TURN THIRTY-SEVEN, PART ONE: CALM SPEAK [THE FIFTH GENERATION]
Holy bagel, apparently this update is too large for the forum.
Heh... I'll split it into two parts.
Alex would begin to chuckle and laugh before he said, "They'll all die. Ill get my power back." Alex would shake his head, before getting to work. He would attempt to move the bed over to the window and hit at it with his elbow. The worst thing that could happen is guards come over to his cell. The best thing that could happen is he could get a weapon and a hurt arm. Move the bed to the window and bash at it.
Alex RamanWith the guards sure to arrive soon in order to interrogate you, it would be best to take action soon and see if you can use whatever materials you have to knock the window out and escape, or maybe to use the broken parts as weapons. However, you don't seem to have many options currently for taking the window. You decide on using the bed to gain the small bit of height needed to reach the window. You begin slowly pulling at the bed and are delighted to find that the bed is not bolted to the floor. Placing it up against the wall on which the window is located, you start climbing onto the bed and begin to position yourself. The bed begins to make some loud creaking noises, which worries you a bit, but won't stop you now. Shifting your weight in order to steady yourself, you feel for the bars and try to measure their strength. It seems that it shouldn't be too hard to knock them out due to the age of this place, but you're going to have to put all of your force behind your strikes.
Over and over, you strike your right arm against one of the weaker bars, listening as it creaks under the pressure. The bed below you complains incessantly of your weight, yet you continue to strike at the bars, intending to knock one of them out. After a couple of more strikes, you hear a sharp
twing! come from the bed. You only manage to pull back your arm one more time before the bed gives way below you, caving in on itself and changing your view radically. You fall into the middle of the broken bed and notice a feeling of pain coming from your right leg, as a broken support from the leg points upward and leaves a shall cut running across your lower leg. It's going to hurt and bleed for a little while, leaving a small mess, but it's not immediately life-threatening. You pick yourself up from the broken bed and clean yourself off before checking on the window. Disappointingly, you don't seem to have knocked any of the bars out of the window. Now, you are left with a bleeding leg and a bruised arm, all for nothing.
You don't hear anyone coming down the hallway. If the guards heard your ruckus, they give no indication of it.
Wound: Bleeding from right lower leg. Vertical cut moving upwards in a semi-jagged fashion.Note: Right arm has been bruised due to repeated intentional force.
Try to reach the missing golems with my mind. Attempt to establish a mental connection, and try to see through their eyes. Failing that, simply get a read on their location, and command my Protector golem to go there. I will follow behind it, my trusty axe in hand.
RuneRoll for focus: 4 + 2 = 6, succeeded!
(Domain bonus for focus and crafting active.)
Probe for golems: 4 + 3 = 7, succeeded.
This would seem to be the first incident that you have had with the golems so far. You are kind of surprised that you haven't had any trouble with the golems before, but could be no more grateful for it nonetheless. Still, you wonder if the golems might have encountered some actual living creatures and embroiled themselves in a situation. It is crucial that you remain a secret to the rest of the world, so as not to have your production snuffed before you even begin the next phase of your plan. You think that you might have to set up some forward scouts to secure the area around your underground factory before someone manages to stumble upon your enormous tunnel system, but that can be addressed later. For now, you need to find where those golems went.
It takes you little effort to go ahead and send out a probing message to find the two golems that have been lost. You scan out to one-hundred meters, then two-hundred, three-hundred, and finally four-hundred meters. There, you get a mental link to one of the golems, but not the other. Quickly, you establish a connection to that golem and its perception of its surroundings in order to see if you can find the other golem. You can see that this particular golem is standing upright in a cluster of trees, looking down at a recently fallen tree. You take a small look around and do not find any living creatures nearby, so you assume that the situation is clear for the time being. Putting your attention back on the golem's forward view, you see that the other golem has had the misfortune to fell a tree on top of himself. He seems to have had a portion of his head crushed by the tree, which is probably why you could not get a read on his mental connection from where you are. You order the golem to lift the tree out of the way and to pick up the injured golem, and to move the golem back into the tunnels so that you may repair him.
Other than that, the surrounding environment around the golem does not seem to be particularly active. You can see some burned ground new plants growing within the scorched earth, the marks of the nightmarish explosion of the volcano that flooded lava out and destroyed a large portion of Atis' vegetation. Yet, even with this, you are still hopeful. There may be time yet to quietly get off of this island and set up a proper factory somewhere else - on an uninhabited island, perhaps.
