QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 3: Deluge]

Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.

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We are intrigued / curious / eager.

The Broadcaster's representative remained still, the bulky television that replaced his head broadcasting a frenetic stream of images. After displaying what would be a seizure-inducing introduction, it quickly cut between numerous scenes—amongst them were a jellyfish-like creature swimming, a teenage super-hero engaging numerous foes, and a wizard and its floating companion debating morality, along with many other scenes—until the resulting product blended together to exist as one kaleidoscopic montage.

The insignificant motes that flood us and invade our senses have not interested us / but we will rethink our stance in light of your proposal.

The Outsider's responses came not as spoken words as much as mental impressions, burrowing into the Gentleman's mind. It presented several separate concepts, each seemingly knotted together to produce a single distinct connotation.

The Gentleman sent on The Broadcaster's behalf nodded, as politely and deferentially as it could towards the entity opposite him. He regarded this errand as the sort of dangerous endeavor only someone in television would perform—not just plucking eight contestants from across universes for a televised fight to the death, but convincing an immeasurably ancient entity that had it was in its interest to do the same. It was the lunacy that someone doped to the metaphorical gills would think a good idea. Instead of contacting a sane Grandmaster—like The Machinist, perhaps—The Broadcaster had to reach out for the ridiculous. He had to go out and specifically request the eons-old personification of the heat death of the universe—or some caliber of insanity along those lines, the Gentleman didn't particularly care for the specifics.

The Outsider paced along the room it had constructed for the Gentleman, its position seemingly not in accordance with the movement of its limbs. The humanoid figure was clad in numerous layers of tattered robes covering any skin that could possibly be exposed, with a vivid cerulean mask skewed into a grinning rictus obscuring its face. As a whole, the humanoid looked less human in a natural sense and more as though it was a patchwork assessment of characteristics a human had, while ignoring the intrinsic elements that made such a being understandable.

The Outsider repositioned himself to address The Broadcaster's delegate, ceasing to be there and instead existing here.

We will do as you ask us to and toy with these playthings / these specks of dust you see fit to experiment with / these microscopic entities you find so fascinating.

The suited figure rolled his neck, the television adjusting past static to show a new image.

"I'm glad to hear it. Television needs visionaries like you, peop—er, entities that aren't afraid to push the envelope. To be willing to screw the rules for the sake of entertainment." The Broadcaster responded, his words coated with the weird brand of subdued emotions business-men are infected with. "We'll send the cameras over whenever you wish."

And with that, his representative vanished.

The Outsider let the temporary enclosure it had built to house the representative fall apart as the humanoid form he had briefly adopted dissociated. As it sidled into a more familiar form, the abomination began to peer into worlds that had long ceased to interest it, scrutinizing them in a new light. The Outsider had deemed these multitudes of universes as being below its attention. Yet it looked upon them once more.

They were crude. They were flawed, without the substance that suffused its existence, they were constricted and bound and limited. Yet, for all of the impositions they placed and the taxes these lower universes extracted, innumerable beings swam amongst them and proliferated. They were constrained yet seemingly ignorant of their limitations. The Outsider saw a realm it did not comprehend and it wanted to know. It wanted to see through their eyes as they struggled to understand and failed to look towards the truth it knew. The worlds below, that had never interested it, now seemed so fascinating.

We must proceed with The Broadcaster's game / folly / arrangement.

The concept The Broadcaster had presented was one that had never occurred to The Outsider, for all of its inscrutable intellect. It saw so much now that the thought of interfering was presented—incomprehensible games to play, civilizations to toy with, species to lead on endless parades. The Outsider saw many possibilities. They would be for another time. The Outsider had an errand to attend to.

We have eight of these lesser fragments / unaware curiosities / playthings to gather.

Eight tendrils, fragments of its consciousness, began to coalesce. In an instant, they were gone—dispersed across universes to collect.

We have so much to discover / manipulate / subvert.

And for seven of the entities The Outsider had collected, this would be their quietus.



Read This:

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Rules format slightly pilfered from Ix.

What:
Right so, welcome to Quietus, the fifth battle in Season Intermission. There's quite a bit of explanation as to what a Grand Battle is, but I'll offer my own explanation and say that it consists of eight characters being forced into a battle to the death across seven locations, with one character eliminated each round until there's one survivor. Despite this description, these aren't really focused on the combat as much as the writing provided—you can have a robotic dragon that breathes nuclear waste and there's no guarantee it will survive longer than a confused teenager or whatever. Having a powerful character is less important than having an interesting character—there's a greater focus on writing characters interacting in unusual settings and writing well.

Rules:
Generally speaking there's a lot of rules and such you can read from other battles, but these are a few points I would like to emphasize.

• If you plan on posting something that will affect other writers—which will likely be most of your posts—make some note of your intention to do so. This is called a reserve. If you do post a reserve, try to follow up on it as soon as possible. Three days is fine, a week is stretching it. Post a month-long reserve and I will softly weep to myself.
• Try to keep in contact. Co-operation is pretty essential for a collaborative endeavor like Grand Battles, so don't try to go without interacting with others. You will be expected to write for characters other than your own, and clarifying characterization with other authors helps with that a bit. Don't inflict major injuries or character changes on others without asking, don't plan things out too much that other authors are constricted, and for what plans others set in place don't deliberately go out to ruin them. There's an IRC channel for Grand Battle stuff (#grandbattle at irc.esper.net), using it isn't necessary but it does help.
• Don't be a jerk. This includes killing or maiming other characters when you aren't supposed to (which is most of the time), repeatedly dominating the plot at the expense of others, and mis-characterization of other contestants—stuff like that. A corollary to this is that, should you be having problems—with other authors or their writing, the round locations I've given, your character and how they aren't fun to write for anymore, what have you—you shouldn't hesitate to let me know. My interest is in creating something others can have fun writing for, I don't want writing for this to become a begrudging obligation.

Judging:
So this is based on writing. While this does mean your technical ability as a writer, I will be more interested in you doing the following: making and developing an interesting characters, interacting with other characters, and holding your own plot-wise and carrying a story. Activity and interaction with your fellow writers is important but a little bit more peripheral, I'm fine with waiting if things are worth the wait (although other writers might not like that).

Applications:
Applications are open for two weeks or so, with possible time above that to allow reserves to be fulfilled. Use the following application as a guide. Feel free to put the sections in different orders; non-profiles are valid if they convey all of the information a normal profile would have. The main point is something that convinces me I want to see more of your character.

Username: Your username. Sort of a relic of an older time but still nice to have.
Name: What do we call your character?
Sex: Male, female, none, both? Something for pronoun purposes.
Race: Human, elf, sentient bear, robot god, whatever. If you wish include a description if it isn't readily obvious what it is.
Color: A text color for your character, not particularly important but fun to play with. Don't pick the Grandmaster's colors.
Description: A description of your character's appearance and personality, as well as other things that help define them.
Items/Abilities: What cool things can your character do or have? Please don't go overboard here.
Biography: What has your character done or what were they doing prior to becoming a questionably sane god's plaything?
Other: An optional section. Include writing samples here if you feel your profile doesn't actually convey your writing ability or whatever. Your choice.

Character Roster:

• XX: Sonora
• Ixcalibur: Florica Hearn (#797979)
• Schazer: Robin Pearson, D.Asc (#0C690C)
• Seedy: Amaranth Benedicta (#CBA9CF on #403B4A)
• One: Arokht (#003366)
• Anomaly: Anila Vakmero and [nameless] (#FF4E00 and #0078FF)
• Jacquerel: Chaete (#A21D00)
• Agent: Rachel Wylite (#CC5000)

Planning Document

Originally posted on MSPA by XX.

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Name: Sonora

Race: ???

Gender: ???

Color: ???

Description:



Weapons/Abilities: ???

Bio:

We came to the river because there was nowhere else to go.

It was fast and it was quiet, we could never hear it coming but we heard it telling us to run in the dark it was the owls in the canopies, crickets in the reeds, wolves in the distance. We left the animals and it took them too; it took what we left and the things we couldn’t carry. It took and it took and we gave it everything we had. When it came to take us we ran. We were silent but it heard us breathing, heard us begging it to leave, heard us putting out our matches in case it smelled the smoke and every sound in the forest was its laugh, every sound was its cry it was hunting us for days. It walked in our shadows and underneath the ground, panting at our heels YOU MUST NEVER TURN BACK PROMISE heard it laughing in the trees like a screaming crow, we were frightened when we saw them flocking, they followed us down to the river in the rain and filled the sky, they filled the sky

One hundred dancing birds like dark little stars. Sonora, they said, sonora, sonora

The children were slow, we left them

Two days and a night before we reached the river and all the while we ran without sleeping, without stopping. We told each other it was gone but we still we fled, all the way to the edge of the water, it was too wide to cross. The river was still and we saw our reflections in the darkness, saw the whites of our eyes like beacons to the sound. Under the water there were the lights of the stars. burning. we couldn’t help but put them out it sees them, we said, it sees us it looks for fire, it looks for us. It will smell the smoke you must drown them out you must find a way you must find a way

We put out our lanterns, we quieted the weak, we hid on the banks. We dare not light our candles, they said, it looks for fire, it looks for lights DON'T TURN BACK NEVER EVER TURN BACK we didn’t try to listen but my god I heard it, I heard it, I hear it, and in the night it said to me Santa Ama, Sancta Sonora, Sonora, Sonora as it came for us

when it came it came from the water, when it came I heard them crying

Sonora, sonora, sancta sonora, sonora, sonora, sonora, sonora sonora sonora sonora

You must not ever

turn

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Theme Song: King- Tunng

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watch out boy she'll chew you up

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Username: Ixcaliber
Name: Florica Hearn
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Text Colour: # 797979
Biography: Florica was born and raised a member of the Iviel; a tribe of nomads. One of her earliest memories is sat upon the back of her family’s caravan one warm summer evening, looking out across the sea of near identical carriages as they slowly were drawn across the plains. They rarely stayed in one place very long and they had little to no contact with the rest of the world. Florica saw the beauty in the world in a way that many of the other kids did not. She was always keen to leave the confines of the Iviel camp and explore the wondrous places she found herself in.

One foggy day, when Florica was sixteen, they stopped beneath an enormous tree by a lake. The tree’s branches hung limp and low over the camp, decorated with the first blossoms of spring. It would have been a pretty ordinary day, in a not exactly extraordinary place if it were not for the song, the incredible music that washed over the camp. Florica can still remember that music to this day; its mournful melody is one that she feels has never truly left her. Florica left the camp on her own, as she had done many times before, there was no reason for anyone to worry about her, not until it was getting dark and she had still not returned from her exploration.

Her parents discovered her body the following day, floating face down in the murky lake. She was sopping wet, her clothes were torn and weeds clung to her hair. Her neck had been snapped. Her body was brought back to the camp and was to be buried under the branches of the sprawling willow tree when before the hole had even been dug she started coughing up water. Somehow she was still alive; cold and wet and confused but still alive. The last thing she remembered, at least the last thing she claimed to remember, was leaving the camp.

The encounter changed her; almost overnight she became more introverted, more withdrawn. She seemed to shun those who she had previously called her friends in favour of quiet solitude in the shade, where she would sit and quietly hum that tune as she blankly gazed out upon the world. Even her family found her to be cold, to be distant. Sometimes she would still leave the camp, though the goal was no longer exploration and the motivation was no longer a curiosity about the world. The first time it happened again her family were terrified. They scoured the surrounding shrubland looking for her, only to find her sat by some old gravestones. Eventually they got used to this, whenever she was found to be gone, she would invariably be found at the nearest grave.

Though years passed she remained the same. Her presence alone made the other members of her tribe feel ill at ease. She was no longer the girl that they had grown up with, she was practically a stranger; an outcast amongst her own people. As soon as she was old enough she left the tribe. Initially she made her way to Ironbrook, the largest city in the land. She did not last a single day in that place. She began to travel alone, never staying in the same place twice and never staying in any community larger than a small village.

Sometimes she would happen across other travellers or those who wished to do her harm. She would fight for her own survival and she would prove to be pretty good for someone who never had training in combat. Sometimes she would take that which did not belong to her, but only what she needed to stay alive. Perhaps the most notable thing about this time was that no matter how vicious or violent those she fought were, no matter what they would have done to her given the upper hand, she never killed anyone.

Items/Abilities: Florica can speak to the dead, or rather should I say Florica cannot help but speak to the dead. Whatever happened upon that lake changed her permanently; wherever she was the spirits of those who had died there would flock to her like moths to a flame, and she found herself unable not to hear their pleas. She does not consider this ability to be a gift, but a curse, and for good reason. Certain spirits, those whose deaths were particularly bloody or those who have business that remains unresolved, can exert a certain influence upon her. The strongest of these spirits can compel her to carry out actions she does not wish to. They can and most likely will use her as a puppet.

In combat she tends to move as though she is dancing to an inaudible tune. She has on her person concealed daggers and a couple of throwing knifes, but she prefers to fight with her fists and her feet; less chance to accidentally kill someone. She is quick, agile and deceptively strong. She also has to her advantage the fact that she does not look like someone who could hold her own in a fight. She is often underestimated.

Description:

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Florica has long curly black hair and dull grey eyes, her skin is unnaturally pale. She wears a black and white dress that goes down to her shins and sandals. Black veils hang loosely around her body, helping conceal the daggers and the knives on her person. She is moderately attractive but there is a certain hollowness in her eyes that underwrites this beauty. She never smiles.

She is very quiet and withdrawn; she barely speaks to anyone and is more often than not to be heard humming a maudlin tune. Though she is not exactly pacifistic she would be extremely opposed to killing someone and would try anything rather than doing so. That said if killing someone was the only way that she could stay alive, she would do so unflinchingly. She usually prefers not to get involved but generally she does not have a choice.

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Theme Song: This.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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Name: Hero Squad (multiple)
Gender: Four dudes and a chick
Font color: #F03000
Race: Humans
Description:
The Hero Squad (as a whole)

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Image by Pharmacy. Yay Pharmacy!

Theme:

Gondolier

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Trained by Italian ninjas deep in the heart of Venice for as long as he can remember, Gondolier is an expert acrobat and hand-to-hand fighter. His weapon of choice is the gondola oar he was given when he came of age, which was rendered indestructible through ancient Venetian ninja rituals passed down by word of mouth for generations.

True to his name, Gondolier's costume consists of traditional gondolier garb. He wears a black-and-white striped shirt, a red scarf around his waist and another around his neck, black pants and shoes, and a straw hat, with another red scarf on it, tied securely to his head. He also sports a handlebar mustache to complete the look.

