approval of his army's taste for manflesh? The only reason I could think of is the oldest trick in the conquering warlord's repertoire- the terrorization of any future centers of resistance. You don't want to spare any survivors whatever their station to prove how utterly insane you are, and the Wolf King would rather the helots to rebel and mutiny at the whisper of his coming instead of apathetically accepting his horde as just a shuffle in who holds the whip so he won't let the masses be taken in as thralls. Thus if you're going to kill everyone man, woman, and child... why waste good meat?
So the question then becomes why would the Wolf King ever set out and give his approval of his army's taste for manflesh? The only reason I could think of is the oldest trick in the conquering warlord's repertoire- the terrorization of any future centers of resistance. You don't want to spare any survivors whatever their station to prove how utterly insane you are, and the Wolf King would rather the helots to rebel and mutiny at the whisper of his coming instead of apathetically accepting his horde as just a shuffle in who holds the whip so he won't let the masses be taken in as thralls. Thus if you're going to kill everyone man, woman, and child... why waste good meat?
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Romv
A Memory of TREES
Looks like everyone gets to feel like a monster! Yay!
Sadly, I don't really see a reconciliation coming. What with the quite fundamental disagreements on how murdered Lookshy should be. So unless Nicky goes for the shiny goldenhobo adventurer route, he's going on a collision course with Harrower.
Sadly, I don't really see a reconciliation coming. What with the quite fundamental disagreements on how murdered Lookshy should be. So unless Nicky goes for the shiny golden
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Not gonna lie, I love the double meaning here, how it chains together the ruinous casualties of Lookshy's defeat with the metaphorical casualties of citizens having to do their own labour, the death of how the world should work in their eyes.
very good husbando yes gimme that witchy goodness
Hrm.
I'll be honest, as unexpected as it is, Jason (well, Leander now, I suppose) being a Solar isn't as big a deal to me as getting a look at the inside of his head, at his motivations and how that's shaken out for him. Meeting Alexius (now Harrower) has pretty clearly shaken his faith in the social order, but it remains to be seen how he deals with that. Hmmm.
Depends on what model of Lunars Tenfold is going. He's pretty clearly not using canon Abyssals, for example, so it might not be a safe assumption that the Wolf King's brand of Lunars even have Solar Mates. TAW's certainly don't, for instance.
Wait, where did we see the Xaumans chowing down on Lookshyans? Has that actually been established as A Thing They Do beyond Lookshyan propaganda?
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- Location
- florida
Where did he break from cannon Abyssals?
Everything looks pretty direct so far.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Uh... Like every Charm that's been on display so far? Canon Abyssals trend more towards Solars with a coat of black paint, untouchable goths and all. Not so much growing porcelain skin and cloaks of midnight fire and making peoples blood literally explode.
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
Canon Abyssals really got shafted in the designs department. Meanwhile the Infernals are just rocking it out.
Given it looks like he killed that female Encrypted people noticed before with a Glorious Solar Saber, it'd kinda have to be, wouldn't it?
- Location
- florida
All of your examples were just cooler descriptions of existing charms.
I mean, everything can be cool when done awesomely. That's the central conceit of exalted.
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
Hmmm, the recent thread on the American south and the civil war has me wondering what it would be like if Lookshy had a necromantic tradition.
Imagine, bringing together the fetters of a houses honoured ancestor in the face of a slave rebellion, forming a gestalt born of centuries upon centuries of cruelty and domination.
An unstained figure, all in white, whose shadow is a whip, whose words are collars to bind wayward souls. A pure thing, bloodless and immaculate even while his servant-limbs are drenched in oceans of blood and pain.
Maybe one was used to rule a city of the dead in service of one of the Nadir Concordat, and now wears an onyx crown, hammered into their hardened, wax-like flesh by He Who Holds In Thrall as the rebellion of a world of fed him so greatly that the world shattered beneath his weight, sending him falling all the way down.