Lirian
They want to ignore me? Fine.
First, I look up at the trees above us for a moment, looking for a sturdy, shaded branch. Then I back away from Artemis and spread out a little, forcing the large shadow to pick a target.
If the large shadow targets me: I back away from it and circle around Artemis, not getting any closer too him but drawing the creature between us. If it rushes me I throw knives at its eyes and dash sideways to the charge whilst it reacts, either twisting its head away or being struck and blinded, either way giving me a moment that it isn't watching me to make my move. Once I'm to its side or rear I draw the sword and move in, attempting to make a single, deep stab into the creature and twist the blade once it's in. When the creature thrashes about in reaction to my blow I do not attempt to hold on to the blade, nor do I pull it out at all after my strike. Instead I leave it inside the creature and back away, drawing my knives and focusing on the smaller shadows, watching for them to either attack or flee. Artemis will probably finish off the creature for me if things progress this far.
If the large shadow targets Artemis and the small shadows ignore me: draw my sword and make a single deep stab into the creature, twisting the blade once it's in and then releasing my hold of it, allowing the beast to thrash about with it instead of ripping it out of my hand. I then back away a step and draw my knives, then move forwards again and attempt to hamstring the creature. once it is helplessly lying on the ground, flailing about, I clamber on top of it, stabbing it with my knives to make handholds rather than releasing them to grab parts of the creature, and climb up to the beast's neck and wrap myself around it, my knife against its jugular.
"Yield!"
If it makes an attempt to resist that isn't very effective, I repeat my demand at the top of my lungs. If it still resists, kill it. If it makes an attempt to resist that nearly works even though I've gotten that far and made my first demand, then kill it on the spot. If it falls limp, then I hold my position and give a new demand.
"Talk."
If the large shadow ignores me but the small ones target me when I split up from Artemis, then I flee to a nearby tree's shadow and shadowstep up to my pre-picked branch above the fighting, and observe from there.
If at any point I become noticeably wounded, then I shadowstep up to the branch I picked out earlier and evaluate my injury whilst applying pressure to either the wound directly or a pressure point inwards along my body relative to the injury as appropriate.
LirianAllies
Lirian
Kind: Human
Tune: Medium
Weapon(s): Knives, ceremonial sword
Physique: Lean
Health: In perfect health.
Neutral
Artemis Dimikaelo
Kind: Human
Tune: ??
Weapon(s): Katana
Physique: Lean
Health: Looks like he's in perfect health.
Enemies
"Shadow ??"
Kind: ??
Tune: Shadow
Weapon(s): Melee
Physique: Bulky
Health: ??
"Shadow Boar"
Kind: Sus scrofa, 1.7x size
Tune: Shadow
Weapon(s): Melee
Physique: Average
Health: Deceased
"Shadow Boar"
Kind: Sus scrofa, 1.7x size
Tune: Shadow
Weapon(s): Melee
Physique: Average
Health: ??
"Shadow Boar"
Kind: Sus scrofa, 1.8x size
Tune: Shadow
Weapon(s): Melee
Physique: Sturdy
Health: ??
"Shadow Boar"
Kind: Sus scrofa, 1.6x size
Tune: Shadow
Weapon(s): Melee
Physique: Average
Health: ??
"Shadow Wolf"
Kind: Canis lupus lupus, 1.8x size
Tune: Shadow
Weapon(s): Melee
Physique: Lean
Health: ??
"Shadow Wolf"
Kind: Canis lupus lupus, 1.9x size
Tune: Shadow
Weapon(s): Melee
Physique: Sturdy
Health: Deceased
You don't believe that you'll have a problem with the larger monster explicitly targeting you, what with Artemis' unnecessary ego taking up the priority queue for the line to be killed. Still, you keep your wits about you and begin forming a plan in your mind to take down this beast. Looking at the surrounding area, you seek out a potential branch which you could shadow-step to later, in the case that you are injured or overwhelmed. However, most of the trees around you seem to be heavily covered in leaves, which leaves you with uncertainty as to whether you might be able to land in a safe spot or not. Despite this, you do find a couple of branches which might be safe to stand on, assuming that your shadow-step ability does not fail you.