As the charter member of the Hero Squad, Gondolier also claims the role of team leader. This was for the best, as he's a better mix of stability, leadership, and intelligence than any of the other team members. Afraid of playing favorites, he's overcautious in treating everyone in the team equally, which can sometimes come off as indecisiveness when he's called on to settle a disagreement.

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Streetfighter

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Streetfighter can technopathically command man-made machines, much in the same way Aquaman can telepathically command fish. Of course, she can't make them do anything they couldn't do normally; a street lamp can't wrap itself around someone like a snake, a car can't be made to fly, etc.

Streetfighter's costume isn't very elaborate; a forest green, fire-resistant hoodie and dark blue jeans. Under the hoodie she wears a light gray T-shirt. She strives to look like the kind of girl you'd expect to see headbanging while walking down the street with a boombox held on her shoulder.

Streetfighter sees herself as a city girl and tries to play true to that. Before she tried to join the Hero Squad, she would often be seen spending late nights partying or clubbing, which caused more than a few drunken run-ins with the local law enforcement. Her brashness sometimes causes her to butt heads with other team members.

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Fireface

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Fireface can light his face on fire. He does this both to intimidate people, as well as a prelude to hitting them with his face. He's in top physical form, and perhaps even more fit than should be humanely possible.

Visually, Fireface strikes an imposing figure. He's built like a gorilla, and even had a stint as a pro wrestler in the past. He left the job, but kept the training regimen, and it shows. His "costume," if one could even call it that, consists mainly of light body armor, shaded in various hues of red and orange. He doesn't wear a mask; it would just be burned to ash whenever he lit his face on fire, anyway.

Fireface has two sides to him. To his enemies, he is a bloodthirsty, hulk-esque figure who has been known to completely ignore being shot in the leg until he's beaten whoever shot him to a pulp. However, to the team, he's like a surrogate father, doing everything from treating their wounds to cooking their meals. He has a bit of a simple mind, but he cares about them all deeply, and that's one thing he's sure of.

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Phantasm

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Phantasm is able to create any illusion perfectly, with sight, sound, and smell all included, but only of things a subject already believes exist. He is cunning, which helps him make full use of his power.

Phantasm wears a very dark blue robe over his regular clothes that covers his whole body except for his hands. He also wears a hood that comes up over his head, letting him hide that as well. The most distinct feature of his costume, however, is a blank mask covering his face, with slits for his eyes the only openings. The mask is fitted to fold around the bridge of his nose and has a pair of strings he wraps around the back of his head to prevent it from being knocked astray if he gets bumped casually.

Phantasm is the most mysterious member of the Hero Squad. While he isn't a total shut-in, he does have an antisocial streak, and tends to fade into the background when the group goes out socializing. He keeps his calm and collected demeanor very well - sometimes almost suspiciously well.

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Blackout

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Blackout is able to emit pure blackness from the palms of his hands in the form of an ink-like liquid or as smoke. He can get rid of the substance by absorbing it into the palms of his hands, although it fades away on its own after a few hours.

Blackout's costume is probably the most superhero-esque of any of the team's. He wears a black wetsuit with blue stripes, matching wetsuit boots, and a pair of swimming goggles. His hands are, of course, free, as covering his palms would block his power.

Blackout's personality fits his power. He's a trickster at heart and thrives on misdirection and confusion, loving little more than a good prank. Despite his jokey exterior, he's more than capable of putting on a serious face when required.

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Biography:

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"Hero Squad, move!"

The double doors at the gate to the warehouse slammed open as Fireface slammed his shoulder into them, the low-quality padlock unable to take the strain. The Tierant's guards, surprised by his abrupt entrance, looked at him curiously. In response, he roared at the top of his lungs and lowered his head to charge at the nearest one, his face catching fire. The other guards raised their guns to aim at Fireface, taking a moment to aim along his predictable path of motion.

"Why settle for ONE black eye when you can have TWO?" Twin streams of ink sprung forth from Blackout's palms as he darted past one of the guards, covering his face in thick black ink. He dropped his gun and started frantically wiping the ink off of his face. He stumbled backwards and tripped over a pile of scrap metal, landing in a dazed, blinded heap amidst distended machinery.

Another guard found his gun knocked out of his hands by a gondola pole. He turned around to see Gondolier in a fighting stance, fierce eyes narrowed beneath his hat. Desperate and off-put by the loss of his gun, the guard threw a haymaker at Gondolier. He grabbed the guard's fist with his hand and pulled him further, adding to the guard's own motion. As the surprised thug flew past him, Gondolier gave him a love tap to the back of the head, and the man fell to the ground unconscious.

A third guard, up on a catwalk, took careful aim at Fireface, when, without warning, the clamps attaching the catwalk to the cables above it all released simultaneously, and it dropped like a stone. The catwalk hit the ground, and the disoriented guard hit the catwalk, getting a number of new bruises from the harsh impact. As he was getting his bearings, Streetfighter rushed up to him. "Yeah, c'mon! Get OWNED, punk!" Before he could properly get up, she dropped her foot on his face, putting him down for a good while longer.

Fireface, largely oblivious to all of this going on around him, charged at full speed towards the guard he'd aimed himself at. The poor goon fired a few shots in panic, but they went wide, and Fireface hit him with the force of a steam train, the headbutt to his stomach knocking the wind out of him. Fireface grabbed him and continued with his charge until he reached a wall, which he slammed the guard into, sandwiching him between the structure and the superhero. The guard dropped to the floor, stunned, and Fireface fell down on him, punching him several times in the head, then slamming his face into the guard's. He got up with a grunt and chuckled at the singed and unconscious man in front of him.

Phantasm joined them silently, having ducked to the side to avoid getting in the way, as the plan of action hadn't required him. The team continued on to the next room of the warehouse, where they found the Tierant and his aptly-named pet, Tieger. Tierant adjusted his smart business tie and smirked. "You're here a bit later than I expected. Get caught in traffic on your way to work?"

Gondolier pointed his gondola stick at the businessman threateningly. "We're giving you one chance to surrender without a fight, then we're taking you out." The rest of the team tensed up; none of them expected him to make it that easy.

They were not disappointed. Tierant pulled out his signature tie-whip and thrashed it against the floor menacingly. "Backtalking the boss? Looks like I'll just have to hand you your two weeks' notice! Tieger, sic 'em!"

Gondolier jumped backwards as Tierant's whip cracked at the spot he had been standing in. "Fireface, Blackout, take out that tiger! Phantasm, Streetfighter, with me!" Gondolier threw what looked like a grenade at Tierant; Phantasm followed its flight path with his head,and Tierant leaped for his life as it exploded where he had just been standing. He landed on his stomach and looked back; he was surprised to find that there was no blast mark. Gondolier tried to reach him before he got back up, but Tierant noticed him just in time, and slung his whip around his feet, making him overbalance and fall forward onto the ground.

Tieger growled menacingly and circled Fireface and Blackout slowly. Fireface slammed his fists together. "Gimme some cover."

Blackout nodded, not taking his eyes off the beast, and slowly opened his hands. "Smoked tiger, eh? Seems a bit exotic for you." Black smoke poured out of both of his palms. It quickly obscured both him and Fireface, and Tieger chose to leap at where it thought they were before they moved, only to be met with a double axe handle by Fireface, clenched fists slamming upwards into the tiger as it leaped at him, and knocking it behind him. It writhed on its back in pain for a few moments before getting back on its feet and circling the black smoke once more, this time a good deal warier.

"Good. I like cooking exotic food," Fireface replied.

The sound of a hook and crane setup rotating around drew Tierant's attention as he picked himself up. He looked above, to the source of the noise, and saw a decommissioned crane still holding a load of iron girders in its claw rotating to hold them above him. The claw inched itself open, and he struggled to crawl out of the way. Unfortunately, he was too slow, and he rolled over on his back to see the crane drop its load on him. He instinctively threw his hands up and shut his eyes...then cracked them open a few seconds later when nothing happened. To his surprise, the iron bars were still tucked securely in the crane's grip.

He was about to get up when Streetfighter placed a foot on his chest, a cocky grin on her face. "How's the fat cat business, grandpa?" He tugged at his whip, intending to crack it at her, but found Phantom's foot resting firmly on it, the expression on his blank mask as hollow as ever, the eye holes providing no insight into what he could be thinking.

Far above them, and at the same time right down with them, a tendril surveyed wriggled curiously. An impressive lot. Notable on their own, but fearsome together. It was particularly interested in the large one fending off the fierce beast with no apparent form of weapon.

Fireface was indeed doing all of these things. Blow after blow rained down upon the poor feline. It had already stopped making so much as a single halfhearted attempt to scratch at Fireface through his body armor, and was now simply staggering back as Fireface punched it relentlessly. When he saw it begin to sway like a leaf, he let out an ear-splitting war cry, then smashed their faces together. The unconscious tiger fell to the ground in front of the heavyset man, the entire team staring in awe, his heavy breathing the loudest sound.

The tendril dipped and dived a bit, and the entire team vanished.

Originally posted on MSPA by Solaris.

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?desnip?

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Username: Solaris
Name: A Hero's Shadow
Gender: Female by technicality
Race: Shadow of a Rydian, Pale, Elflike humanoid with sharp claws and teeth in adulthood. Also weird eyes.
Colour: #001E1C, Blackish Teal, speech is in BOLD
Biography: It's a story that's been told a million times. The ever-present battle of good versus evil, cropping up time after time. A Tyrant rises to power, and a Hero rises up behind them.
Skalah did not ask for her role, and she was reluctant to accept it, but after her best friend was kidnapped, she knew what she would have to do. Heeding the words of the gods, she travelled across the land of Rydia in search of the Five Artifacts that would help her stop The Tyrant who, if not stopped, would surely take over the world. As she collected each, she slowly took the steps necessary to become the Hero of Legend she never thought she could be.

Her return to the Temple of the Gods would be where she would take her final step.

It was here that she originally forged the point of the Pike of Destiny that slew the Tyrants minions, and it was here that she would face her biggest challenge yet. She entered the temple and froze when standing in the center of the temple was none other than herself. Same size, same shape, even the same weapons and accessories were visible from the entrance. However, the similarities were not as startling as the differences. As the other her stepped forward, she noticed that its tunic and skin were both black, and that its eyes glowed red. It pointed its pike at her as it began to speak.

"Hello there Skalah."
"What... What are you?"
"What do I look like? I am you. Your shadow brought to life. "
"What do you want?"
"I want to fight. The two of us, shadow and self, fighting a battle to see if you are truly the legendary hero of Rydia. If you win, then you are truly deserving of the pike in your hands. If you lose, then you will never be able to defeat the Tyrant."
Skalah hesitated, stepping back as the creature that claimed to be her shadow stepped closer.
"Do you accept my challenge?"
Skalah was silent once more. This was the last hurdle she would have to take before plunging straight into the Tyrant's lair. Raising her pike, reflecting her shadow, she took a deep breath and said "Yes."

A circle formed around the two and the battle begun.

The Hero and her Shadow were evenly matched, striking blow after blow at each other. Their pikes clashed, making sparks fly. They were evenly matched. However, Skalah began to grow tired.
Her blows began to weaken, and the shadow knew. It mocked her, "Is that all you can do? Really?"
Skalah tightened her grip and with a newfound strength, she continued, replying "No."

The battle felt long, longer than anything Skalah ever had to endure. Just as she was on the verge of being overcome, she saw an opening and struck the shadow in its shoulder, disarming it and knocking it back. The two of them breathed heavily, just staring at each other, before the shadow smiled.
"Good job Skalah. Good job."
It pointed at the wall opposite of the entrance, behind the pedestal that made the pike's point. An opening appeared.
The shadow stood up, retrieving its pike, "Past that hall is a jewel that will give your Pike the final edge it needs against that Tyrant. Good luck Skalah. You need it."

Skalah stepped through and claimed her prize. She would go on and save the world, defeating the Tyrant and bringing light to the world once more. While she would never forget her battle with the shadow, she would never question what had happened to it after her battle. Though she assumed that it had returned from where it came, it was actually taken from her world to somewhere far, far away...

Description: Rydians have pointed ears and pale skin. They also have sharp teeth and oddly colored eyes, Skalah's for example, are gold. Older Rydians have semi-retractable claws on their fingers, but Skalah's are still developing. She is a mid-sized girl of about seventeen years who wears a teal tunic that stops above her knees with a diagonal strap around her chest that holds various items that she collected on her Journey for the Five Artifacts. Strapped across her back in a while cloth is a large pike wrapped in a white cloth. Her hair is red and cut above her shoulders and held by teal headband. She has stockings over her boots and light chain-mail under her tunic. The Shadow obviously has all of the above in various shades of black, as is its skin. Its eyes however, are red.

The Shadow in its current form is an anomaly. As a shadow bright to life by the Rydian gods' magic, it was never meant to last longer than the duration of her fight Skalah. As such, her personality is not exactly what you could call developed beyond what was needed for that battle. At its core, it has the bravery, honor, integrity, and ingenuity of the Hero of Legend, itself, but it lacks the goal and heart required to truly use any of it. It is confused, aimless, and even it does not know what lies in its destiny.

Items/Abilities: The Shadow has all of Skalah's weapons and abilities and is at the same level of proficiency. This includes some impromptu weapons training, the combat experience of six or so dungeons, resourcefulness and ingenuity, and a small knowledge of runes. As a shadow brought to life, it also has access to shadow based magic that allows it to summon any of the items in her strap and a weak telepathic link to whomever she is focused on fighting. However, it also has a great weakness to light based magic.

The only item that truly belongs to it is the Mirror Pike, a weapon less powerful than the Pike of Destiny, but still able to point whoever wields it in the direction that they are most needed.

SpoilerShow

I suspect that exactly what Skalah’s Shadow becomes and how I play her depends on what exactly happens to her.

Theme: Primus by Jeremy "Solatrus" Iamurri

Other?

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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Username:Lord Paradise

Name: Commander Princess Patricia Pastrykisses-Bearonrollerblades

Sex: 100% woman

Race: Human

Color: #8888BB

Description: Assembling a wardrobe is one of the most underappreciated talents of a politician, especially a politician burdened with good taste. After years of hurriedly changing out of a ball gown and into full military regalia in the back of the limo from Tiaran into Jetpaxia, Patricia decided that for her sanity’s sake she was going to have to break some new ground here, fashion-wise. She’s currently wearing a tasteful lowest-common-denominator ensemble consisting of a camouflage evening gown bedecked with medals and diamonds, combat boots, stockings, a backpack, silk gloves, elbow pads, and a combination tiara/headset with the mic hanging within licking distance of her lower-left bicuspids. It’s a good look, you know, for affairs of state.