Just a thought. If only because I might be too busy to write an omake for it today.
Imagine, bringing together the fetters of a houses honoured ancestor in the face of a slave rebellion, forming a gestalt born of centuries upon centuries of cruelty and domination.
An unstained figure, all in white, whose shadow is a whip, whose words are collars to bind wayward souls. A pure thing, bloodless and immaculate even while his servant-limbs are drenched in oceans of blood and pain.
Maybe one was used to rule a city of the dead in service of one of the Nadir Concordat, and now wears an onyx crown, hammered into their hardened, wax-like flesh by He Who Holds In Thrall as the rebellion of a world of fed him so greatly that the world shattered beneath his weight, sending him falling all the way down.
Just a thought. If only because I might be too busy to write an omake for it today.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, I agree; lots of direct allusions such as:
- Dark Messiah style which is a canon style name, which doesn't work like it does in canon.
- Incarnadine Reaper (not canon).
- Mail-from-Marrow (not canon).
- On Carrion Wings (not canon).
- Dread Anatomy (not canon).
- Iridescent Nightmare Mantle (not canon).
BadAtScreenNames
Killed a man in Reno just to watch him die
- Location
- the (currently) United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We actually fight more like an infernal than anything.
- Location
- florida
I feel... Differently? These are pretty clearly inspired and emulating a number of... Well charm lines.
Specifically resistance and athletics charms.
- Dark Messiah style
- Homebrew
- Ivory blossom carapace and crimson petal armor
- On wings of night
- Frenzied forge within
- This is a spirit charm. It even calls it out as such.
If this doesn't illustrate the similarities I don't care too try anymore.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
It doesn't illustrate the similarities, no, and while I know you've bowed out, I think it's useful to examine the differences.
To start with, you are correct vis a vis Dark Messiah Style. Tenfold's description of languid motion and unnatural strength arises pretty naturally from a reading of canon Dark Messiah Style, in particular Bone-Shattering Blow and Dead Man's Grasp, and the ten inch talons he rams through some poor sucker's brain is pretty clearly an invocation of Five Knife Fist.
However, Inauspicious Inner Aegis, whether manifested as Ivory Blossom Carapace or Crimson Petal Armour, works in a certain specific way. It's a mirror charm to Glorious Solar Plate; it creates a suit of armour. That armour's aesthetic may vary, but it is nevertheless a suit. It doesn't do what Harrower does, which is a more reactive, mutative growth and recession of having armour where he needs it, when he needs it, until he doesn't need it. Likewise, On Wings of Night is specifically a Charm for limited flight, while the description of On Carrion Wings refers to sudden lunges propelled by necrotic essence, basically dashes from a spectacle fighter, and... if anything it has more in common with certain TAW Charms, like Body-Optimised Pursuit or Sky-Bounding Might.
Dread Anatomy has more of a gristly feel to it; where Frenzied Forge Within deals in relatively sterile concepts like mad genius, simply bent towards destructive purposes, Dread Anatomy reads more like a biological version of an Alchemical's Omnitool Implant. Iridescent Nightmare Mantle, meanwhile, doesn't feel like a Spirit Charm so much as a distinctly Exalted concept that's been peculiarly neglected by the game, relatively speaking, that being the deriving of power from the anima banner itself.
The most illustrative passage, I think, is this;
because that's not something canon Abyssals do.
Canon abyssals might hit like a reaper's scythe, they might be far stronger than they should be or impale people with naked fists, but the aesthetic of their charmset is more... Well, look at the flavour text for Corpse-Might Surge, "Overcharging his body with the unholy energies that animate the walking dead, the Abyssal stands stronger than living flesh should be. Taut tendons and rigid muscles betray the agony of this exercise, a small price to pay for such brutal power."