As expect, the monster does indeed put his focus on Artemis, mostly because of his more threatening walk and aura of confidence. You take advantage of this and observe the field in front of you, looking for the smaller Shadows and watching for what they do. There are four of them in total now, and they seem to be unsure about what they are to do now. You think that they are going to wait until the two of you are engaged in battle with the larger monster before springing in and incapacitating the two of you. However, you also have Artemis on your side - at least, that is what you think right now. At any rate, Artemis can serve as a distraction while you go in and disable the bigger monster, allowing Artemis to take care of the rest if he can.
You use your overwhelming speed to close in quickly on the monster and surprise him while he is focused on Artemis. At the same time, you draw out your ceremonial sword and make use of your forward momentum, stabbing the sword deep into the dark matter that composes the vile creature. It takes some effort to penetrate the beast's thick insides using the unsharpened ceremonial sword, but you manage to make a deep wound in the creature's mass. The monster lets out a guttural howl and scratches down at his side, trying to pull the sword out. You jump back and take out your knives before he can reach at you, allowing yourself to assume an offensive stance.
There is no time to miss the opportunity you are given. You dodge around to the creature's backside, attempting to get behind it and slash at its legs, potentially disabling its movement. However, the creature expects your attack this time. He makes a wide sweeping attack with his right arm, backhanding you across your body and sending you flying backwards about eight meters. You land and roll in the grass, which softens the force on your body a little bit. You can feel the upper-right side of your body pulsating with pain, though you don't think that you have sustained any external, bleeding injuries. At the very least, you are still able to concentrate through the pain and keep yourself ready. As you pick yourself up, you hear a sickening choke-howl come from the beast. You look up to find a silver-shining blade protruding out of the front of the creature's throat, its arms grasping at its neck but finding no success. The beast tumbles forward and falls face-first into the grass, beginning to dissipate like the creatures before it.
Of course, you find Artemis hopping off of the back of the creature and pulling his sword out of the creature's neck. He spares a quick glance toward you before yelling at the rest of the smaller Shadows:
"Any more of you wish to die today?" The small Shadows seem to have lost their lust for human blood now, and are retreating into the deeper woods, the darker night. He stands over the evaporating body before looking at you once more. The last thing you see is him walking toward you before you black out, the pain overwhelming you.
...
You wake up in a meadow of varying, brightly-colored flowers, all blooming around you. The sun warms your face in a comforting manner. In the distance, you can see a volcano billowing smoke and a small, somewhat familiar village not too far from the volcano's base.
Cecil smiles, a bit haggardly as the stress of the past few days have caught up to him.
Thank you, ma'am.
He moves toward the seat he was offered and sits down with a breathy sigh.
I cannot thank you enough, honestly. This is the... first time I think I have been able to relax in a long while. I cannot imagine I can have a worse time than the past few days.
He stops for a second before laughing to himself quietly.
Though I can imagine you know what I am talking about... look at me going on, I apologize. I also apologize for not being the guest you expected. I hope I'm not intruding.
Cecil G. PalmerThe woman smiles pleasantly, taking herself to the other chair on the opposite end of the table. Based on the texture of the table, you feel like it is some sort of dark wood that has been polished through natural means. It has a feeling of smoothness to it that is also accompanied by the natural roughness of the wood. The chairs seem to be the same way, though with silk covers over them to make them a bit more comfortable to sit on. Out of what seems to be thin air, the woman produces two wooden cups filled with a clear liquid.
"No need to apologize, Cecil. It has been quite the conundrum, hasn't it? It's simply part of an... adjustment, is all. Unfortunately, this will not be the end of it. But at the very least, you are still safe here. Tea?" She offers you one of the two cups and you take it. You sip at the tea and find that it is surprisingly sweet and warm, giving you a comfortable feeling all around. You sigh and put the cup back down on the table, listening to what she has to say to you.
"I wish it didn't have to be this way, my child. I wish I could slowly bring you into the matter, like the first generation was brought in. But things are changing in this world, and I am not able to keep thing the way they were before. You might not understand what is going on. Things might be scary. You might be alone in this world, unable to go back to the life that you had known before. But trust me, dear, things will become sweeter as they go along. You must trust me on this.
