Character Sheet
The Mysterious Orphan

Name: Lotte, daughter of Henrik and Anelie
Sexuality: Pansexual
Age: 18
Species: Lamia, Central Lands Human Culture
Level: 3
Class: Hunter
Weapons: Bow, Knife

XP: 2/18

Description: A tall lamia, with short blond hair, and blue eyes, dressed in a protective vest and a noble's hunting shirt. They are muscular, well-formed and handsome, and have slightly yellowish eyes and a forked tongue. Their snake-half is in a forest pattern that helps for blending in, except for the occasional splash of Tyrian purple.

Traits:

Just Devotions (Racial--Human, Central, Cultural)(Level 0): Humans in some parts of the world worship the Gods, vast and sometimes unknowable beings that do grant blessings to those that believe in them, magical blessings. But even the lowliest of the pious knows how to pray to them, how to do the right supplications, how to act in the proper ways. This knowledge can sometimes be put to good use, though the Gods rarely turn their eyes to every little prayer.

Wholesome Farm Looks (Human, Central, Physical, Level 1): Though most of the people of the Central lands, that mass of Kingdoms, Princedoms, Dukedoms, Duchess States, and more, are of course quite poor, they are a hardy, hard-working people, and sometimes this life less beats a person down and more hones them. They have reasonably good looks, and even more importantly, look trustworthy, clean-cut, and otherwise like the kind of person who'd never lied a day in their life or slacked off a single hour, either. This remains even after becoming a lamia, though it is... tempered, obviously.

Snake Eyes (Level 1, Physical, Lamia): You can see in the dark pretty well. It isn't perfect, but the night is not nearly so dark and full of dangers as you expected it would be, for whatever reason.


Forest Wanderer (0, Pre-Class): The forest is a fascinating place for a child, as long as they don't go too far. As one gets used to it, one learns more about its ins and outs, and while some of it only applies to the forest that such a child lived in at first, much of it is quite helpful later.

Forest Eyes (Level 1. Class): As one could have eyes that pick out every tiny detail of the tundra, so can one be used to seeing in the dark forest tracks, possibilities, old growth, traps, and anything else, especially when one knows how to use your ears and nose to aid it. It is remarkable how much you can see, when you see what is actually there.

Hunter's Mettle (Level 1, Class): To hunt, one needs a bow, an arrow, and perhaps a knife for self-defense. Having some skill at them is inevitable, having solid skill at them is admirable, and quite useful.

Steady Arm (Level 2, Class): You have a strong, consistent aim. You're not a superlative archer, at least by the standards of adventurers, but you don't have off moments, and you don't waver from being able to hit your target, even if you're not doing the fancier tricks.

Leave Few Traces (Level 2, Class): The experience of being on one side of the hunt makes you wonder how you'd hide your tracks if you were being hunted, or tracked by hostile enemies, as sometimes does happen in adventures. You've begun to practice how not to be followed in the woods, and perhaps elsewhere.


Mending Knowledge, Basic (Level 0, Pre-Class, Healing Priest): You know how to apply poultrices, and you know the basic ingredients of a number of potions that cure headaches, deal with common pains, put someone into a gentle sleep, and other minor things. You can also bandage someone properly. You are not very good at this, merely adequate... but that's more than what most people are.


Whitlin' Ways (Level 1, Common): A man or woman who knows how to whittle will never want for whistles, or spoons, or any number of goods. It's a useful, solid sort of skill, and one that could be made into a trade. It also makes a pretty decent way to pass the time, and the person who whittles never lacks for a knife in sticky situations.

Penny Pincher (Level 1, General): You know the value of a Pfin, and how to keep from wasting all of your money, even if you're far from a merchant. Money is something you're familiar with.

Steel Nerves (General, Level 3): You've seen enough strange places and done enough fantastic things that you are less likely to panic in terrible situations, and more likely to think things through, however difficult. This doesn't mean you can't panic at all, but you have a grip on those nerves. In battle and danger only, this unfortunately doesn't help at all with social anxiety.


Divine Sense (Level 0, Divine): You can sense when someone is a Demigod, and there's at least the potential ability--though you have not figured it out yet--to try to track people through their divine 'scent.' A person's 'scent' gets stronger as they get more magically and divinely powerful... but on the other hand, you now have a 'scent' of your own, that will allow other demigods to know you for what you are, increasingly as you grow more powerful yourself.

Captivating Eyes (Level 2, Divine): You can sometimes 'catch' people with your eyes. If you're concentrating, they'll find it slightly more difficult to look away, though any sense of threat or danger breaks it immediately, and they'll hear your words clearly, actually listening… or at least hearing them. There's no requirement to listen to them, nor does it seem as if anyone's mind is being altered in any way, but it's an interesting, if bizarre, power, and certainly is a new take on 'lost in their eyes.'