A canon Abyssal is a walking corpse, moving with terrible grave-born strength in a mockery of life, and they might look like a distorted mockery of a person with rotting flesh or muscles in the grip of rigor mortis, but they're still recognisably human. Abyssal Melee, for instance, deals a lot in the imagery of detached butchery, homicidal instincts distilled into names like Unfurling Iron Lotus that suggest steely precision. Likewise Abyssal Athletics, which refers to feats like moving over obstacles as lightly as a ghost, or moving with unnatural grace. Resistance, too, is all about baroque, gothic armour and ignoring wounds as unimportant because you're an invulnerable corpse. There's almost a serenity to it, drawing a lot on the semi-romantic vampire imagery, the cold, pristine corpse moving untouchably through the world.
Harrower on the other hand is far more visceral, mired in the guts and offal of death, reflecting Tenfold's prediliction for... not even body horror, exactly, more a fascination with the physical mechanisms of the organic. The result more closely resembles the kind of Alex Mercer-inspired aesthetics that went into TAW and produced Charms like Argent Moon's Armament, Hybrid Nue Transformation, or Hard-Earned Silver Callus. Something monstrous and inhuman, biology exploding and sprawling outwards, shedding skin and reshaping flesh as easy as breathing, worms of meat slithering over each other to wreak monstrous carnage.
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- Location
- florida
Chapter One Part One: The Man Who Sold The World
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter One: A Wilderness of Wolves
Godling. God-king. Little golden lord. Where is your father now? He has turned his face from you, turned to his diversions, to his Games? Be glad, for what would he say if he could see you now? Would he take those hands in his (red, so red, yours and his). Would he wrap those scarlet stained claws around your throat, weeping as he strangled you. Like that would kill you. Like that could kill you. Like that would be enough to stop you. Like you could ever stop. This is what you are. The world would break and shatter underfoot before you became anything else.
This is what he made you.
aren't you proud?
This is the way it breaks. This is the way it all comes down. This is the way the world ends.
One foot in front of the other; one aching, stumbling step after the next. Black blood welling up between your fingers, so hot it steams and hisses. Wisps of white curling off of orichalcum plated nails and lustrous gold tattoos. Crude oil, running pitch, soaking the long waistwrap you wear, the elaborate robes in all the colors of hammered sunlight and encroaching dusk. So hot it sizzles as it drips from the hem, from your hand, splattering syrup-thick on the halls of cold mountain stone; staining the boulevard broad passages of Meru with Solar ichor. Every print you leave behind is a puddle, a half-smeared step, the clotted depths flashing with sunfire. Rippling with reflections of molten light and heat distortion, the power around you enough to crush and cower lesser things all on its own. Useless now, for all the good it did you to begin with.
Fresh agony licks up your side and the world turns grey. The sound you make is more snarl, more vicious, venomous hiss than anything remotely human. You slump against a frieze of Merela, a vast, towering thing sculpted from the Omphalos itself. Features at once delicate and handsome looking down upon you, cold, indifferent as your blood slicks her shins. Your own breath is loud, gasping-harsh in your ears. So pathetically weak. So fragile, so small. But, be kind to yourself.
It's been a long time since you felt pain.
The passageway shudders, your eyes flick up. Mind reflexively probing the ruined remnants of CATARACTS like a tongue tests loose teeth, a mouthful of cracked and shattered enamel, loose in its bed. Forgetting, for a moment, that you killed your own connection to the stream, to the feeds to keep them from finding you. Forgetting, for a moment, that all the network has been returning are fractured, glitching error messages and dead nodes, dead terminals, dead users. It doesn't matter, you know what those are; those staggered impacts, the metallic howling, the clarion roar that comes on their heels: the Gentes are dropping Warstriders into the City. Siege platforms under full escorts, every movement of cyclopean pillar-legs shaking the whole damn mountain.
But they don't know you're here yet. You have a chance.