Physically, you pretty much know the drill: Patricia is an attractive, curvy-within-reason young lady of twenty-four years. She could pass either for a typical Tiaran (or a typical Tiaran’s unattainable ideal of a typical Tiaran) or a typical Jetpaxian’s unattainable etc. etc. When in Jetpaxia, she tends to play up the blue tint in her otherwise black hair, which is currently tied up in a bun but has been known to hang down as low as her bellybutton at parties. Her face alternates between pouting, scowling and other expressions of stress and is likely to age poorly over the next twenty years, if not surgically assisted.

If asked about her personality, Patricia will deny that she has one. A politician to the bone, she thinks, feels and behaves in whatever manner she finds most beneficial and convenient. That’s another lie, of course, but one of which she has at least convinced herself. Truthfully truthfully, Patricia’s innermost desire is the desire for whatever the hell she wants, now. This desire blossomed during a rich and spoiled childhood and transmuted into a single-minded drive for success when responsibility was thrust upon her too soon in her life. Nothing about this is at all healthy, and there’s always a risk that the dam of all-encompassing hatred in her heart will burst forth to catastrophic effects under conditions of extreme stress. Luckily for the world, as of the moment before her abduction, Patricia believed most of the conditions of extreme stress in her life to be behind her.

Weapons/Abilities: In her youth, Patricia’s parents nursed her inborn talent with both machines and animals, but she got taken away from all that in order to better serve the world. Now, her weapons are people.. Patricia’s status and credentials are pseudosociologically enhanced to function virtually everywhere, so that she is consistently recognized as an upper-level bureaucrat. This doesn’t mean that everyone is compelled to obey her—on the contrary, they’re as likely to develop an instinctive need to rebel against her—but the usual boring submissive masses will treat her with the respect due her ill-defined office. She supplements this advantage with her own, more run-of-the-mill talents, having learned or been trained to function in the gymnasium, the podium, the bedroom, the courthouse, and the kitchen, if not in the garage, the wilderness, or the streets. However, being really good at your job is worth nothing without the proper tools, which is what the backpack is for. The contents of Patricia’s backpack include:

-One legal pad for writing up various writs, warrants, I.O.Us, contracts, memos, diplomas, and drafts thereof;
-One very classy pen, for use in writing on the above;
-One desktop nameplate;
-One wall-mounted nameplate;
-An inconstantly large amount of denomination-changing currency;
-Two self-inking stamps, one with the word “approved” and one with the word “denied” on it;
-One megaphone;
-One collapsible soapbox;
-One handkerchief;
-Assorted posters and bumper stickers in support of variable causes;
-One personal planner, full of handwritten addresses, appointments and alibis;
-Makeup, deodorant, and emergency toiletries;
-An assortment of press passes, nametags and other transferable symbols of authority;
-A palm pilot that functions as a tape recorder, a fairly accurate lie detector, a live feed of polls and approval ratings, and a window into alternate timelines, with a battery life of about one week of frequent use.

It can be assumed that all of these things have strange, pseudosociological abilities to manipulate and influence people.

Biography: Patricia was born in a P.O.W. camp, the illegitimate child of renowned Tiaran vegetarian soldier-chef Fredward Pastrykisses and crack Jetpaxian dino-roboticist Jessie Bearonrollerblades. After a peace settlement was reached and the first steps were taken towards uniting the two nations, allowing her parents to continue their relationship in the open, the romance and circumstances of Patricia’s birth made her something of an emblem of peace and a minor celebrity. The Pastrykisses-Bearonrollerblades family became quite wealthy, but the pressures of fame drove Fredward and Jessie apart, with each returning to their own home. The question of what to do with Patricia became rather heated, and several months of poor game theory later they came to the agreement that neither of them could have her and she should be sent to a boarding school on the border. This was about three weeks after her eleventh birthday. She saw her parents but little for the rest of her life.

Patricia excelled in all her classes and made a number of friends, mostly out of spite, and had what might be considered a healthy adolescence to somebody who wasn’t observing too closely. At the age of sixteen, the threat of a second war drove pacifist factions to train and recruit a new generation of diplomats, and Patricia was an obvious choice for a number of reasons. She accepted the new program’s offer, as it seemed like the thing to do at the time, and spent the next two years intensively training to be the most effective politician living in either country. And as the first war panic settled down before her graduation, Patricia was able to use these talents to accumulate power and wealth beyond anything her parents had accomplished, presuming that the time when she would have to save the world would never arrive.

That moment didn’t arrive until after she had turned twenty-one and become the first citizen ever to achieve the titles of both Princess and Commander. A personal vendetta between the Princess-in-Chief of Tiaran and the Triple-Admiral of Jetpaxia forced the militaries of both nations into a dangerous campaign of brinksmanship. A second war seemed inevitable until Patricia organized a sitdown, following which both the Princess-in-Chief and the Triple-Admiral announced their resignations and stepped off the face of the Earth, never to be seen again. The public, relieved at the prospect of peace, never really called for a full investigation, and Patricia, rather than use the event as a campaign platform, allowed it to fade into memory. The subsequent epidemic of mysterious disappearances among the politically inconvenient went completely unpublicized.

Theme song: Game of Thrones -- Orion's Reign

Originally posted on MSPA by Jacquerel.

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Username: Jack Noir
Name: Chaete
Sex: Female
Race: Lumbricus Astronomia (more often known as the Common or Garden Space Worm)
Colour: #A21D00

Everything Else:

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

Your average Space Worm is a planet-eating creature of almost unimaginable size, sitting somewhere between 800 and 1000 miles in length with a radius in the range of 50-70 miles. It would take a significantly long time to walk such a distance on foot, and as the name implies you'd probably need some kind of sealed environment suit to attempt it because they spend most of their time drifting through the stars between meals. Fortunately for the other entrants to this contest, such a titanic adult form takes a long series of millennial childhood stages to achieve. Little more than a baby at 218, Chaete hasn't even undergone a single moulting yet and is thus only eight foot from head to tail, much shorter than that upright as she bends herself into a rough S shape for surface movement.

As she lacks an adult's impressive size, Chaete's most immediately noticeable assets are her teeth. Her cross-shaped mouth can open so alarmingly wide that it turns itself inside out (though this is often unnecessary), revealing a set of tools that would embarrass any dentists, steelworks or torture chamber. Some of them even rotate. These fairly impressive natural implements combined with a bafflingly fast metabolism allow Chaete to tunnel her way mouth-first through almost any substance known to man, though she much prefers a diet free of the foul-tasting oils and pesky micro-organisms so often present in plants, soil and people. These terrifying jaws are necessary because space worms generally feed by floating through space and eating every unpopulated planet in the solar system that they arrive in, culminating with the sun for dessert. As she is therefore evidently capable of surviving in such disparate environments as the cold vacuum of space and the crushing heat of a planetary core you can also chalk “astronomical resistance to heat and pressure” onto the list of notable features.

One particularly arcane set of molars enable what is probably Chaete's most notable ability, eating holes in the very fabric of space itself. Worms do not tend to have a reputation for quickness and this does not change when they are placed into the endless abyss of space. Moving at a speed significantly slower than that of light, they would clearly starve to death rather quickly without some other means of transit. Thus they evolved the ability to tunnel from any starting location to another many light years away in the space of an instant (or more likely, they evolved this first as an escape mechanism and then evolved further in order to use it to travel through space but let's not be pedantic), though as she is a juvenile Chaete's range is fairly less impressive than lightyears and she can barely manage a jump of more than three miles at a time before having to stop and have a snack (and ideally a nap).

These “space tunnels” start out at about the size of Chaete's head for fairly obvious reasons but expand over a period of about five minutes into a jagged-edged circle six feet in radius. In case you are unfamiliar with the idea of portals, stepping into one will deposit you at the other, and vice versa, and looking through one will reveal a view of the other side. They are so thin as to appear two-dimensional and therefore fairly hard to see unless you are facing them head-on though they can be entered from either direction. If they have any kind of set lifespan it has yet to be discovered, many other sapient races use old worm-tracks to save on fuel during interstellar voyages and in certain well-travelled areas they can make navigation extremely difficult.

The largest portion of the rest of her body, as you might expect what with her being a worm, is little more than a tube made of many flexible segments, though any similarity to the earthworms found on Earth ends there. Over the top of the segments are a series of plates (resembling traditional chitin but much tougher) that offer protection against heavy impacts during space travel, these grow to surround the entire body during periods of interstellar movement and then partially break away again when the worm enters a solar system, leaving the configuration that Chaete is currently sporting with little more than the front of the head and parts of the back covered. The colour of these plates is determined by the minerals present in the particular specimen's recent diet and Chaete's are currently fairly reddish.
Eyes are set at fairly regular intervals along the body (more grow as the worm increases in length) and clustered around the head, with one pointing directly backwards to give the creature close to three hundred and sixty degrees of vision while planetside (though oddly she still lacks the ability to see directly forwards, perhaps simply because it would be pointless underground) though as a juvenile, Chaete only possesses the base nineteen.

Unlike the hermaphroditic species on Earth, Space Worms have a fairly traditional pair of genders though only the females are able to grow to their maximum size. While females undergo a long cycle of gorging on rocks and dirt, growing and shedding their old skins, males never moult and live a terrestrial life on the planet that their egg lands on, not growing much larger than the size Chaete currently possesses, until picked up by a feeding Female who happens to eat their planet. At this point they burrow into the space between her digestive system and exoskeleton and become a permanent part of her body.
A single female can eventually host millions of parasitic males, their personalities linked psychically into a single community and given as much say in what they do or say as she does herself, though as the decisions a big flying worm has to make are not usually incredibly complicated they spend most of their time just chatting with each other or delegating who has to deal with which children next.

This is relevant because females are also significantly rarer than males (for reasons that hopefully do not need to be explained) and thus tend to be spoiled rotten (from a great distance) by their doting parents during childhood. Which also means that, until they gather a generous collection of humbler mates who can keep them under control, they are almost invariably arrogant, demanding and petulant. As she is still several thousand years away from sexual maturity, Chaete has all three of these qualities in abundance. On top of that, as many eggs can land on a single planet but will rarely produce more than a single female and Chaete's own eventual growth to adulthood takes so much food that all of her brothers will eventually starve to death, she has become accustomed to living with an army of siblings who have no purpose but to wait on her hand and foot until she eats their entire planet (though their workload is at least lightened by the fact that she doesn't actually have any feet to wait upon).

So, what with living a life mostly comprised of drifting through space, eating floating rocks and talking to the people that literally live inside of their head it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that most worms are not all that concerned with material goods. This is not the case with their spawn, who share the same love of trinkets and pieces of cheap, colourful plastic as children the universe over. Alas, it is much harder to do anything with these when you lack any form of manipulating limb and so (at great expense to one of her mother's other children, who hatched many years previously on an already populated planet) Chaete received a pair of mechanical arms for her 180th birthday. They are hardy enough to survive general wear and tear (although they fold away into a backpack when not in use) but otherwise not particularly strong. She couldn't lift a car with them, though she can just about use them to support her own weight when she's tired. In any kind of fistfight they'd almost certainly snap in two.
Despite begging her parent for years prior to the actual event, she hasn't actually used them all that much since either (let's face it, did you really use any of the toys you asked for as a child on a regular basis? She has other people to fetch things for her) so on top of that her coordination is fairly poor but at least they allow her the convenience of being able to open a human door without eating it. Not that she's ever encountered one to know how to use a doorknob.

Her poor attitude certainly wasn't helped by the fact that adult worms large enough to eat planets are completely unable to land without dealing catastrophic damage to the surrounding environment (and would be very much tempted to eat that environment), and are thus unable to directly interfere with the growth of their children. Space Worm parenting is a strictly hands-off approach, aided by an incredible gift for telepathy that allows them to store the karmic signatures of their many thousands of children in a mental address book and communicate with them on a one-to-one basis from vast distances. This unfortunately does not allow them to see through their child's eyes and so they are reliant entirely on conflicting anecdotes to find out what their offspring are up to, and with thousands of needy females clamouring for attention (and many thousands more resigned males not getting much) they don't usually have the time to collate this into any kind of accurate picture of what is going on down there at all, let alone deliver any lessons on consequences and right and wrong, leaving little Chaete to pretty much do whatever she wants without fear of parental retribution.

For communication between siblings (when Chaete bothers to talk to them at all, usually only to request (well, order) that they do something for her), a long-distance one-to-one call is a bit of a waste of effort considering they're not only going to be on the same planet but presumably also quite nearby, so for this worms use a different manifestation of their psychic ability that is rather conveniently awfully like just speaking aloud. It differs from plain talking only by the fact that it is not muffled by walls or distance (unless the walls are lined with tin foil) and rather than a drop-off of volume as you move away, you can only either hear it at full volume or not hear it at all. This is also what fully grown Matriarchs use to bind their consciousness with that of their mates, creating a psychic communication field spanning most of their body.
There are very good reasons why Space Worms evolved to dislike the taste of life-supporting planets, anecdotal reports say that worm matriarchs who have been forced (due to starvation or attack) to consume colonised planets are driven mad by the psychic emanations of the dead coming from within their own digestive tracts. How this might reflect on Chaete's own psyche if she is ever (to use a purely hypothetical example) entered into some form of battle to the death by an unknowable eldritch horror is perhaps something to watch out for.

Originally posted on MSPA by MrGuy.

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Name: Zylkorabon and Janet Brass
Gender: Male-identified, Female
Species: Worm, Human
Color: #800055
Description:

SpoilerShow

(Image courtesy of Pharmacy)

Zylkorabon is a very large, sapient worm. His body segments are colored in such a way to suggest stripes, and he has a sort of mace-thing at the end of his tail like an anklyosaurus. He has four eyes and various facial markings.

Janet is a somewhat short and slightly overweight woman of roughly 23 years old. She has short hair (dyed a dark green) and wears a black hairband, as well as a gray hooded sweatshirt. She is waist-deep inside of Zylkorabon, acting as his only arm.

Zylkorabon tends to be thoughtful and scheming. His plans unfold with varying degree of success; sometimes they'll unfold perfectly, and other times they'll completely blow up in his face. He has considerable affection towards Janet, but often grows exasperated with her.

Janet is, above all else, lazy. She doesn't particularly enjoy doing much of anything, especially if she's being told to. She's quite cheerful and friendly as a general rule, but has a bit of a tendency toward sarcastic humor, which can come across as more biting than it's intended to be.