"There will be things that you will see and experience that will be the stuff of nightmares. You will wish that you had never been born. But you must persevere like the rest, and you will find the end. Now, I know you must have questions about what has happened. I cannot tell you everything, but maybe I will be able to guide you on your journey. Please, do ask. I am here to help you, my child."
Warren Drake
"Hey, um... girl!"
Mental note: should probably learn (remember?) this girl's name.
"Is something corrupting the local animals? Does this happen a lot?"
Ask her plainly and loudly. No messing around.
Warren DrakeYou call down to her from your position on one of the tree's branches, trying to see if you can get her to explain what exactly happened here. You decide to be gentle in your words, as you do not wish to scare her and either invoke her hidden wrath or accidentally cause her to cry even harder. Either option would not be beneficial to your knowledge of this area and whatever god-forsaken force has landed you in this forest, so you would wish to be, at the very least, friendly in your mannerisms.
After you call to her, she lifts her head up and looks around, trying to locate your voice. You call to her once again in a clearer voice in order to let her know where you are. This time, she looks at you and takes on a surprised look.
"O-oh, I'm so sorry! Do.. do you need anything?" she asks of you. You shake your head back and forth, telling her that you don't need anything at the moment, though you do have a question for her. You ask her about the animal that is trapped in vines, wishing to know if the animals are becoming corrupted in the local area.
In response, she shakes her head yes and wipes some tears of her face, sniffling periodically as she talks.
"Y-yes, they're... changing. Some nights they're fine, and on other nights, they become hostile, rabid, mean, and I don't... I don't know why! It's just.. just been happening recently, but it's now becoming so frequent.. there's just so many. I try to help them, and some of them do get better, but most of them... they.." She begins to sniffle and sob a little bit more. You can tell that she is broken-hearted due to the death of the little creature within the vines. You're not sure whether you should comfort her or keep asking about the details of the event.
At the very least, you are now intrigued. Maybe, you will be able to get some more information about who she is and what these creatures are doing around here. Yet you must also be careful about how you go about this. One wrong statement, and she could breakdown and refuse to help you.
Eh Ah
"They did value me enough to leave me to my own devices and allow me to do what I wished without interfering needlessly, which was, in retrospect, rather wonderful of them, and I do thank them for the freedoms provided balanced by the care they showed when it was needed. I hold them in esteem because they are rather nice people who strove to help me, or at least err on the side of doing no harm, but if ma'am was asking if I held them as peak examples of human virtue without significant personal flaws, then the answer would be a very solid no. My father's unfortunate habits in relation to various mind-altering substances I have already mentioned, though I may have also skipped out on his tendency to be perpetually in debt and mooch off my mothers. My mother had a sometimes disturbing propensity for finding love in the wrongest of places with great frequency, and her attempts to push many of her dubious lovers on my other mother and my father tended to get uncomfortable a lot of the time, especially since many of them we would see only one time, and a few even made off with some of our things once in a while. And my other mother, well, she always did feel far too good to be doing what she was with her life, and virtually everything she did, she did with an undertone bitterness and resentment, as I, my meta-brothers, my mother and my father always seemed to be in some way impinging on her freedoms. And yet despite these flaws they tried to be as kind as they could, and tried to become better people as time went by, with mixed success."
"Now then, back to my story, and forays into love specifically. Contrary to what one may think, I did not stumble upon love like your average teenager - granted, I did experience slight infatuations with girls and boys of the neighborhood, and some of them I even was fortunate enough to explore in my early years, but there was no commitment, no wonder and no awe in it, and as teenagers often do, we had little in common except a lust for one another. As an aspiring artist, you can imagine my disappointment at this, as love was a thing brought nearly to the forefront of the entirety of art - it is the quintessential universal experience, love, the thing that you can reach almost anyone through, and almost everyone will understand perfectly. And yet it seemed to elude me, or at least its glamorous image I had cultivated in my mind did."
"The obvious solution, of course, was to seek it elsewhere. Among the people of Atis, specifically, as I then reckoned, as it is easy to mistake simple living for pure living, after all, and I thought that there I could perhaps meet a tribesperson who would finally strike me with that wondrous spark that would no doubt fill me with inspiration to last me a lifetime. Little did I know of the rather stringent Atisi marriage customs that all but make sure their young people are paired off as soon as possible, and the best I could hope for was somebody unexpectedly dying of disease to free up a vacancy, which, to be fair, is apparently not that rare an occurrence."