You wait for the color to seep back and push yourself off again with a strangled grunt, a choked sob. The causeway yawns cavernous all about you, the walls stark white and faintly luminous, the floor as pale as bone. The polished, gleaming surface catching the glow of faded lamps. The hallway is a triangular slash descending through the Pole, Elemental Earth pressing in on every side. Hewn in one, perfect motion centuries past and then abandoned as the foot traffic here slowed to a trickle and then withered entirely. You found it while exploring; one of those long, aimless walks. Pacing slow, methodical circuits of the City; nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing demanding your attention. Since then it's been your own private little passageway, your own small secret.
Now it's your sole hope of salvation.
you and Bright Shattered Ice had argued earlier
a small thing, a stupid thing, spats between colleagues and friends.
your once-hot rivalry cooling over the centuries into something amiable if sharp.
It was a question of aesthetics. principles. philosophy
your biological armatures (beautiful beyond compare)
her surgical fixation, anatomical fascinations cold as her namesake
pointless. but what do you have to amuse yourself but pointless things?
and so you stalked away in the hall, heat in your cheeks, scowl on your lips
you'd delay a little, invite yourself late to the banquet
just to make a point. just to make them regret it.
the sun was setting, you had a terse missed message from Merela.
you were pacing along the halls, scanning the CATARACTS feeds
watching the proceedings despite yourself, savoring a little of the discomfort at your absence. watching as the Sun began his descent.
the great bells of the city tolling, a rolling, resonant echo. overlapping each other like waves crashing against the shore.
and as the last notes faded
the swords cleared their sheaths.
a small thing, a stupid thing, spats between colleagues and friends.
your once-hot rivalry cooling over the centuries into something amiable if sharp.
It was a question of aesthetics. principles. philosophy
your biological armatures (beautiful beyond compare)
her surgical fixation, anatomical fascinations cold as her namesake
pointless. but what do you have to amuse yourself but pointless things?
and so you stalked away in the hall, heat in your cheeks, scowl on your lips
you'd delay a little, invite yourself late to the banquet
just to make a point. just to make them regret it.
the sun was setting, you had a terse missed message from Merela.
you were pacing along the halls, scanning the CATARACTS feeds
watching the proceedings despite yourself, savoring a little of the discomfort at your absence. watching as the Sun began his descent.
the great bells of the city tolling, a rolling, resonant echo. overlapping each other like waves crashing against the shore.
and as the last notes faded
the swords cleared their sheaths.
Tell yourself that you've survived worse. That you've come from less. It's the truth, if such a thing exists here anymore, in this place where everything is malleable, mutable, where every constant can be altered. Every law taken and bent, alloy deforming in your hands like soft soil. The horizon the only boundary remaining, the only warden-wall. The only one left that matters.
You were so young then, in that village on the edges of the steaming jungles. Young and slight and so small, skin the color of dry, sandy soil and melted cocoa beans; your hair straight and dark. Dwelling in the glow of a green sun, a blood-red moon, in the shadow of their towering temples. Merela never changed herself and you never understood why. You had offered before. You could have made her beautiful. Made her more than that...quaint relic. But she always refused you, politely, firmly, with a smile that never really reached her eyes. And so she stayed the same, stayed small and slight with skin the color of spiced chocolate as you worked yourself into something new.
You're a statue now. Your flesh an obsidian-black so dark it gleams glossy, absent any fracture, utterly flawless; threaded through with golden veins and lustrous tendons, molten channels that course up over the idealized anatomy and give voice to the artful biology below, the perfectly sculpted physique. Hair like hammered sunlight hangs loose, spikey and shaggy to your shoulders. Your teeth are orichalcum ingots, your eyes are pools of light, layered rings of gold. You stand, a shadow silhouetted against the sun. You stand, perfect, inhuman, immortal. You stand and you bleed and you limp forward feeling the panic surging, wild and unchecked. The acrid taste of bile as it climbs your throat. But, be kind to yourself.
It's been a long time since you've felt fear. And you're so very afraid.