Items/Abilities: Zylkorabon can use the thing at the end of his tail as a weapon, with a decent degree of effectiveness.

Janet has two arms, with five-handed fingers complete with opposable thumbs; she uses these to grip and manipulate various objects. She also has a small amount of knowledge in many subjects, though she often overestimates what she knows.

Biography:

SpoilerShow

On one gray, snowy morning in late November, Janet Brass woke up in the basement of her apartment complex chained to the wall. Next to her was a laptop computer; on her other side, her roommate Zylkorabon, in quite a similar position. He gave the best approximation of a smile that a circular mouth can manage. "About time you woke up."

Yawning, she raised her manacled hands to rub the sleep from her eyes. "Mm, morning to you too. The hell are we in the basement."

"I shall answer that." Down the stairs came a mustached man wearing a labcoat and an odd set of goggles, carrying a pouch of assorted hooks, yarn, pins, needles and circuitry. "Do you recall me, Ms. Brass?"

Janet stared at him for a moment. "Um... the landlord?"

"Not MERELY the landlord, you fool!" He slammed his hand against the heater, only to promptly recoil in pain and frantically blow on it. Once finished, he continued. "Once, I was your biology professor."

"Oh, Mr. Doty. Nice to see you again! How's the kids?"

Zylkorabon sighed. "Let him monologue."

Mr. Doty scowled and continued. "After you left the university, I sought vengeance on you, as well as all my other laziest students. So with my patented gene-merging machine, I merged my DNA with the third-most ruthless creature of all time... A LANDLORD! I couldn't find a lawyer or politician in time, you see. Also the rent was coming due and I'd spent all my money on a gene-merging machine, so that was a little side bonus."

Janet blinked and furrowed her brow. "Okay, what I do remember from your class, that's not how genes work."

Zylkorabon just stared at her, clearly exasperated. "That's right, Janet, make the crazy man even more pissed off."

Doty began pacing the room. "But there was an unexpected side effect. I had always loved knitting, but the landlord was more of a crocheting enthusiast. These conflicting desires merged, causing me to-- subconsciously at first, but then knowingly-- develop the horrible hybrid of KNICHETTING! Now I can attach anything to anything given enough yarn!"

Zyl continued for him. "The point being that if you don't write a five-page research paper in the next twelve hours to make up for the fact that you never completed a single paper in his class, he'll combine us into one monstrous being!"

----------------------

Janet continued flipping through the channels, occasionally asking Zylkorabon to lean down so she could get a handful of tortilla chips for the both of them. Mr. Doty sat next to them, enjoying some hummus.

Zylkorabon sighed. "I can't believe you actually let him go through with knitting you to me."

Doty smiled. "I can't believe you paid me twenty bucks plus yarn expenses for this!"

Janet shrugged. "I can't believe you expected me to do a paper when Real Housewives of Boise was on in half an hour."

Despite himself, Zyl cracked a circular smile-ish sort of thing. "What are we going to do with you, Janet?"

Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.

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SpoilerShow

Times is having technical difficulties posting, and as such I will posting this on his behalf.

Username: TimeothyHour
Name: Sequi and Fugere
Gender: Male and also Male
Race: Immortal
Colour: Sequi is Grey on Gold, Fugere is Gold on Grey
Weapons/Abilities: Look, let me just explain it my way, alright? This way is boring. Instead, I’ll tell you a story. And, it’ll explain things much better. No need to thank me.

Once, long ago, The Moon stole some of The Sun’s light.

Now, like any man who finds their positions stolen, The Sun followed the perpetrator, partly to get his light back, partly to give that thieving two-timing Moon a piece of his mind. And, like any thief who finds himself, pursuit, he fled to the hills like a coward.

This continued for many hundreds of thousands of years, through the blackness of space, until the moon hid behind a blue-and-green planet called earth. Winded, the sun called out to its thief.

“I don’t know about you, thief, but I am tired. I have chased you for all these years for my light, and I am tired.”

The thief, being, at the very least a polite fellow, replied.

“My pursuer, I would agree with you. I have run from you all these years, and I, too, am tired.”

“But what are we to do?” The Sun sighed. “You have stolen my light.”

“And I dearly wish to keep it,” replied The Moon.

There was a long silence between the two. The Moon, being closer to Earth than the sun, was the one to notice Humanity, wandering earth, thinking, breathing, and discovering. Quick witted and sly, the moon devised a plan.

“Sun, I have an idea.”

“And that is?” The Sun asked. It briefly considered chasing after The Moon once again, but decided to at least hear the thief out.

“On this planet, here, walks a species, so small yet so large. They have hearts and minds, and they think and talk, like us. They walk on the small skin of this stone, look to the stars, and imagine.”

The Sun looked, and it was true. Humanity walked upon Earth’s surface.

“And what, exactly, do you suggest?” The Sun said to The Moon.

“A wager,” was the reply. “We each make a human, immortal to all but each other. Yours will pursue mine to the ends of the surface of this rock, and mine will run from yours like the winds. We will wager on our humans, and the winner of the bet receives the light. All the while we can sit here and catch our breath.

The Sun thought for a long while. He looked out into the blackness of space, contemplating. Eventually, he replied.

“I accept your wager.”

And thus it was so. The Sun and The Moon chose a child, a child so small and so weak; they split its soul in half, for the spirit, divided, cannot die partially. And, from stardust, they made their Men.

The Sun built a lanky, gangly man. He had greasy yellow-brown hair, and a pair of green eyes that never quite seemed in focus. The Sun made him athletic and quick, trained in the art of killing, and gave him an obsession with death that simultaneously twisted his mind and acted as a passion and driving force to hunt. He fell in love with blades and knives, and, when turned loose on the world, his first act was to ransack a nearby town for his weapon of choice. His name became Sequi.

The Moon built a scrawny, meager man, designed to run and hide. He was given grey hair as a mark of his creator, and careful, hazel eyes that seemed to shine gold in the right light. The Moon, more concerned with matters of mind and wit, built his man a quick-thinking, intelligent mind that, above all, feared death and confrontation. He was, above all, taught to run and hide, and became a thief to survive, just like The Moon. If forced to fight, however, he used weapons that gave him a fair distance from his rival, and he certainly had a couple of guns or ranged weapons on him at any time. His name became Fugere.

And in this way, they were released upon the earth. For thousands and thousands of years, one followed, and one fled. Through eras and eras, to the ends of the earth, they became ingrained into the culture of the world. Rumors spread, and every once in a while the world would watch in fascination and horror as they met, and as they fought. They viewed Sequi as a God of Death, perpetually clothed in a masked lock in an emotionless smile and a longcoat stained with blood. Fugere became a symbol of wisdom and trickery. The cane he stole after a particularly close encounter with his stalker, and continued to carry afterward, became a symbol for thieves around the world.

But, for a few years now, though, they’ve seemingly disappeared from sight, and the world is already beginning to forget. Such is mankind, and such is life.

They say that when Sequi and Fugere meet, The Sun and The Moon come to watch. This is how, they say, on those days, the moon covers the sun, and blocks out the light. So if you ever look up into the sky and see that burning black eye, if you ever witness that darkened sight, know, know, that somewhere, out there, They have met.

And they’ll be fighting.

Information that might not be clear from the story and information not in it outright: Sequi and Fugere can only die if they are touching each other or within about a foot of each other. However, both of them can feel pain. For example, if Fugere shot Sequi from far away, the bullet would hit Sequi and he’d be bleeding everywhere and it would be horrible and messy and painful. Eventually, he would appear to die. But because a soul cannot be destroyed divided, he’d wake up, fully healed. If one of them dies, the other would die also, even if he was in perfect health.

The two of them only disappeared a few years ago, say, 2007, but they’ve existed since almost the beginning of mankind, so they’re pretty familiar with all technology levels besides, like, things from the future, and they’ve learned to roll with technology as it changes. As such, Fugere has several pistols on his person, along with a variety of lock-picks and other gadgets. Sequi has used technology to further his obsession with death, namely, an iPod with 12 days of hard rock and death metal on it, and also those super-sharp blades they advertise on cooking channels. Man, he can’t resist getting one of those sharp, silvery blades. They cut so well.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Username: Schazardous materials containment unit Z-14
Name: Robin Pearson, D.ASc (Necrology)
Sex: Female
Race: Human, once-dead
Color: The colour of her peacoat, #0c690c

Description: Bobby (as she prefers to be called) is a calm, chipper scientist in her mid-thirties, who could pass for about five years younger if you had a keen eye for that sort of thing. Her black hair's swept off her face, and tidily trimmed to a nape-length bob. At the time of abduction, she had her nice green excursionary peacoat with pepper spray, keys, a cell phone, and a few sticks of gum in the pockets; office-acceptable black trousers and white blouse underneath; and modestly heeled dark green shoes. In her suitcase is a netbook, charger, several pen drives and empty museli bar packets, a journal submission or two she still needs to get round to reading, a labcoat that really should be stored in a separate plastic bag, and poorly-defined assorted necrologist paraphernalia. Robin herself is intelligent, pretty much married to her research, exasperated with society's mass stupidity but too optimistic to become a true misanthrope, and quite happy to tell you about the work she does. She understands full well that her line of study has a powerful "gross" factor for most, but still espouses how much use it can be to people. Having technically killed herself under controlled lab conditions and coming back a few hours apparently-unscathed, the prospect of imminent death may not completely faze her. Which, in itself, is kind of creepy for most.

Items/Abilities: Necromancy! (Even though the "old name" for it is considered unscientific and bad for PR.) Robin tackled the nebulous magical energies relating to the dead with her can-do scientific approach, while completing her self-constructed thesis and Ph.D - all after graduating with honours on her Bachelor of Arcane Sciences. She's been told she has a real knack for the field (much to the chagrin of her Magibiology lecturer), and can navigate the spirit realm for your average homicide victim's soul in the space of three hours. Robin likes to be able to keep ahead of whole-human genome sequencings, so hones this skill as often as her other advocacy work and research allows. Also amongst her skills she's never had ethical clearance to perform outside the lab are restoring souls to vessels, raising the dead (with the permission of a body's prior owners, obviously), and generally communing with assorted entities on the non-mortal planes of existence.

Biography: It bears mentioning, just to get some sort of perspective, that the Arcane Sciences were studied from whence Robin harked since their inception - an Event occurring roughly twenty years ago (in the late eighties) in an otherwise similarly-progressing universe and Earth to our own. Like any new change on their modern planet, humans approached it with wild speculation and rumour-mongering, before the scientific community rolled their sleeves up and tried to get some reputable information about the way people could suddenly control the elements. Much like astrophysics, some of the finer details about how all this exactly worked weren't agreed upon, but where facts could be found papers could be published. Robin grew up aspiring to work in some kind of practical capacity with the newly-discovered sciences, but didn't decide on necromancy until the scarcity of information intrigued her.

Suffice to say, it's been an uphill battle for her since. While the physics, biochemistry, and all the other "classical" disciplines have gone full steam ahead in finding out how the less unsavoury schools of magic play out in their reality, necromancy in all its forms suffered from severe negative public backlash. Robin's quick to exclaim the myriad useful applications were society to decriminalise necrology; of being able to clear cold cases, or use consenting bodies as a low-cost workforce, as examples; but faces criticism at every turn. Having said that, she's a poster child for necrologists worldwide, and does a lot of advocacy work explaining to schoolkids and community groups what her work entails so her colleagues can work with fewer protestors trying to torch their offices.

Aural Thematics: Tommy Ill - Living Dead

Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

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Username: Agenenenen
Name: Rachel Wylite
Gender: Female
Race: Only still somewhat human
Colour: #CC5000
Description: Rachel Wylite looks worn, a used husk of a human being. She wears a straitjacket torn open into a rough sort of dress, wrapped around a metal shell that covers her torso. Crude wires are bolted from this array down the length of her arms, terminating in ports that seem designed to accommodate a variety of jacks. Her shoulder-length brown hair hangs limply and unhealthily from her scalp, interspersed with blonde strands that glitter in sunlight. Her tired, bloodshot eyes are the same shade of brown, flecked with gold. Her clothes hang loosely on her tall 5’8” frame, her face draws on the edge of gaunt, her slender figure bordering on starved – since she doesn’t eat. Or breathe.

The progenitor of those oddities lie underneath the metal shell housing her upper body, which contains a miniature but fully-fledged G-type main-sequence star, quietly fusing hydrogen from the air and the occasional hydrocarbon for sport – the product of being in the wrong place (mad scientist lair) at the wrong time (generally all the time when it comes to being in a mad scientist lair). In return for destroying her respiratory systems, digestive functions and practically everything fleshy around it, the sun provides her with the energy she would normally require by doing things like breathing and eating…and then some more.

Her psychological state matches closely her physical, being tied into her energy levels. When they are low, Rachel generally exists in a state of being panicked out of her mind and hysterically wondering where her life went so wrong. As they rise, her demeanor changes: fear is replaced with anger, and hysteria becomes subsumed with sociopathy. In other words, her propensity to cause destruction is directly proportional to her capability to destroy.

She’s a little frightened of herself.
Items/Abilities: The ports on Rachel’s hands are universal power outlets, capable of charging any electrically-powered device with the prodigious power of her sun. This comes at the cost of depleting her internal energy, which in turn has its psychological effects. If she were sufficiently charged herself, she could likely weaponize those ports on their own or power complex machinery. While the amount of energy she can output is theoretically astronomical (hehe), there is a limit to how much her body can stand. At the optimum balance between a runaway chain reaction and sub-optimal power generation, she could probably replace a nuclear power plant as long as she manages to devote all her attention to the balancing act.
Biography: Deep, down below the skies, under the earth and dirt…

Darkness reigned in the musty corridors of the facility, interrupted only by the occasional fluorescence of a ceiling tube mustering its last electrons. The stale air hung unfiltered and unrecycled, tasting of suffocation and a long-decayed, dusty death. Here and there lay piles of bones, some human, some rodent and animal – some intermixed and showing where one had eaten the other, or vice versa.

In a sequestered corner of an undistinguished office space lay a desk, with dust carpeting its patina finish. A skeleton, gnawed clean by the work of a thousand mice and rats – themselves now dead – lay back in the frame of a rotted leather chair, slowly decomposing into dust and slurry. Slowly, in the dead air, barely-aerobic bacteria chewed away at the metal of a pistol, nested in the decaying fabric and foam where the skeleton’s lap would have been.

On the desk a notebook lay open, its pages preserved in the oxygen-starved air. In a spidery, shaky hand was scrawled the last thoughts of a dying man, meandering over lines and margins:

We shouldn’t have done that.