"In any case, that turned out to be something of a bust, if it's not already apparent, though I did try my hardest to get into the whole Atisi marriage circuit. I even visited a priestess to get an Atisi name to go by - a Marvin Shriver or a Daniel or Jules Dobbs wasn't likely to get anything but suspicious looks from women and men alike. So she named me Eh Ah, and I asked her what that meant, and she said that it meant nothing at all. She had a slight substance abuse habit, I suspected, but that felt more endearing than unfortunate at the time. She even let me stay a while outside her hut in an appropriately prepared enclosure while I kept looking for a potential bride. It was most unfortunate for me, then, that mortality among the Atisi seemed to be at an all-time low that season, and I mostly just wound up spending time with the priestess instead. We had a bit of a fling toward the end of my time there, and for a bit I thought that maybe she could be my inspiring love. I even had two rings made to signify our wonderful union."
Eh Ah shows his hands, a tungsten carbide ring on the ring finger of each one.
"As ma'am can probably infer, the ring was not particularly appreciated, as the Atisi tend to be suspicious of certain Aecrocian artifacts, and attach special magical significance to jewelry in particular, and relationship-related jewelry is not a popular custom among them, which I thought quaint at the time, but found to be a very important detail. She seemed to be rather spooked by my offering, and did not accept it, and when winter came along, she merely asked me to go away, as winters among the Atisi can be difficult enough without freeloaders eating up the scarce food and warmth. And that was that - I moved back to Aecrocia after that, not particularly emotional, just a little dejected, and settled back in the antique shop. The episode gave me a notable amount of inspiration for some drawings and a short little programmatic symphony with creative percussion, which is what I believed I wanted to begin with, and no real harm was done, either. I even obtained a more specific name to go by, not the set of three I had been using, and sharing with my meta-brothers, I should note, until that point. And though Eh Ah was indeed a fruity name by all accounts, I figured I could go by it comfortably. At the time, it felt very distinguishing, if not distinguished. Though it was but a short time until I moved on to the next try when the creative well ran dry once more."
Eh Ah thinks for a moment.
"Hm. But before I continue, if I may, I would ask a question of ma'am. Why does ma'am believe the arts to be inefficient?"
Thus spake Eh Ah.
Eh AhYour group has passed through the edge of the Atisi territory within the forest and is nearing the bounds of the Aecrocian city now. As you walk, you continue to talk about the experiences that you had within your youth: the pursuit of love, interaction with the Atisi community, the origin of your name, and the regard of your parents. You look to the Empress occasionally to gauge her reaction to your stories, yet she continues to wear an unchanging face of constant muse. After you finish your monologue, she lets a few moments go by before she answers your own question to her.
"My thoughts are molded in the form of the head of an impeccable war machine which relies on precise engineering and calculated timeliness," she begins.
"In many ways, I sought to please my father and to somehow live up to the image that he presented. However, I also wanted to outdo him in this manner. One would believe, by looking at my father, that he was more of a machine than he was a man. He had care for neither the arts nor human beings, in reality. He assumed position as leader of the Theyin Empire so that he could create a symbol of perfection in the world. Perfection did not include the arts to him, as arts were something of a waste of time when you could be creating practical things: medicine, weapons, functional architecture, and the like. Everything he did had to be precisely measured and counted; otherwise, there were going to be debts paid within his offices of control.
"I believe that the Empire was stagnating for that exact reason. What he was missing out on was the human factor - the imperfection and the wrongs which allow us to perpetuate change. Of course, I did not abandon many of the concepts that my father put forth, including engineering, medicine, and logistics. However, I realized that, in order to win, I had to make a compromise in order to preserve the human element of war. Unlike my father, I... wished to see the truth come out for a change. I wished for the lie of perfection to be washed away, so that maybe in the future, I might be able to salvage some kind of existence for the Theyin Empire for many years to come.
"I still struggle with the concept of art, however. I don't see much point in wasting time trying to be creative in a war. It serves not a purpose but to waste time in the end. Then again, this may just be a relic of the past that I am clinging to. Perhaps that is what I am missing here. Perhaps delving deeper into the human factor might bring me victory in the future.
What are your thoughts, Mr. Eh Ah?"
And now on to the
Survivors...