"
If there is one thing worse than death, it's being turned into an animancer's slave." - a common southfolk saying
Death. In the new world, it's everywhere - the people, the weather, the beasts - everyone is a potential killer, even if you think they are your greatest and closest friend, they may turn on you any moment, shoot you in the head and steal all your belongings as your corpse rots away on the streets of a ruined city...
But sometimes, it doesn't just end here.
Around the northern part of the world lives a certain splinter faction of the magic-wielding Northmen called the animancers. Animancers claim to use the emerald-derivative, healing magic, but in reality they're using it to resurrect dead people or kill the alive ones, sucking out their souls for their own purposes (which range from extending their own lives to using them in certain malevolent magics) and keeping them walking via runes and regular doses of mana.
However, you were NOT an animancer. You are a dead man walking. An undead. A zombie. A slave. The green-colored pentagram on your forehead is your new heart, your new brain, the centre of your existence, and mana is your lifeblood. Your master, in order to ensure that you serve him for ages to come, was always giving you and the many other undead under his command a small amount of active mana that would be used to power your rune of life that lets you continue to work for him.
Eventually however, you had enough. You no longer felt thirst, hunger nor tiredness so you were given virtually no breaks, and you might very well be a soulless being not driven by any higher purposes, but that didn't stop you from escaping the frozen ruins of a city where the animancer resided, grabbing a bottle of mana on the way out.
Now you are a free undead, not under a control of anyone, but you are not like a regular human. You cannot be killed since you are not really alive, and the only true way to stop you in your tracks for good is for your head rune to be damaged, or when it stops from supporting you once it runs out of mana. Thankfully you took that one bottle of it, right? You better find more soon or else you'll once again be but a rotting corpse.
Contraty to the common belief, the northern hemisphere is not as desolate and empty as most southees would lead you to believe. In fact, you have a faint memory of three other nearby settlements where you could probably find someone willing to help a person like you who lives solely by the power of magic...
Where do you go?West -
Dragonrider Camp of Redshard - dragonriders are...interesting among the northmen. They are the only people that have successfully tamed the mighty dragons, uncommon but ferocious beasts that have appeared in the new world. Be it trade, combat or just general transport, you can expect to see at least a couple flying lizards with their riders there.
South -
Gunmage Outpost "Kul'r" - some say that the northmen who use magic and southmen who use technology would never try to ally, but the Gunmages are the very proof that it is in fact possible for the two supposedly polar opposites to work together, and the gunmages skillfully combine their powerful magical spells with a bit of high-velocity bullet action.
East -
The Philosophers' Skyscraper - if there is one northmen faction more fond of alchemy and potions, it's the Philosophers. They have mastered this unique art of magic and know how to use them in and out of combat to overcome nearly any situation.
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Topic: [TSG] Gun Francisco: Wrath of the Animancer (Read 3700 times)