We shouldn’t have given them labels like 78 and 510, shouldn’t have put them through what we did, the forced labor, the utilization… They were – are – human, we lost sight of that. We lost sight of that.

No wonder 413…I don’t even know her name – stopped powering the facility. The air, the water – gone. Fuck. Knew there would be no lifts, no life support, no communications. No wonder she did that to us. Torturing us, to die. Big facility, but ten thousand personnel. Less now.

But

No matter what we did to them, it couldn’t have been worse than what that mad scientist did to them

Right? Right?

Heard talk that the team sent down there didn’t find anything. Anything at all. No 413, just an empty set of chains. Nowhere to go, just…disappeared. I don’t think we captured any teleporting experiments. We’d know. Have known.

break.

I went out and found the file on 413. It’s not my clearance, but the overseers are dead. Rachel Wylite…her name was is Rachel. Nice name.

Second year, Bachelor’s in Physics. Astrophysics major. Oh, the irony. Unattached at the time of abduction, according to the good doctors notes

Psychological evaluation?

FUCK paper cut

illegible

Burnt Rachel’s file. No one should have to read about that never again The match wouldn’t catch can you believe it? its the air

damn air there’s no air in this air air air air

I won’t die like this

We shouldn’t have done that

A tiny breeze, a last gasp in a still, dank tableau, rustles the edge of the page where the writing trails off. Inexorably, the words grow ever more illegible: the last fragment of life in a dead world, dying, decaying deep down…

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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Name: The 24-7 Gang: Bobby Banks, Robyn Banks, Robespierre Banks, Roberta Banks, Rupert Banks (No relation)
Gender: Male, Female, Male, Female, Male
Race: Human, the whole lot of them
Text Color: 009900, dollar-bill green
Description: The 24-7 Gang are a family of thrill-seeking gangsters who have dedicated their lives to robbing banks, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If this means hopping on a bankplane to another continent, and robbing it in the process, then so be it!
The Banks family wear their masks at all times, at least when they're on the job - rumor has it they wear them in private, too, but this rumor has no basis in reality.
Bobby is a somewhat bulky man in his late thirties wearing a purple ski mask. Most news stories on the gang identify him as the leader, but in all honesty, he's not very bright and is well aware of this. He does enjoy the publicity, though. He's very protective of his family, though you'd have a hard time getting him to admit this in public - or in private, for that matter.
Robyn is a slim woman, slightly older than Bobby, wearing a red mask. She's the true leader of the gang, and Bobby's wife; she admires him mostly because he's very good at doing what she says. She tends to constantly issue orders to the family even during downtime.
Robespierre is a thin, even scrawny, teenage boy in a light blue ski mask. He loves pulling pranks, and it doesn't matter to him whether he pulls them on bank security guards or on his own family.
Roberta, the youngest, is an eight-year old girl wearing a pink ski mask and a frilly pink dress instead of the black jackets and pants the rest of the family wear. She always talks in a very cutesy voice, and is usually holding a doll or stuffed animal of some kind; she's gathered a rather large collection, but every week or so she picks a different one as her "favorite" and will never be seen without it, until next week when she tosses it back with the others.
Rupert is the only member of the gang not to wear a mask; he wears formal attire and is a man in his fifties or sixties with grey hair and an immaculately-trimmed mustache. He is always polite and has a slight British accent - at least, when he's not posing as someone on a job. He is very loyal to the family, and acts as something of a butler to them, as well as a tutor to the children.
Weapons/Abilities: Each member of the gang has their own specialty.
The main advantages Bobby brings to the team are his imposing build, and his ability to yell in a loud and booming voice. He tends to act as the muscle and/or a distraction, depending on what the heist calls for.
Robyn specializes in planning out the gang's heists, and she's an excellent shot with a gun. In addition, she's an expert at breaking into and hotwiring vehicles whenever the current one gets too hot to handle; past thefts include motorcycles, armored trucks, police cars, tanks, ocean liners, and a space shuttle that one time.
Robespierre's light build makes him good at sneaking around unnoticed, and he has a grappling hook, infrared goggles, and a harness to help him make use of this to get into hard-to-access areas unseen. In addition, he's the family pickpocket, and usually the one called on when they need to get a keycard or somebody's ID in a hurry. He also loves pulling pranks, as mentioned before, and can never resist pulling at least one trick while he's on a stealth mission. He has a few props for this purpose, such as sneezing powder and whoopee cushions, but he's also not afraid to improvise.
Roberta is the family's tech expert, and also has a knack for picking locks. She's remarkably adept at hacking, although she tends to give her stuffed-animal-of-the-week credit for that.
Finally, Rupert is a master of disguise, which may explain his willingness to go without a mask the rest of the time - it's not as if it would help security to recognize him. He's also something of a jack-of-all-trades, having previously shown an affinity for such diverse tasks as demolitions, safecracking, martial arts, cooking, laundry, vehicle repair, software engineering, and skydiving.
In addition, at the time of abduction, the family had stolen an armored van and loaded their most valuable belongings into it, among them changes of clothes, various gear for heists (including weapons), Roberta's doll and stuffed animal collection, and Robespierre's props.
Biography: (spoiled for length)

SpoilerShow

Bobby Banks was a two-bit hood with dreams of big things. He had robbed convenience stores since he was fifteen and had finally figured out how to pick the lock on his dad's gun room. But on his twenty-first birthday, he suddenly realized that he could do more with his life. That was when he decided to move on to bigger and better things.
He robbed his first liquor store that evening.
It was a bit disorienting at first, but once he figured out how to hold the six-pack and the gun at the same time, it went a lot better. At least, it did until she came in.
Robyn was twenty-three, and she'd figured out how to pick the lock on her mother's shed at fourteen. She took one look at the amateur who was clearly working on his first hold-up and sighed.
Usually, when she came across losers like this who happened to beat her to the job, she just shot them and then turned her gun on the clerk; it was good for intimidation. But this time, when she saw Bobby and how eager he seemed despite his incompetence, she felt something else.
Pity.
"You heard my partner," she growled, pointing her gun at the clerk. "Put the money in a bag and toss it to him."
The clerk nodded warily, and emptied the cash register into a paper sack. Bobby took it, unsure of what exactly was going on.
"Good work, kid," Robyn said. "Now bring it out to the car, we don't have all day."
Bobby obeyed, wondering what the hell had just happened. They stepped out into the parking lot, and Robyn led him over to a pickup truck, keeping her gun trained on him all the while in case he tried to bolt before handing over the cash.
"This one looks good," she said. "You know how to hotwire, kiddo?"
Bobby shook his head.
"No? Well, lucky you. I'm gonna give you a quick lesson, at no extra charge."
A half-hour later, they were driving down the highway, masks off and exchanging their life stories. They soon found that each of them had something that the other was looking for; Robyn realized that Bobby had the makings a good minion, and pretty good-looking compared to the losers she'd been dating up to now. Bobby, for his part, realized that Robyn could provide him with valuable experience and was a total freakin' babe.

Three months later, Bobby took Robyn to a place that was very close to his heart: the first convenience store he'd ever robbed. After they gave the elderly clerk a heart attack and cracked open the safe, they headed to the slush machine for a drink and then headed back outside.
"Pretty nice place, Bobby," Robyn said. "I can see why you started here. It's a lot better than the first dump I held up."
Bobby nervously sucked on his slush for a few minutes, saying nothing. Then, he finally spoke up.
"Robyn," he said, "we've been goin' around for three months now, and I was thinkin'... I was thinkin' I like you a lot, and, uh..." He paused, and held up the ring he had grabbed off the clerk's finger.
"Will you marry me, Robyn?"
She glared at him.
"Hell no!"
He looked down, sadly.
"Don't you know anything, Bobby?" Robyn shouted. "That's a wedding ring, not an engagement ring! If you're gonna do this, you better do it right! Now come on, we got a jewelry store to hit."
Bobby looked up, and stared at her for about five minutes while his brain tried to process what she was saying. When his neurons finally figured it out, he smiled.
"But Robyn," he said. "We never robbed a jewelry store before!"
"Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything," she snarled. "Now let's go!"
They headed over to a station wagon. Robyn was about to break in, but Bobby tapped her on the shoulder.
"Allow me," he said with a smile, ready to show her what he'd learned.
Five seconds later, the car alarm went off, alerting a police officer nearby, and in ten minutes they were handcuffed together. Twenty minutes after that, Robyn was driving a stolen police car to the jewelry store.

The jeweler looked at the young couple in masks handcuffed together and raised an eyebrow.
"Sir and madam," he said, "were I a less observant man, I would believe based on your attire that you had come here to threaten me and purloin some of my merchandise. However, the fact that you appear to have left your firearms in the police cruiser which you arrived in suggests otherwise. Would you care to clarify this matter?"
Bobby stared at Robyn.
"Uh... What'd he say?"
"He said you forgot the guns, you idiot!"
"Oh. Wait, I thought you were bringin' the guns!"
The jeweler sighed.
"Is this your first robbery, sir and madam?" he asked.
"Uh, no - ow!" Bobby said, as Robyn elbowed him in the gut.
"Shut up, idiot! This guy could testify against us later!"
"I assure you, madam, I had no such intention. In fact, as it happens, your arrival is most fortuitous for me. You see, the owner of this establishment has a rather generous insurance policy on the items in this store. And if some of these items were to be stolen, well, the insurance company would have to pay for their equivalent value."
"So what?" Bobby asked.
"It's interesting, but the owner of this establishment is highly reclusive. Why, I'm the only person to have any contact with him in the last ten years. To anyone else, it might seem as if he'd simply vanished ten years ago."
Bobby simply stared at the jeweler, but Robyn seemed to understand.
"Got it. So how many bags are the thieves going to get away with?"
"I was thinking seventeen." The jeweler handed her a small pistol. "Granted, it's an awful lot for two of you to carry in your condition, but surely your hostage can help out. What a shame no one will ever hear from him again, yes? Oh, and be sure to hit the security cameras on the way out. I'll point them out to you."
"Hang on a second!" Bobby shouted. "I don't know what's goin' on here, but I came to get my girl an engagement ring!"
"Oh! An excellent idea, sir." The jeweler reached under the counter and picked one up. "Here we are, the finest cubic zirconium ring I've ever crafted."
"Cubic what?" Bobby asked.
"He means it's a fake," Robyn replied. Then she glared at the jeweler. "Hang on a second! A fake? What are you tryin' to pull here, mister?"
"Madam, please," the jeweler replied. "Do you realize how corrupt the diamond trade is? I have my standards, you know."
Robyn sighed. "Well, it's a nice ring, I guess. Okay, Bobby, try that again."
"Right, right!" he said, taking the ring and handing it to Robyn. "Robyn, will you marry me?"
"Don't use my name in front of a witness, you moron!" she yelled back. "And yes, I will. Now let's get goin'."
"Oh, don't worry about me revealing anything," the jeweller said, packing several rings, bracelets, and necklaces into bags. "Once I set up my next identity, I'll hardly be in a position to accuse two people I don't know of robbing a jewelry store that I've never been to."
"You do this a lot?" Robyn asked.
"It's something of a hobby. Although, perhaps in my next one, I'll finally be able to retire. I've even been thinking of going back to my birth name, just for amusement."
"What's that?" Bobby asked.
"Rupert Banks," the jeweler replied. "Seventeen bags. Six for the gentlemen, seven for the lady, four for me. Let's go, shall we?"
"Yeah, fine," Robyn said. "I hope you like weddings, by the way. I don't believe in long engagements, so we're gettin' hitched next stop."
"Oh, marvelous!" Rupert replied. "Perhaps the Reverend Charles Finne can perform the ceremony. I've always wanted to bring him back, just for a night or two."

The next day, the newlyweds were sitting in a 24-hour diner, reading the headlines.
"First Church of Mammon National Bank Robbed, Thieves Wed," Robyn said, smiling at her new husband. "We made the headlines, honey!"
Bobby smiled back.
"Best heist of my life, Robyn."
"It was rather exhilarating," Rupert said, emerging from the kitchen with a stack of pancakes, which he deposited on the table. "I must say, I'm envious of your lifestyle! I almost wish this was how I'd spent my own youth. Or Franklin Evansburg's youth, as the case may be."
For perhaps the first time in his life, Bobby looked thoughtful.
"Hey, Robyn," he said. "Think we can have this guy stick around? He was pretty useful in that heist, and he makes some damn good pancakes."
"I would not be averse to such an arrangement, sir," Rupert replied. "And naturally, I would respect your privacy."
Robyn smiled.
"Hell, why not," she said. "Just one thing, though."
"And what would that be, madam?"
"If it's just me and Bobby, that's one thing. But once we bring in a third guy, well, we're a gang. And that means we need a name."
Bobby chewed on his pancakes thoughtfully, and then got up.
"A gang name, huh."
He looked out of the window at the diner's sign. It read "OPEN 24-7".
"Twenty-four seven," he muttered.
"What's that, Bobby?"
"How about the 24-7 Gang?" he asked. "I kinda like the sound of that."
"Bobby, are you nuts?" Robyn screamed at him. "It sounds like we're a gang that's always stealin' stuff, every hour of the day, every day of the week!"
Rupert smirked.
"I must say, that is a rather intriguing concept."
"What? You seriously thinkin' of doing that?"
"Well, madam, now that you've raised the idea, I am considering how it might actually be done. It would certainly be an audacious effort. If you'll give me an hour or so, I can draft a plan of action."
Robyn sighed.
"All right, do whatever you want."

Fifteen years later, the 24-7 gang had expanded by two. Robespierre Banks was Bobby and Robyn's first son, conceived on their wedding night - the name had been a suggestion by Rupert. Their eight-year old daughter, Roberta, had been named by Robyn, on the basis that Bobby had named the gang and Rupert had named their first kid. They were now the most notorious bank robbers on the planet. Despite the best efforts of law enforcement, their 24-7 crime spree continued unabated.

Until the day when suddenly, they vanished.

Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.

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Username: Godbot

Name: The Indomitable Pat Pastrykisses

Sex: Everyone knows women can’t drive

Race: Human, allegedly – though it wouldn’t be surprising if she’s got a car engine for a heart or something.

Color: STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS (#00C4FF)

Description: If by “wardrobe” you mean “locker,” then Pat still isn’t really big on the whole “wardrobe” thing. She’s just wearing her usual mechanic’s uniform, which has been kept rolled down to her waist frequently enough that the tank top she wears under it is significantly oilstained no matter how much she washes it, which is for girls. The tank top has a little nametag pinned to it that says “Hello, my name is ‘fuck off’.”