Slithering Shadows (Level 3, Divine): You can blend into the shadows better than you should be able to. At night, and in darker areas, you can seem to shift away from sight. It doesn't work well in a wide-open space, but that little bit of extra secrecy can be very useful as a hunter, and as someone who might need to sneak through various areas.
 
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We're getting so close to an egg crack moment, and eventually I won't have to mess with pronouns!

And on that note... anyone have suggestions for names? :V
 
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Maybe just drop the L and get Otto? Or go for Lothar, which is more fantasy-sounding than Lot (also, I just don't like the biblical connotations of the name Lot).

Granted, Lot does grant itself easily to puns, like "he's a Lot of a man", but.
 
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Lotte's eyes had been tightly shut in those last moments, half-blinded by the light, and so it took her a few moments to get her bearings. When she opened her eyes, she found that she was in a large field, covered in thick, overgrown grass, under a vast, open sky. There were none of the other plants that should be growing in the field, as if The field ended, at least to her left, in a blank black wall that stretched hundreds of feet up, and yet barely began to touch the sky, which was the red of a sunset.

She could just barely see the stars, just waiting for the sun to go down further to come out. More imposingly, in front of her was a pathway made of large cobblestones, improbably smooth, as if they'd been in a river, even though there was no water around. Lotte turned around, half-stumbling, and walked the other way. She thought there was no good in anything around here. She paused after a few steps to kneel down and run her hand through the short grass. It felt entirely normal, and when she dug with her fingers, there was good loamy soil, smelling remarkably like that on her parents' farm. It was the kind of soil anything would grow in. So, this impossible place was somehow like the place she knew.

Lotte kept on walking, and then blinked in shock. She found herself at the start of a cobblestone path again. When she turned around she saw, behind her, the area where she'd dug up dirt, still faintly disturbed. So she turned herself right and kept on walking… before finding herself, after a minute, back in front of the cobblestone path. When she looked behind her, she saw… the hole she'd dug up out of curiosity.

This was bizarre, and there was a sinking feeling in her stomach. She'd have to walk on the path, unless she just sat there. But a part of her was afraid that the tentacle would come back, and so she began to walk.

She was still soaked in gore, still with barely bandaged wounds, still smelling slightly charred if you could smell that beneath the sweat and blood and guts. Lotte was just about at the end of her strength, and so she limped along, her legs aching more and more with every step. Finally, she spied a shape in the distance which, as she grew closer, she could see was a building made of a very familiar looking type of black stone. It looked a lot like slabs of smooth stone stacked on top of each other like steps.

When she got closer, she could see that it was vaguely triangular, and that on each level except the ground floor, there were dozens and dozens of life-sized statues of Lamia, humans, a few Sepult, and snakes of all shapes and sizes. They were beautifully carved, and almost looked real, and were--unlike anything else here--colorful, clearly painted to look just like real life. They were slightly off, the yellows too bright, the blues of a cloak looking too much like the sky.. At the very top of the structure was a shining, white-gold capstone that seemed gemlike. It glittered like the stars had when she'd looked at them. Plain and normal, but… if that's what she saw, what would others see?

At the base of the structure, where the cobblestones led, there was a wide open door. As she got closer, she realized that each of the steps was about twice her height, so the door itself was very big. It gaped, leading into some sort of hall. But just before she stepped in, she heard a voice, coming from up above.

"Prince, you have returned," it whispered. "No, not Prince."

"Who are you?" Lotte called out, loud enough that she winced, afraid that she'd be attacked again. But no one responded, and after a tense, terrified moment she continued on into the building.

Lotte saw no other choice but to walk in, looking around. There were what looked like stone tables, here and there, in a large circle. There were several doors, and the room smelled faintly of perfume. It was almost relaxing. The first door seemed to lead to more halls, and the second, when Lotte finally managed to make it over there, opened up to… well. The room's floors were of the same black stone as everywhere else in this place, but they were slightly slick on the stairs down, and then there was what looked like a huge bathtub, the size of a pond, stretching outwards. It was empty.

Then she reached out and touched it with her hand. The black stone of the tub began to turn white, spreading from where she'd touched it, until the whole tub was made of this strange, beautiful white stone, which seemed almost to have patterns swirling in it. Then the water began to fill it, slowly, coming from seemingly nowhere. Cautiously, Lotte touched the water. It was warm, but nothing more than that, at least not at a glance.

Lotte had a feeling that whoever had dragged her here wanted her to bathe, and so she turned around and walked out.

She was too tired to be polite. And why should she be? This wasn't some noble, who she had to be polite to because of their status and power.