The flesh-conduits are gone, the anchors embedded in your body, nestled among the glassy, glyph-etched bone and eel-like viscera are working but the connections have been severed. Terminated at the source. The citadels adrift in the Wyld's shoals, knife-edged towers ten stories tall, are gone and you don't know who or how. The purification plants, the manufactories that fed you the raw skeins of life, mechanized death, the raw undifferentiated tissues and divine metamaterials that you used to make, to build, to kill are gone and the thought terrifies you. Works of mortal lifetimes and more-than-mortal genius annihilated utterly. But there's more than that: it's the uncertainty.
You scarcely remember what it was like to be so limited, so bound, your awareness shackled inside your own skull with nothing but your own thoughts for company. Constrained to only what you can see, what you can hear, what you can touch. Crippled. Mutilated. Deaf and dumb and blind. Where once-
laboratory complexes the size of cities, towers shining in the noonday sun
installations in stabilized wyld-shoals, black sites in the parasite-reality beneath your feet, outposts in hell
The Kiln, your pet gods, that which fires clay and makes it pleasing
this world, this world, trapped in this world so small and so boring and so quaint.
dead centuries stretching ahead, dead centuries stretching behind.
you were so proud of what you made at the start, don't you remember?
the serums that strangled plagues. the seed-strains that murdered hunger. the organic systems that replaced frail, faltering flesh.
you were their salvation. they loved you. they worshipped you.
and so did their children.
and their children.
and their children.
and their children.
and their children.
how many generations did it take to realize the trick, the trap?
that in the end you were locked in this world with only seven hundred others for company.
with only hollow permutations of empty conversations.
every scrap of novelty exhausted. every obstacle effortlessly demolished. an eternity of steady, even sunlight washing the colors from Creation.
Bright Shattered Ice understood, better than anyone else She understood the question, the problem.
it's like she asked you once:
Can the Host make a stone it cannot lift?
Can we build something we cannot break?
this stagnant, sterile system. this rotten reality. its walls closing in on every side; penning you in, suffocating you.
there is a way out. there is a way to be free. you just have to find it.
your whole world is seven hundred people and you are so.
so.
sick of them.
installations in stabilized wyld-shoals, black sites in the parasite-reality beneath your feet, outposts in hell
The Kiln, your pet gods, that which fires clay and makes it pleasing
this world, this world, trapped in this world so small and so boring and so quaint.
dead centuries stretching ahead, dead centuries stretching behind.
you were so proud of what you made at the start, don't you remember?
the serums that strangled plagues. the seed-strains that murdered hunger. the organic systems that replaced frail, faltering flesh.
you were their salvation. they loved you. they worshipped you.
and so did their children.
and their children.
and their children.
and their children.
and their children.
how many generations did it take to realize the trick, the trap?
that in the end you were locked in this world with only seven hundred others for company.
with only hollow permutations of empty conversations.
every scrap of novelty exhausted. every obstacle effortlessly demolished. an eternity of steady, even sunlight washing the colors from Creation.
Bright Shattered Ice understood, better than anyone else She understood the question, the problem.
it's like she asked you once:
Can the Host make a stone it cannot lift?
Can we build something we cannot break?
this stagnant, sterile system. this rotten reality. its walls closing in on every side; penning you in, suffocating you.
there is a way out. there is a way to be free. you just have to find it.
your whole world is seven hundred people and you are so.
so.
sick of them.
-Do not dwell on it. Do not dwell on the exposed ribs, the pulsing meat in your side, the scorched smell of Essence-cannon charred tissue. Do not dwell on how naked you are, how exposed you've become. Do not dwell on the centuries of tedious labor your traitorous tools have cost you, on the price of your complacent trust. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. You've butchered Titans and shattered Devas, this Terrestrial rebellion is almost pathetic by comparison. You will escape. You will kill them. You will harvest their fallen and finally, finally, build something better from their bones as you promised the others- how long ago was it? It doesn't matter. Their new incarnations will appreciate the gesture, you're sure. You might even pretend to care.