Her hair is an incredibly rare shade of strawberry blonde that looks exactly like it’s blue, and she’s gone all out on keeping it out of her eyes; it’s been cut short, the rest has been pulled into a spikey little tuft of a ponytail, and she has a bandana tied over her head to drive back any remaining loose strands. She wears a pair of needlessly high-tech goggles that never seem to leave her forehead, with a seemingly inexhaustible pack of that gum she’s always chewing shoved into the strap. Like basically everyone in Jetpaxia, she has a neat little X-shaped scar below one eye from her climactic battle with her rival. She also has a tattoo of Mecha Godzilla decking a tiger made of fire in the face on her back.

She wears a strap with a pouch on it over one bicep, and she keeps bandages wrapped around her elbows to keep them clean of grease. Despite refusing to wear her uniform for dexterity’s sake, she still wears a pair of heavy leather gloves adorned with metal plates and leather straps that definitely don’t need to be there. The part of her uniform that she actually bothers to wear has an arsenal of pockets, but mostly it possesses the incredible power of staying up under the weight of an excessive number of tool belts loaded up with futuristic power tools. She clinks and rattles distractingly no matter how she walks – an ability unexplained by modern science – but she never seems to notice all the noise. The pants are stuffed into a pair of enormous steel-toed robotic-looking work cleats covered in buckles that go all the way up to her knees and end in metal kneepads. Ostensibly, like all the other Patricias, she’s got a pleasantly curvy figure somewhere under there, but we’ll never know for sure.

And yet somehow, underneath enough badass to launch a thousand bulldozers and enough power tools to build you an even better metal detector out of what’s left of the one she just walked past, Pat still has a closely-guarded weakness for animals – not necessarily the small and fluffy variety, except yes, the small and fluffy variety.

Items/Abilities: Pat is the best damn mechanic in Jetpaxia, which doesn’t sound like a whole lot – until you realize that everyone in Jetpaxia has a racecar, a motorcycle, a spaceship, a giant robot, or some combination thereof. She’s been fixing vehicles since she was allegedly a little girl at some point, but during all the intense and utterly ridiculous training that followed, she got away from the garage to learn firsthand how to drive basically every vehicle ever, if only so that she’d know more about how they should handle than just vague hand gestures and ham-fisted analogues from ham-fisted space bikers.

In addition to being a superhuman mechanic, Pat can make a vehicle out of basically anything (up to and including other vehicles), she can pilot any vehicle proficiently, and given the opportunity to give it a tune-up, she can pilot any vehicle acrobatically. Give her enough time with it, and she can make your jetski drive up walls.

Besides having a basically infinite supply of reliable futuristic power tools, most notably her trusty boltgun, which is essentially just a nailgun but with bolts, Pat wields the allegendary Überwrensch, a fully automated adjustable wrench with a ridiculous amount of moving parts and no evident power source. It automatically adjusts the shape, size and angle of its jaws to solidly clamp onto just about anything – and if you flick it just right, you can trick it into compacting into a pretty good mace. Its handle is wrapped in caution tape, but that’s just probably just the grip.

Biography: As usual, Pat was born in a P.O.W. camp, the illegitimate child of renowned Tiaran vegetarian soldier-chef Fredward Pastrykisses and crack Jetpaxian dino-roboticist Jessie Bearonrollerblades. Nothing new here. Anyway, when a surprise attack on the capital of Jetpaxia that might have otherwise won the war for the Tiarans fell flat – every single group of Tiarans ran into confused battalions of Jetpaxian dinosoldiers whose conflicting orders had sent them out into the middle of nowhere that very same day – both sides quickly turned defensive and refused to speak to each other, and the war became stagnant except for a handful of ongoing zero-sum battles along the border.

Unforunately for Pat, this meant that she and her mother and father stayed right where they were in that Tiaran P.O.W. camp for a few years longer than they might have, until a band of Jetpaxian prisoners broke out and fled across no (wo)man’s land, Pat and her mother Jessie included. Fredward had to stay behind, understandably, and that was the last they saw of him.

The refugees lived out their next few years in a Jetpaxian border village out in the middle of nowhere, namely because there was plenty of room for high-speed car chases and high noon gunfights. Soldiers, dinosaurs, and war machines constantly shambled through the little village on the way to the warfront for food, lodging and repairs. By this point, Pat was old enough that it was thematically appropriate for her to be a child prodigy, and so Jessie taught her how to dismantle the essential parts of a car and clean them out while spouting technobabble that nobody including her understood. There wasn’t a whole lot else to do, and so Pat got pretty good at it.

Anyway, the war ended when Jetpaxia attacked Tiaran from space. Oh well!

Now, just as a brief aside – in Jetpaxia, school exists entirely so that you can be too cool to go to it. Instead, children are assigned rivals with the same age and an edgier backstory, and they spend the next several years training fiercely to become better than each other. There’s plenty of room for interpretation as to what makes you better than your rival, but chances are good that it has to do with claiming a legendary sword, finding a wizened old guru in the middle of the desert or in space or something, and a whole lot of cool training montages. By the end of the first season, you have to have a climactic battle with your rival, and one or both of you ends up with a cool scar.

Anyway, since Pat grew up fixing cars and tanks on the warfront, she came into the Jetpaxian rivalry game pretty late, and her rival had already achieved Power Level 3½ and carved his name into a mountain range with lasers. This left poor Pat Pastrykisses with little choice.

In the name of needless competition, she had to become the best mechanic ever.

Now, in a world where everyone became The Best Ever at something ridiculously awesome like shark herding, dinorobotics or zero-gravity nunchucks, Pat Pastrykisses is an ordinary mechanic.

After all, someone has to service all those racecars, spaceships and giant robots.

Originally posted on MSPA by One.

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Username: One
Name: Arokht
Appearance:

SpoilerShow

Sex: Male
Race: Iceworlder
Race Description:

SpoilerShow

Iceworlders are unique among the vast varieties of aliens because, unlike most aliens, iceworlders are ammonia-based rather than water-based. In addition, iceworlders developed on an extremely cold planet, inhospitable to most life. These differences force iceworlders to use environmental suits in order to interact with other races. As iceworlder culture revolves around conquering, domination, and control, however, 'interaction' usually means 'war'. In addition, they are firm believers in survival of the fittest: only the strongest, most powerful races survive. If they cannot match or overcome the iceworlders, they are not fit to live.

Iceworlders possess a thick, segmented shell that is shed regularly throughout their life cycle. A full-grown iceworlder stands at slightly less than 10 feet tall. Though their ponderous size suggests slowness, iceworlders can move with surprising swiftness. They have two pairs of arms: one pair is designed for crushing and smashing, with hands that have a grasping strength of 2500 pounds. The other pair is much less powerful, but also much more suited to delicate tasks. Their four eyes are each capable of independent movement. They are omnivorous, though predominantly carnivorous.

The average iceworlder environmental suit is fitted specifically for each individual. Because suit ruptures can be fatal, they are designed to make the already-hardy iceworlders into living tanks. Each suit has a layer of non-newtonian fluid that stiffens on impact with any fast-moving material, as well as thick armor plates designed for both maximum flexibility and maximum protection. Military-grade suits, such as the one that Arokht wears, have a large cannon placed over one arm. This cannon is an energy weapon, firing beams of intense cold that can cause instant frostbite and coat whatever it hits in a layer of ice.

Color: #003366
Items/Abilities: Arokht is remarkably robust, even for an iceworlder. At nearly eleven feet tall, he towers above most sapient races, and is strong enough to flip cars. Being a soldier, he also wields a subzero cannon. His helmet gives him a wide range of scanning/targeting equipment. He can process and analyze information remarkably quickly.
Biography: Arokht is an accelerated-growth clone, grown aboard an iceworlder warship. His unusual size quickly distinguished him from the rest of the iceworlder clone army, but it was soon discovered that his ferocity in battle was just as impressive. He has served in multiple campaigns and battles across a hundred worlds, but has never once seen his homeworld. His life has been nothing but war. After a war, he is placed in stasis to ensure that he is prepared for the next one. As such, he is both unflappable and violent, which is never a good combination for somebody who suddenly gets dropped in a foreign environment.

Arokht's main enemies were the forces of the Black Temple, a pan-universal empire every bit as xenophobic as the iceworlders are. In his first battle, he demonstrated a combination of cunning and brutality by luring a Black Temple mech into a rockslide of his creation, destroying it. Since then, he has shown off his craftiness time and time again, proving himself as both an excellent strategist and a terrifying warrior. His abilities did not go unnoticed, either; Arokht enjoyed a steady climb through the ranks until he was put in charge of a platoon of his own. With an 18-iceworlder force at his disposal, he became an even greater terror. Old, brute-force strategies were abandoned in favor of sneak attacks and ambushes designed to do massive damage with minimal casualties. He and his band of soldiers became, essentially, a guerrilla force made of 10-foot-tall alien crabs. However, his newfound dependence on teamwork has led to an atrophy in his ability to work alone.

His last battle before being dragged into Quietus was his most ambitious one yet, with the objective of destroying a Temple, a combination troop factory and siege engine, with only his platoon.

Originally posted on MSPA by Drakenforge.

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Name: Echo
Gender: Male
Race: Post-Apocalyptic Cyborg
Post Colour:#660000

Description: Codename: Echo is a project decades in the making. Having been raised to become a processor rather than a human, his intelligence and cognitive ability far surpass anything humanity has managed to achieve through evolution or study. His body was steadily replaced with technology as quickly as it could be manufactured in a post apocalyptic world. The only organic thing remaining is his brain. He stands sightly taller than an average human. Personality wise, Echo mourns the loss of his brethren and has an almost primal urge to outdo his predecessor. His one true goal was always to destroy the dragon race, but a burning urge inside of him drove him to fight not for survival, but for pride.

He has a peculiar interest in technology, as any secret or unknown machines could be used to progress humanity in his world in the ways they have been held back. When it comes to humans, Echo views them as his moral superiors being a creature more machine than mammal, not to mention his time as a living weapon rather than a person. He also has a helmet made out of a small dragon child's skull, used as psychological warfare to gain an edge on dragons he recently left without children. In battle, he used even the dirtiest of tactics if he believed it would give him the upper hand, having long ago abandoned his human morals. Out of the eye sockets in the skull stand two antennae, comically similar to straight bunny ears. They function as a kind of sonar that works for large living creatures, alerting Echo to the presence of any animal larger than a lamb.

Abilities/Equipment: Echo was at one time the single most advanced piece of machinery on his planet. Ever since the rule of dragons fell and the need for his highly advanced body diminished he has had some small selections of parts removed, as the mechanical components were deemed needed elsewhere. Where some hardened synthetic flesh should be is instead dragon hide, procured illegally after several battles worth of remains. The same can be said of his armour, now at least half of it is bone and scales from dragons since most of it is harder than the steel he used before.

His choice of weapon is as unique as his dress sense. A massive folding Lance Cannon that usually resides on his back. The ammo type was specially designed to have a two stage impact since the dragons had not only intensely dense scales and flesh, but a biological energy shield that could withstand even the intense heat from a nuclear strike if they cocooned themselves. The ammo manages to bypass this at the cost of a large portion of the force, but it is just enough to wound them.
The gun barrel is mounted above a large bayonet. It has a special alternate attack that allows it to fire an intensely hot explosion after charging for several seconds, which mimics the flame breath of a dragon. The force of the attack is strong enough to knock him back even after he plants his feet in the ground, and can penetrate just about any kind of armour. It leaves the gun massively overheated however and puts quite a lot of strain on the well being of both the gun and himself.

Bio: Echo was not the first of his kind. Humanity's first saviour since biblical times was his predecessor and father. Having been selected from many potential candidates for his potential, he was the first to undergo becoming a cyborg. The lead scientist was a revolutionary with implants and prosthetics. They knew that their first candidate, The Prototype, was imperfect having been chosen so late, so they left enough DNA to create clones should the need arise along with a successor. After becoming cybernetic the warrior was given several black ops missions to obtain information and organs from dragons. They were vital in building new technology to fight them. However, soon the widespread destruction humanity was being forced to endure became too much and the project had to be rerouted. The predecessor was forced to locate and eliminate both the alpha male and matriarch dragons after learning that their deaths would had irreversibly devastating effects on their race as a whole.

And so, on a suicide mission Echo's father eliminated the strongest foes humanity would ever face. Echo knows that many lives were lost so that he could become competent at defending his people, which sculpted him into a fiercely dedicated killing machine. His personality was never given time to develop, he barely ever even got to use his organic body before being turned into a cyborg. He, along with several dozen clones, were put through inhuman trials in order to become fit for battle. As he developed along with his squad, he became uncomfortable with the lack of individuality the clones were allowed. His entire squad were known as Echo-1 and so on, including himself.. He began to befriend each member of his squad, treating them differently in order to bend their similarities and even going so far as to give each one a unique nickname. In return, he earned their loyalty. In return for giving them names he eventually earned his own. They abandoned their number ranked names in order for Echo to only apply to him, eventually adopting it as his rightful namesake

Over the years in battle Echo lost many of his brethren, too many to suicide missions and final stands to ensure his own survival. But no matter how angry Echo would get his squad mates would still comply with their orders. They thought of themselves only as clones, unfit to fight for their own survival. This had a large impact on his psychological background and the need to prove himself. He knew he was nothing more than a second attempt at perfection and that his father was the true icon he was overshadowed by. He was counting the dragons he killed and comparing them to how powerful the lead two killed by his father, never content with the current number.
All of humanity knew of his father's sacrifice, but barely even knew of his squad's. After the last clone had died, and his status changed to Final Echo, he was deemed expendable. The rate of finding dragons had decreased to the point that the military figured they could handle the rest of the extermination without him. His missions became more desperate and suicidal at an alarming rate, yet he constantly refused to die. He always found some hasty plan or reckless move to grip to, usually leaving him so broken that he wasn't able to return for days at a time. But still he continued to obey orders, knowing that he had no alternative.

Humanity would never accept him, covered in robotic and false parts and never knowing the warmth of another's company, he was forced to live on the battlefield. He had lost respect for his own kind, knowing that they were making the sacrifices of others benefit those they deemed more important. They started removing parts from his body so that they could be reverse engineered to further research in other areas of science, ones more beneficial to society. He, along with the still lead scientist, managed to make due with using dragons as a material source, though Echo was steadily losing faith. The final straw was that when he petitioned to have his squad's remains kept at a remembrance site denied for the reason that their bodies would be de-constructed for the sake of research. He rejected their orders and personally hijacked their remains before becoming an outcast. Lost in the desert, he build a memorial from the remains of a dragon nest he destroyed years ago.
In their bones he carved their names, eternally marking each of their sacrifices that would be ignored by those that were alive because of them. It was then that Echo stumbled across a large cave filled with dragon eggs, so many that should they hatch would be enough to overthrow humanity once more.