She was stopped short when she opened the door in the front area of the building. She came upon smooth stone steps down to what seemed to be some sort of stone altar, white unlike everything else in this building. After a moment, Lotte realized something.

...a Temple. This was a Temple. At the heart of this 'Palace' was a Temple, and one incredibly hard to reach.

Lotte walked down the steps, setting down her bag at the second to last of the black stone steps, and then touching the strange stone table that looked like it should be laden down with holy works like a beast of burden was with supplies.

"Why am I here?" Lotte asked, her voice echoing.

Then she saw symbols on the table that felt vaguely familiar. When she reached out to touch the table, the altar… sacrificial, perhaps? It began to turn into white stone, and Lotte knew instinctively what it said.

One drop or one cup.

Lotte bit her lip, but felt an odd sort of pull. It was as if she was going to throw up, and she reached out her bandaged hand and rubbed it against the white stone until a little blood came out.

Nothing happened, at first, and for that Lotte was glad, because her body had moved almost without her.

Screaming, crying, hoping and dreaming, nightmares that wouldn't end and then a feeling of being watched. Blood, so much blood.

The world drowned in it, sometimes.
But she cried for her own blood, blood not even shed so much as released by her body.

She felt sick and strange, as if her head was about to burst. She staggered back, and blinked as darkness gathered all around the center area where the altar was. Then the darkness began to take the shape of eyes, and serpents, thousands of them.

There were snakes in a riot of colors, a voice seeming to come through all the snakes, on the ground and yet seeming to stretch out to be connected to… nothing. The voice coming through them was somehow able to make the ground shake.

'Little One. At last I can see you with mine own eyes, rather than the pale reflections. It has been too long.'

The voice was strange. One moment it was deep, the next high-pitched, and then after that raspy, as if it was everything at once.

"W-what?"

'I looked upon you once, upon a dream. You remember it. I knew you then, I dreamed with you, and knew that you would come back to me, sooner rather than later.'

Lotte gaped as the snakes swirled around him. They didn't seem to have a center, some place where they came from. They were everywhere, never stopping their motions. Then they began hissing all at once, as one. Lotte knew they were tasting the air, but it didn't keep her from backing up a step. But of course she was surrounded.

'Eighteen years. Eighteen years I've waited. And I could not see into your mind because of my deal with Her. Eighteen years, and only a single glimpse dearly bought. And now you are here, at last, my child.'

Lotte spun around, drawing her bow and preparing to loose her final arrow at… where? Where was she supposed to target?

'Do not. Do not attack me. It will do you no good, and we are linked, the two of us. It was bold of you to come like this, to wear a false face and call yourself a woman, as you are not. It shows a dedication to me.'

"Who is…?" Lotte asked, heart hammering in her throat.

'I have many, many names. Speak three and at last we can begin. Speak three and you can at least see. You've spent all those years, and now your body and soul are ready. Or you can stay here, trapped. I can give my word by my divine essence that it shall do nothing more than reveal who you are.'

Lotte blinked, "What words?"

'Did they not teach you, boy?! Well then, repeat after me. I have ten trillion names, and to declare this is a name.'

Lotte hesitated, but she realized she was surrounded by a… a mad God of some sort. Or Goddess, or… both? It was hard to tell, hard to be sure. "I have ten trillion names, and to declare this is a name." The words sounded strange, and seemed to echo, as he spoke them.

'I have been Forgotten, but not by my friends: to declare this is a name.'

Forgotten? Lotte, her legs hurting more and more with each moment. She had to fight through all of that, and heartsickness, and the headache, even as she recognized the name. She had heard it before. "I h-have been Forgotten, but not by my friends: to declare this is a name."

'Imnatash ai Hurwasa.'

Lotte hesitated.

'We are here, at the beginning of all things, at your rebirth. I cannot read your mind, but I know your fears. How could I not, after so many times? Seven and seven. Speak it.'

From a choked, broken voice, Lotte spoke the final name, unable to help herself, as if the words were being dragged out of her. "I-I-Imnatashi ai Hurwasa." The weight of the name seemed to drain her energy, and for a moment she stood there, barely standing.

Then she felt agonizing pain in her legs, and then her body, and she began to scream. She'd never hurt like this, she'd never felt closer to dying, she'd never felt as if it would be better to die than to feel this for even a moment longer.

She was still screaming in pain and terror when she passed out into the darkness, to the voice of the… God.


'Sleep, and awaken to a new world, my child.'

*******

A/N: And there we end the Book of Lotte. To be continued in the Book of Rebirth.
 
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So I suppose Lot's dad is a Forgotten God?

Well.

In a spiritual sense, at least.

Some kind of Loki archetype? Deceiver with many names and many forms, imprisoned by other Gods for maybe/probably heinous crimes.