You slump against the sharktooth-shaped doorway, gesturing at the antique sensor in aggravation. A few fractions of a second and it registers, the partitions grinding apart, unfurling with a small shower of dust and grit.
Stumble out, weak and whimpering and then catch yourself. Stare-wide eyed into the abyss all about you. Stand there on the edge of everything and bear witness to the Hell you have made.
You're at the very bottom of Upper Meru, on the fringe of those grand manses and massive palaces. A quarter of the Pole rising above you, a solid wall of rock and sacred stone that seems to stretch out to eternity, just barely curving at the absolute limit of your vision. It's bulk a pressure against your spine, a palpable weight on your shoulders. More than half the City falling away at your feet, a vertiginous plunge into a forest of marble-white skyscrapers: megastructures and arcologies, wreathed in green-growth and elaborate gold inlay, grown and shaped from terraces barely large enough to support them, cities within cities. The space between the towers thick with walkways, the ten-lane bridges made delicate by the distance. The river Serpentine courses nearby, thousands of gallons thundering past it plunges down the near-vertical slopes. The roar loud enough to rattle your teeth, Black Snake Dam a smudge of supercrete and jadesteel in the razor-sharp foothills. A patchwork quilt of green and tan fields, spider-webbed with machinery, stretching out from the base. Riven and split by rivers and bays that glow like hammered brass in the dying Calibration light.
You stand on a little landing of polished slate-gray cement, a small public garden growing from austere boxes, topaz-yellow lilies bobbing in the wind. The gale plucking at your hair, at the drenched hem of your waistwrap, your robes. Meru unfurls all about you, a metropolis cut into the mountainside.
Below you can see the people running. See the war machines; hexapodal, saurian, insectile. Their bodies long and slender, limbs almost delicate for all that they're as thick around as roads. They're ascending the slopes, surrounded by hordes of smaller, humanoid walkers. Golden flames dripping from serrated jaws, flanks bristling with weapons. See the flickers and flashes, the distant sparks as small arms fire stitches across open plazas and glass-fronted concourses. The blooming banners of smoke, curtains of rubble falling from building flanks.
Above a battle rages. Framed against clouds the palest shade of pink and orange, backlit by the sullen, setting Sun. His face a yawning black void, a pool of ink as Lunar and Solar Incarna converge. The Maidens sitting in a crown about the conjoined pair. All of them indifferent, uncaring as the greatest aerial fleet in history tears itself apart.
Hulls draped with thicker cables and striated tubing, the terrible suggestion of flayed sinew, exposed tendon, the second layer metamaterials glistening wet ink beneath and between segments of ivory and orichalcum plate. Rippling, rainbow rounds and lances of lustrous energy thread them together. Swarms of darting, squirming embers dancing between them, blossoming into devastating detonations on impact. A squadron of fighters screams past, the wash of their thrusters a hot breeze on your skin, their angles sleek and stark, origami hulls folded around blue-hot engines. In the sky interceptors duel with bomber escorts, buying time for the the bulky, fatter things to dip close to kilometer-long support ships, sapphire flowers blooming in their wake. Cerulean flames ripping through armor and ablative and superstructure. You see lean, lethal frigates hunting in wolfpacks through the storm, tacking into the hurricane of directed energy and hyperaccelerated slugs. You see wide-winged cruisers, their shadow like a vulture's span, a longsword, wide-wings stretching forth from the "hilt" every pinion a throbbing jet. You see claymore dreadnoughts, cities in their own right, ridges rising along their length like crocodile scutes, strobing the clouds with enough firepower to level a raksha kingdom. Punching holes in the billowing, pastel things. You see the sigils. The seals. Bright Shattered Ice. Iskander. Desus. The Hierophant. Salina...Merela.
You see the Worldmaker Cairn, flagship of the entire Metropolitan Defense Fleet, cored through with a spinal shot. Slowly, ponderously, listing as gravity takes hold. Drawing it down. Flames chewing through bloody rents in its side, shedding debris as it begins the long, long fall.