As he drew his weapon, the first egg began to hatch. But even with his inhuman speed and reflexes Echo was not able to pull the trigger before being torn from his world, dooming his race should he never return.

SpoilerShow

Rather edited for hopefully superior quality

Originally posted on MSPA by The Dr..

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Username The Dr.

Name Jonathan Winters (and Quicksoul)
Sex Male (and genderless)

Race Tortured Soul

Color I rather enjoy this one, #003333. It reminds me of the night sky. I never really did get to see the sky much after I was Torn, after I went into hiding, but it's something I held on to when I really needed... oh, right, I seem to rambling again.

Description Jonathan stands reasonably tall - about 6'3" - and walks lazily, as if he'd stopped giving a damn years ago. He wears a dark green jacket, a loosely-tied scarf, and black jeans. A torn grey undershirt barely conceals the gaping hole in his chest, around where his ribcage would be; a large puncture, around 15cm, going straight through his sternum. His hands are burnt and scared; his scraggly, slightly greasy black hair folds over a pair of rectangled glasses and dark green eyes. His right sleeve conceals his "pet".

Items/Abilities Jonathan has magic blood, so he has slight control of fire. He's not very good at it, though, and commonly ends up hurting himself more than he does others. Other than that, Winters is basically human: aside from being slightly faster, having faster reflexes, and being considerably resourceful, he is as "normal" as one would think. His real ability shines through in Quicksoul, his "pet". Quicksoul is a malleable biological mass, silhouetted in black, that Jonathan morphs into various weapons; it is an extension of himself, containing his soul and fragments of his mind. If Quicksoul is destroyed, Winters becomes vulnerable and easy to kill. He retains his superhuman abilities, but is much easier to get around without it.

Biography

SpoilerShow

I stopped running, to breathe. They were coming for me. They were coming for me. They were coming still. They were these monsters from places that shouldn't be. I've got to explain.

The world we see is a lie: a hidden facade of fake faces and truths that follows every man, woman, and child. What people think is truth is a conglomeration of smoke and mirrors, lies and shady undoings. Just beyond the innocent faces of mankind lie the shadows of their souls. They saw these souls for what they really were; they took them, manipulated them, made them their playthings and they did not forgive. They came up from the underworld, they grabbed the souls of impure men. They tore into those who sinned and made them scream.

They were coming for me.

There it was again. That pounding. That sound. That sound just followed them everywhere, no matter where they went. That incessant barking of tortured screams and hallowed promises, it followed me. From there I ran, I ran through corridors with doors leading to nowhere and I ran through subway terminals postered up with ads from years ago and I ran farther and I ran to the pier, where the cold dark was waiting for a stray ship, and I figured it would have to do. I ran and I jumped, and the water was there, it was around me, it was with me, making me safe and whole again. My fire was useless here, but so was theirs. I liked the water: it made me feel alright, made me feel like I could breathe.

Still, they were coming for me. And I heard it, now. The pounding and the thumping and the screams. They never ended. They were here for me, I felt them tearing at my soul.

I'm sorry.

***

There was a sensation Jonathan had never felt before, and silence. He felt the unmistakable pain, the removal of a soul beginning. They were too far to grab him, but their tendrils could just barely touch. He was safe in the water, but their claws still pierced and stung. They couldn't reach his soul, but they could still stab at him, but they could still try, but they could still chase and they could still scream and god damn they could still hurt. Without warning, he felt a tearing inside of him, and then the entire world stopped. He still breathed, yet he could not move. He could think, but could not cry. The cool water around him slowly faded away, leaving him nothingness. Jonathan was sad; he liked the water...

On the cold concrete of the pier, all was silent.

***

The sun had already started to rise.

Jonathan still wasn't used to this whole thing. He'd known for a long time that tortured souls constantly underwent this chase, but it always got to him. He'd known for a long time that they tried to tear the souls from him, but he was never ready for them. What he didn't know was the pain. That screaming, searing rip deep down in the middle of his heart. That was new to him. He slapped his wet hand up on the concrete, pulled himself out of the tide, and breathed. It had been hours. He felt cold. And hurt. And hungry. He went to sit up, to tend to his basic wounds, but the tearing was suddenly back, and he cried. He fell, and he clutched his hand over his heart, only to find it phase through. He cried for a little while longer, and he finally opened his eyes and looked down.

For the first time, he spoke: "Holy shit," he panted. His heart was gone.

But yet, he didn't feel like his heart was gone. He didn't feel like his soul was missing, but there it was, a hole, right where it should have been. Torn straight through. He ran his hand through it a couple times, taking it in, but he couldn't mistake the feeling that this part of him hadn't departed from him. It hadn't been destroyed, just... misplaced. Instinctually, he felt it in his hands. He felt it in his wrist, his tortured heart still beating away. He waved his hands around, found nothing. He stretched them, found nothing. He stopped moving, and thought. And there it was. His heart was back. It was new, though: it didn't look like a soul. It was this silvery black mass, sitting in his palm, waiting for a silent command. Yet, still, he knew it was his.

He shifted it to the side, and it flopped. It stretched, it moved, and it changed. He picked it up again, and he had a sword. He shifted it again, and it was then a lance. He grinned to himself.

I like this new weapon. I like you, friend. I'll name you... Quicksoul.

SpoilerShow

Theme Song Ashes to Ashes - Groove Addicts

Originally posted on MSPA by The Deleter.

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Username: The Deleter

Name: Aleph Rosenberg

Gender: Male

Race: Reticulan

Colour: This here colour will do just fine, pardner.

Description: Aleph resembles one of the stereotypical “grey aliens” from popular culture – a four foot five, grey-skinned alien with a large, egg-shaped head, thin limbs, hooves and large black eyes. He has a few small scars around his face from past adventures, which are a sore point for him. He wears a thin black bodysuit with a slivery belt around his waist, and little else. The more noticeable thing about him is the ice cream truck he drives as part of his job, a battered white vehicle that struggles to play “You Are My Sunshine” on good days and bleats out nightmare-inducing tones the rest of the time. A pair of pink fuzzy dice hang from the mirror – Aleph likes the irony. He also keeps a potted mint plant in the sunny part of the window.

The defining trait that could describe Aleph is “tired,” or perhaps “apathetic.” He moves like he’d rather not, drawls his words in an accent that isn’t quite southern, and takes longer than he needs to when performing even the simplest task. He is too apathetic to even hate the stupid humans properly. This is probably due to one or more of the following things – the alien atmosphere and conditions of Earth, a laid-back and relaxed personality, a prior life of crime which culminated in the robbery of a Reticulan Hyperbank, or the fact that his psionic lobes are totally burnt out due to an incident during the aforementioned bank robbery. Regardless, he’d rather avoid conflict or drawing attention to himself to prevent the long arm of galactic law from catching him, and prefers his days of living in a crappy apartment and selling ice cream. His chosen job also allows him to satisfy his addiction to mint in the form of mint-flavoured ice cream and mint cigarettes, a vice that he struggles to moderate.

Weapons/Abilities: Aleph, determined to avoid notice, carries various methods of disguise on his person and in his van. His favoured method is a skinsuit, a synthetic material which compresses his form to that of a short, portly, middle-aged Italian man. However, this does restrict his mobility greatly, and thus he has a few backup devices. A hologram projector allows him to assume a similar form whilst retaining freedom of movement, although those with a keen eye may notice an odd flatness to this disguise. Contact with water will shot out the hologram, and the battery life is limited to four hours operation before it must be charged by solar power. In a pinch, Aleph can strain the ruined psionic lobes in his brain to create a temporary Ignorance Field, causing people who look at him to simply overlook the fact that he is an alien entirely – however, this is painful for him and he hates using this power.

Aleph keeps an old 50’s-looking raygun pistol in the glove compartment of the ice cream truck. This weapon is capable of reducing flesh to ash, leaving a charred skeleton behind, and requires no reloading or ammunition. However, due to Aleph’s desire to avoid conflict, its primary skill is to gather dust.

Biography: Aleph used to be a notorious criminal on his home planet of Zeta Reticuli. For more than twenty solar loops, he and his crew performed a variety of heists, hits and jobs for the Shade, the biggest mob boss on their planet. His name became feared and respected, and his reputation was such that his victims would tell him what he wanted to hear, regardless of him actually asking them anything. However, his life took a downward turn when he was contracted to take on his biggest job yet - the robbery of a Hyperbank, an etablishment full of both money and ways to be killed by those that protected it.

The operation went smoothly until the last few moments, when the Hyperbank's automated security systems deployed hunter-killer drones from the walls of the atrium. As his crew members were gunned down around him, Aleph did the only thing he could think to do - he put one of the guard's discarded taser-rays to his head and pulled the trigger. In the resulting mental spasm, he unconciously unleashed a wave of psionic energy that blew out the windows of the bank, the A.I. of the drones, and the mind of every individual in a forty-foot radius, at the cost of burning out his psionic lobes permenantly. He then took the money and ran, not even checking to see if a price had been put on his head (there would be - the Shade did not waste time). He fled wildly in a stolen ship, and crash-landed on Earth after several years of travel.

Coincidentally, he landed in Nevada. Using his now crippled psionic abilities to learn English, and construcing a series of increasingly elaborate disguises and false identites, he made his way to Carson City, where he scraped together a shitty new life serving ice cream and trying not to draw attention to himself. Reticulans have long memories, and he is very aware that, if he is found, he will have more than these stupid pink monkeys on his case.

Other

SpoilerShow

Theme Song for shit and giggles: Johnny Cash - I Got Stripes

Originally posted on MSPA by ~ATH.

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Username: ~ATH
Name: Ferdinand Fox-Geselle
Race: Human
Color: this one
Items/Abilities: He is capable of locating stolen objects with ease, by hearing the voices of the objects, which are usually only the phrase "save me" repeated over and over. He is compelled to rescue these objects from their thieves, and, should he choose not to, the voices will get louder and louder until he is driven insane. Once he gets the objects, the voices cease. He tries to put a positive spin on his kleptomania by giving these objects back to their owners, but he has no such natural ability for detecting the owners, so he has to carry them around, finding the original owners through other methods like asking around, or extorting the information out of the original thieves.
He resides in Atalanna, a realm well renowned for its immense magical sources, and for the fact that everybody there is born with an innate magical ability. Some were lucky enough to go on to become physical gods, others, born with weak powers, were condemned to a life of physical labor. He unfortunately veered on the lower end of this spectrum, with his ability to cause two objects to instantly switch places, providing they were both smaller than himself, and within his eyesight as well.
At the time of his recruitment to the grand battle, he is carrying around with him: a golden goblet, several jeweled necklaces, a priceless portrait, some dresses, and around 300 pounds in cash, all haphazardly piled in his backpack. He is also equipped with several daggers, to be used whenever he gets in a tough spot.

Description: He appears to be 30-something, with short red hair and a scraggly red beard. He is rather tall and lanky, and he has a very awkward way of holding himself, like a poorly-constructed wooden stick figure, but he has a healthy glow to him that is almost infectious. He's the kind of guy that you could easily be friends with, and this is why he is such a popular and societable figure. He is a folk hero, and as a result, he sees himself as one, no matter what he does. When he steals an object, if it will benefit him more to return it and be seen as a hero, he will do so. Sometimes, though, he will keep the object for himself, justifying it with heroic reasoning.

Once you get to know him, however, you'll see that he's actually really unstable. He gets angry over the smallest things, and grins at things he's not supposed to be happy about. He is addicted to the rush of danger, and will often be foolish and disregard his personal safety, all for good fun. So, he has very few people that he knows personally, always breaking any connections he had before moving on to a different city. He is easily distracted and rarely ever sad.

Biography:

The roofs were his playground. He ran, jumped, and flipped between them. This was his city. None could catch him. He had recently gotten away from a very successful heist on an illicit antique store, with jewelry in tow. He would make so much money, yes. Best of all, he would be putting up the necklaces as found artifacts. Women from all over would praise him for his bravery, yes. A sound from behind him woke him out of his fantasy. Crashing, booming thuds. He had a pursuiter! And holy hell, was he huge! Hewas pretty slow though, and easy to get away from. He resumed his flight, when all of a sudden, SAVE ME SAVE ME SAVE ME SAVE ME SAVE ME SAVE ME blasted through his head. The shock was too much for him, and he fell. Forunately, he was able to recover with a quick somersault. He turned around, and saw that his hunter had a humongous sword. And it was stolen. Judging from the intensity of the shout, he could tell the man had it for a very long time. He was probably pretty attached to it. Heh, this was gonna be good.

"Hey, you! Yeah, the big lumbering hulk! If you're chasing me, you must have a good sense of honor and law and all that shit, eh?"

The lump merely grunted, but he did stand stoically for a second. He seemed pretty receptive.

"What do you say we brawl it out, right here, right now. Your weapon against mine. If I lose, I'll come peacefully. If I win, I'll take that pretty sword of yours."

The other man's eyes widened for a bit, and they glanced down at his sword quickly. He then attempted to resume his stoic gaze, but it was too late. So, he does have an attachment to this sword after all.... He finally spoke just then, with an earthy rumble.

"Fair enough. My Dwvester Flame-sword will defeat any weapon of yours. I have tempered this sword for a very long time, infusing it with my flame magic. Bring it on."

"Excellent! Now then, as for my weapon..."

Ferdinand reached down and picked up a stick.

"Here! This should do..."

He grinned and looked up at the towering figure. The towering figure glowered back.

"You dare come at me with this ... stick?! You dare insult me, Sir Derrick of the Flame-sword?! Enough of this foolishness! You will die, at my hand!"

"Hey, now. Don't insult this thing. You'll have to fight with it, after all..."

The huge guy became a bit bemused, but he charged anyways. He raised his immense weight, and brought it down on his opponent. It was actually getting really light, he thought. All that muscle training really was working out, after all. He brought down his cherished weapon, and... clink!
A sword on flames struck a wooden stick, and the stick broke. The stick wielder's chest tore open. Sir Derrick of the Flame-sword looked down, horrified, at the stump of a stick he was now holding, then at his huge gaping chest wound. He looked up, and saw that impudent thief, holding his sword. His sword.

"Wow, this thing is pretty heavy, isn't it?"