That's eight letters, so I guess he refers to something else when he says 'Seven'.

Lotte knew that that wasn't so, that instead the stars were shining tears, and the sky glass stretched over them to keep them from drowning the world. She'd been told it once, by her father, and if he wasn't a reliable source than who was?

Wait, wait, wait.

Alright, I've picked a few pieces here and there, so my working theory is:

There was a cosmological war during or after the creation of the world, and a bunch of gods won
They locked other gods away from reality and maintain constant barriers between them and creaton
Like, there's an indication that the Earth and the Sky work in tandem to keep away cosmic radiation angry stars
Which are this God's servants/children
Like, maybe even looking at them without protection of the Sky's barrier seems to hurt people and fill them with terror
And he sometimes sends the stars crashing down to break the barrier, only for the Gods to stop the stars and trap them in mortal bodies
Only someone fucked up this time and didn't check Lot's gender

Considering my track record tho, I might be wrong on every count :V
 
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So I suppose Lot's dad is a Forgotten God?

Well.

In a spiritual sense, at least.

Spiritual sense, eh? You don't think Nashy came down as a goose?

I like the rest of your speculation. It's well charted. :V

But yes, I think I said earlier that all the characters would have some sort of twist or reveal relatively early, and that we plotted those a bit before chargen, in a basic sense. Welcome to this one! Time for the quest to go from Lotte's Friendly Adventures in the Woods to, well. Different Adventures, hopefully?
 
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The Orime one, incidentally, was secretly The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, with the Orime switching between a ruined future centuries in advanced, and a troubled but... not as bad present.

The Prince would have faced a war, with himself at the center of it all.
 
My suspicions on things remain as follows
-This god is a forgotten god
-This is not in the sense of "nobody remembers". This is the sense of "We have tried to erase every trace of the god, to essentially kill them"
-See also my remark about the glowing runes feeling like some kind of immune system, given it reacted to divine and we have a god stuck in jail here.
As for what god we have...
-snake associated
-was pleased by us appearing as "someone who we are not really" - trickster decieving themed perhaps
-also has been associated with stars/starlight and heavens

I feel that we may have gotten chosen by a lucifer-analogue.
Also I see that mixing pronouns within the narration. Neat touch there.
 
See also my remark about the glowing runes feeling like some kind of immune system, given it reacted to divine and we have a god stuck in jail here.

Well, if Lot's this god's kid, it might be that the prison reacts to the blood specifically because of that?

Maybe these are blood wards, built from god's blood to imprison a god's immortal corpse, or something.

Like, I seriously expect the story to become slightly more Lovecraftian after this revelation.

Lol, maybe this is the world's analog of Abrahamic God, association with light and trillion names and everything.

That would be interesting.

Eh, still not enough pieces to speculate more.
 
I do appreciate the symbolism of the... child, or what have you, of a trickster god having constantly fooled themselves throughout their life. It's a rather neat little detail.
 
OK so the mc was not female? Or is but can change genders? Or this dad doing a sex change on us? That the only thing confusing me atm everything else is cool.
 
So, has anyone else noticed the connection between this forgotten god and, well... the cult that our last quest ended up revealing, to a 'forgotten' god?

Hopefully dad isn't mad at us about that 👀💦
 
Hey, remember when that ghost saint was considering you as a vessel and then suddenly changed his mind?

He was just a cowardly chump.

Real men work out their interpersonal issues and fuse gems with everyone they meet. :V

Lol, I wonder what size of the crater the failed merger between a scion of a Forgotten God and a saint would entail.
 
Real men work out their interpersonal issues and fuse gems with everyone they meet. :V

Lol, I wonder what size of the crater the failed merger between a scion of a Forgotten God and a saint would entail.

I suppose it could have been a Lapis / Jasper kind of situation? Inhuman willpower to keep the merge going so that the scion couldn't fulfill their fate, or so on.
 
I suppose it could have been a Lapis / Jasper kind of situation? Inhuman willpower to keep the merge going so that the scion couldn't fulfill their fate, or so on.

Hah, so you say that he would try to outright possess Lot? I can see that.

Well, how much trouble a Forgotten God could cause if let out of prison, really?

Everyone should just learn to get along and make flower crowns or something.
 
Hah, so you say that he would try to outright possess Lot? I can see that.

Well, how much trouble a Forgotten God could cause if let out of prison, really?

Well... there's a bit of a personal grudge, too?

Know, it was an assassin who took life,
Hear the name of him, let his darkened deeds sing
Gerhard of Nowhere, soon Knight, this is truth!
While I fought raiders, his blade soon did sing
The song of dark, forgotten Gods, whose acts
Caused and drove, knife through flesh, my martyrdom.
 
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