The man stands, waiting for you, backlit by the burning dreadnought. Hands hanging loosely at his sides, calloused and heavy. Dark hair drawn back into a ponytail, emerald eyes studying yours. He wears little save a simple green jacket over a combat skin.
Dragonblooded in their organic armor flank him on either side, all but surround him, their optics glowing gold. High frequency blades humming, elemental energy licking up the lethal edges. Boxy cannons braced to their shoulders, light already kindling in the depths of the barrels. Your three-part, wasp-like seal on their chests. Your Gens.
Yours.
For a moment there is silence.
"Kejak," you say politely, almost conversationally. Two old acquaintances meeting by happenstance. He raises his hands, fingers curling, knuckles audibly popping. You match the motion, fists pitch dark and shot through with precious metal.
You are immortal, endless, soaked in Primordial patricide and stained with Pride. The first, the most beautiful of all sins. You've survived so much. You will survive this. You will not stop.
You cannot stop. You cannot be anything but what you are.
A whisper of cloth as Chejop Kejak, Vizier of Heaven, Chair of the Sidereal Central Committee shifts his own weight in response, his face unsmiling.
He speaks your name with all the bitter imprecation of a curse.
Past Life (Apollyon, the Angel of the Abyss): Novice (Locked)
Shatter the sky.
The tether to Harrower's First Age Incarnation, the bearer of the golden spark, the keter-soul that now resides within the Abyssal. Apollyon was a veteran of the Primordial War and carried this Exaltation for untold centuries. Shaping it, molding it, like wind and rain sculpt stone. Something of him has been indelibly imprinted upon this shard. And something of that, in turn, has left its mark on Harrower. This potential treasure trove of memories currently manifests as brief flickers of uncertain inspiration amidst deeply unsettling dreams.
Shatter the sky.
The tether to Harrower's First Age Incarnation, the bearer of the golden spark, the keter-soul that now resides within the Abyssal. Apollyon was a veteran of the Primordial War and carried this Exaltation for untold centuries. Shaping it, molding it, like wind and rain sculpt stone. Something of him has been indelibly imprinted upon this shard. And something of that, in turn, has left its mark on Harrower. This potential treasure trove of memories currently manifests as brief flickers of uncertain inspiration amidst deeply unsettling dreams.
Fall. Fall in darkness. Fall in an ocean of night. Tangled sensation, confused awareness filtering through in flashes: your back arching so far that your vertebrae crackle and pop, your lips peeling back from neat, even rows of ever-so-slightly-too-sharp teeth, your skin slick with sweat. You claw your way up through layers of sleep, reaching for the waking world only for it to slip away. For reality to subside and the fever-dream to return.
Consciousness has its degrees.
In that spray of images, memories, impressions you find something. You cling to it.
[ ] The Sky. Those fighters, fast and sleek and deadly, darting through the clouds. Dancing between the raindrops. Untethered from the world below.
[ ] The Mountain. Those armored suits that surrounded the larger platforms, each one thrice the size of a man. Implacable. Indomitable. Relentless.
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Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
[X] The Sky. Those fighters, fast and sleek and deadly, darting through the clouds. Dancing between the raindrops. Untethered from the world below.
I think the perceived freedom of flight would be more to Harrower's tastes.
I think the perceived freedom of flight would be more to Harrower's tastes.
- Location
- New Zealand
Remember this will be something we make from flesh, not metal.
So do we want a behemoth, or flying raptors?
So do we want a behemoth, or flying raptors?
LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
[X] The Mountain. Those armored suits that surrounded the larger platforms, each one thrice the size of a man. Implacable. Indomitable. Relentless.
Nemesis Motherfuckers Let's Go Let's Go.
Nemesis Motherfuckers Let's Go Let's Go.
- Location
- United States
[X] The Mountain. Those armored suits that surrounded the larger platforms, each one thrice the size of a man. Implacable. Indomitable. Relentless.