He gave it a few practice swings.

"You're a bit of a hypocrite, aren't you? All that law and order crap, yet you've been lugging around a stolen sword all this time. Ah well, thanks for the fight, and for the sword."

He walked away, and the huge figure collapsed. This really was a lucky night.

Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.

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Username: fart fart fart

Name: Anila Vakmero, [nameless] (she refuses to refer to it as anything but "wizard jelly")

Gender: Female, N/A

Race: Human, unnamed shapeshifting organism

Color: The color of infinity inside an empty glass.

Description:

SpoilerShow

Picture credit to Pharmacy.

Anila appears to be a somewhat-shorter-than-average woman with long, vaguely-neglected brown hair and, oddly, a blue tint beneath her skin. Not that you can see most of this under the slightly damaged, blood-stained dark-gray longcoat she wears. She wears also a garishly blue wizard hat, which she stole from the reclusive and clean-shaven Firebeard the Bearded.

The blue tint, however, comes from the fact that her blood is not actually blood - it was rather recently replaced with a shapeshifting organism with the consistency and appearance of blue slime. Surprisingly such a thing did not arise from mad science/wizardry, but instead from the shapeshifter saving her life as she was bleeding to death. There are a few side-effects to this (other than having slime for blood) - when cut she doesn't actually bleed, as an example. The shapeshifter also happens to be a telepath, and usually speaks soley to Anila. Oh, and it's also slowly and inadvertently converting her body into the same substance it's comprised of with little means of stopping it. It's that or kill her, and it doesn't particularly want to do that.

Fortunately for both, she doesn't actually mind as much as you'd expect. Anila is not exactly (or at all) what you'd call normal, and in fact has a very unhealthy fascination with the strange and paranormal. She's never satisfied with mundanity - she has a drive to constantly seek out the bizarre, even if doing so would incur intense risk to herself or even to others. Especially if doing so would incur risk to herself or others. Personality-wise she is best described as being mostly friendly, if a bit spacey. Hanging out with Anila, of course, is not the safest thing a person can do if they value their health, although she's surprisingly good at getting out of bad situations (usually).

The shapeshifter is largely rational and much less adventure-inclined than Anila, but there's not much it can do to stop her. It acts as a voice of reason in her mind, with limited amounts of success. If necessarily it will take action directly, though most of the time it is trapped inside of her body and can do little. If there is have a breach through which it can exit, it will partially do so in order to support its host in any way it can. It is quite apologetic about the whole conversion thing, but it's certainly not going to just leave her bloodless, now, is it? (No.)

Items/Abilities: Anila carries a strange assortment of items under her coat - a short, rune-etched sword which isn't actually all that sharp and doesn't really have any magical properties, a couple of journals in which words are written by thought rather than with physical implements, and a random assortment of food (and a few other oddities) piled up in a bag which is much deeper than it appears. She has a few other odds and ends as well, but nothing especially useful. She possesses both a decent level of athleticism and a record for spitting in the face of danger and emerging unscathed, as well as the ability to calm or even befriend all manner of monsters, beasts, and other generally unpleasant creatures.

The shapeshifter, foremost, has the ability to largely defy physics in some regards, most notably the ability to levitate at will. Not only can its density be altered freely, but even its mass is somewhat inconsistent. Its only other abilities are its telepathy (a trait which, in a limited regard, it has passed on to Anila) and its unfortunate infectious property, though the latter only occurs due to its integration with her body systems.

Biography:

SpoilerShow

26 Irefall 893, 13:46

Finally found the wizard's tower. I think the guy really doesn't want to be found. Why else would he build his tower inside of a dark, empty cave and use more than one dragon to guard the entrance? I've heard a lot about this guy though. One of the best wizards in the world or something. Who knows what he's hiding in there?

13:58

Those dragons weren't really very good security. They let me right through without much questioning. Maybe they thought I was delivering food or something, but wait no that's stupid he's a wizard. He can wizard up his own food. That's how wizards work, isn't it? Magical energy stored in their beards or something. Must be called "Firebeard the Bearded" for a reason.

14:04

Climbed in through a window even though the front door was open. Wouldn't want to miss out on a side room just because it's locked, would I? I think it's just a broom closet. By which I mean it's full of flying brooms. I'm not sure there's actually a way to control them. They keep flying into the walls whenever I get on them. Maybe I'm not magical enough to ride cleaning implements. I put one in my bag next to the food anyway.

14:07

This place might be bigger on the inside than the outside. Not sure. Either way I'm lost. All the doors seem to be sealed shut, which is a shame. Maybe I'll pick the locks later. I sure wish I actually knew how to do that. Firebeard's probably taking a nap in his library or something. Probably safe to head upward. There are stairs everywhere, so that shouldn't be hard.

14:08

First stairs I tried only led into a pantry or something. Nothing but all these really big jars of blue jelly. I tried tasting some but it wasn't very good. Spat it back out. I think it started moving on its own after that. Not going to bother taking wizard jelly with me. Guy might be a great wizard, but he's a terrible cook.

14:11

I think I'm going to steal Firebeard's hat.

14:14

I just saw the wizard jelly in the middle of the hallway. I don't really have any idea what it's doing there. You'd think that wizard jelly would stain carpets.

14:48

Not much interesting happened in the past half hour. I think this guy locked every single door in his tower, except the jelly room. Talk about paranoia. Does he really think that someone can really get past his dragons and break in oh wait right.

Still, it's a shame I can't get to any of the wizard's secrets. Man, I wish I could turn myself into wizard jelly or something and pour through the keyholes to get inside. That would be the most awesome thing ever.

15:01

I stole the wizard's hat! Just like I thought, he was dozing over some magical tome. What I also noticed is that "Firebeard the Bearded" is remarkably clean-shaven. I don't really understand wizards. Maybe he just turned his beard invisible or something. That's something wizards can do, right?

Whatever. This is an amazing hat. It's like I'm actually a wizard or something. I refuse to take this hat off ever (until I find a better hat). I tried looking through Fire"beard"'s shelves but it was all boring-looking stuff. Nothing about slinging fireballs or opening portals to other planes or anything like that. I'm not sure why they call him a great wizard if this is the kind of stuff he doesn't keep in his library!

15:11

Still searching. He must be keeping some great secret at the top of the tower. All wizards do, don't they? I think I made it clear that I don't know anything about wizards, but if I was going to keep something secret that would be the place. All these locked doors, though. Frustrating.

15:19

oh god

figures he'd do something like this

why would you put a spike trap at the top of your last flight of stairs, firebeard

couldn't you have just hidden a teleport trap or something

getting stabbed really hurts

i think everything's going blurry maybe it's the blood loss

because the stuff's just getting all over the place

my beautiful coat, why would you do this wizard

i bet wizard jelly can't feel pain

the spikes already retracted but i think that's making it even worse

oh god i think i'm dying

oh god

16:23

Um.

Aren't I supposed to be dead? I'm pretty sure I was bleeding out. Did I bleed back in or something? My skin looks kind of bluish now. Is uh

Is that normal when you've been stabbed?

16:25

There's wizard jelly in the hole the spikes left. I think I have wizard jelly for blood now. That's kind of weird and hold on I think it just talked to me

16:28

Apparently, wizard jelly is actually an shapeshifting telepathic life form created by Firebeard. He told me that he saved my life while I was bleeding to death up there, so hey, can't complain about that, can I? Besides, now I don't even bleed. This is amazing! He says to stop using the word "he" to describe him, but whatever, I don't care. I think I should probably get going before Firebeardless down there wakes up. He might notice that his head is a bit cold, or maybe that he doesn't have anything to put with his wizard peanut butter. That'd be a shame. Anyway, expedition successful!

Originally posted on MSPA by ThunderJolt.

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I think I'll join this.

Username: ThunderJolt
Character name: Varis
Gender: no gender really, but can easily be referred to as a he
Race: Triifyan (has humanoid appearance)
Color: OH YEAHH PURPLE (#660099)

Description: As said, he has a humanoid form. He is tall (about 6 feet) and has dark skin. Bald. Wears a sleeveless orange shirt and purple pants. He wears a pair of goggles with highly translucent lenses, making it difficult to see his eyes at all. He can see perfectly fine through these though. He has 2 blades, one equipped to each arm, attached by a metal ring, which allows him to freely slide them down to his wrists when needed. (hopefully the whole thing with the blades makes sense...)

Abilities: He can turn his arms into magma - he doesn't do this too often though, he'd much rather fight using the blades, which he is incredibly skilled with. He can only do this with his arms though. His blood, upon contact with another surface, instantly bursts into flame.

Personality: Quiet. When he does speak, he speaks very logically. Prefers not to strike first, and doesn't necessarily enjoy fighting, though he has fought and killed in the past. He is very serious, and always has a serious expression. Rarely smiles. When he speaks to others, he often questions them, mostly about their lives or things related to the situation at hand.

Bio: He was literally born from volcanic rock in the form he has now. He set out to explore other worlds that surrounded his own. One world he came across called Xedon, he discovered the native population to be building up its own empire, first taking control of the whole of Xedon, and preparing to set out to invade other worlds. One of the planets close by - Fleprit - discovered this and launched an attack on Xedon. Being of a race from one of the worlds the Xedonians had planned to invade, Varis became an enemy of the Xedonians and was targeted often. He agreed to help Fleprit fight the Xedonians for the time being but often found himself in hopeless situations when the Fleprit forces were obliterated by the Xedonians and had to fight the enemy off, alone, in order to survive. He was ultimately betrayed by the Fleprit commanders who believed he was really an enemy spy. While on a small command ship orbiting close to Xedon, the ship was shot down - with no regard for their own soldiers and crew aboard - and the ship was sent drifting through space. Varis was one of few survivors on the ship. Eventually, the ship crash landed on a large, barren asteroid. Varis was then stranded on the asteroid. During this time, he used most of his time to think since he has no real need to eat or drink, he began questioning things about other beings and other mysteries of the universe and contemplating them in his mind. He remained there on the asteroid until, well, he was selected for this (assuming he does get picked of course!)

Originally posted on MSPA by crepuscularDissembler.

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Username: crepuscularDissembler (Nickname: seedy)
Name: Amaranth Benedicta
Sex: Female
Race: Homo sapiens subsp. sapiens + Agape sanctus cv. 'Necessary Evil'
Text color: Pale pink on dull indigo.
Description:

SpoilerShow

Amaranth wears heavy and plain cloth dress similar to a nun's habit. She has a layer of chainmail underneath, her hands are in metal gloves, and her feet wear durable boots. Her face is covered by a metal grate protection which has two fake flowers attached. They emit a pale purple smoke, which can also issue from ducts in her hand-armor if necessary. A large shield is strapped to her back.
Had she not been spirited away to here she would have become something like a missionary. Despite having been mentally prepared for the horrors of the outside world, she is still only 21 and has lived in a utopia-like society her entire life. She has not encountered any serious hardship or challenges to her faith. She will not kill unless she has to, but is willing to go to extremes to accomplish her goals, as she strongly believes in the greater good.

Items/Abilities: Amaranth has had basic training in defensive tactics/combat, as well as persuasive rhetoric of the spiritual/philosophical/moral nature. She carries a set of 6 Agape sanctus subsp. commonalis seeds in a special container on her chest. Her own body is host to the modified cultivar of A. sanctus, which allows her to affect the minds of herself and others via the smoke-like pollen clouds it releases. Protective breathing apparati halt the effect, but only an airtight suit with powerful filters can fully ward it off. The effect will also be lessened the further the subject is from "human". She can use it to aid herself, creating preternatural calmness and focus, bursts of adrenaline, pain-deadening hormones, and dulling of hunger pains or need for sleep. Or she can use it on others, although its effectiveness is dependent on distance, windspeed, and other variables. Common uses are extreme fear, nausea, or feelings of love and happiness.

Biography:

SpoilerShow

Amaranth's world, which her people call "The Garden", exists in an uneasy state of peace. After decades of war (between which there were many skirmishes but all counties denied that any such border conflicts existed), during which the Union's lands only grew inexorably larger, and later when technology became more widespread, decades of cold war fought through development of bombs, spies, and expansion into "neutral" territories that had not been conquered by any of the major parties, both sides were ready to enter into a time of real peace. The Union, Amaranth's native land, wished to do so because they are a compassionate peoples who cannot stand the loss of human life. The Alliance, a combined force of various countries who banded together to be able to match the Union did so because despite their best efforts they were ultimately fighting a losing battle. The remaining unconquered lands were divided between the two parties. Amaranth has been raised from about ten years of age to aid in the conquering of these lands.
The A. sanctus plant is a parasite which in its basic form makes humans happier and calmer, and with a strong desire to go and implant the parasite in others. They also wish to die in a fertile and sunlit area, as upon death a seed begins germinating within them. The plant grows from the corpse and releases a pollen that entices humans to eat its fruit. This is its lifecycle. Due to the society-benefitting properties of A. sanctus, a cult formed around it, which soon grew into a full-blown national religion. The society is significantly socialist and collectivist. Poverty and homelessness are essentially eliminated. Certain members of society whose jobs are very necessary and would be aided by more powers are equipped with special cultivars which allow them to influence a broader range of emotions via their pollen, while the majority of society has a basic version which can only create the milder positive emotions. Amaranth possesses the highest level of cultivar possible, as she must face heathens and dangerous situations.
Worship primarily takes the form of community gatherings were everyone enters a trance-like meditative state, under the guidance of a priest or priestess possessing a stronger cultivar of A. sanctus. There is also a significant amount of ancestor-worship involved, as families keep the trees grown from their previous generation's bodies well-tended and often use the fruit to "pass down their spirit" to the new generation. Martyrs may have their trees housed in huge temple-orchards as an even higher form of honor. The highest punishment for a crime is to have your body cremated so that no tree grows.

Originally posted on MSPA by dynamicEquilibrium.

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Username: dE

SUBJECT FILE
Name: Original name unknown, colloquially referred to as Hangman's Nightmare, the San-Belvieg Impaler, Creaking Suzanne, the Thirsty Noose, self-nicknamed as Schadenfreude, within this document referred to as Schadenfreude
Sex: Unknown, female or nonbiological
Race: Unknown, human or nonbiological
Indicative Color: SILVER, ICE, AND BONE, BURIED IN THE EARTH
Physical Characteristics: The subject "Schadenfreude" appears at first glance to be similar to a common or garden scarecrow. From a body made of rough sacking protrude four makeshift limbs, and a head made of any sort of round object that could have a face painted or etched onto it. More precise physical description is unreliable because the subject frequently changes the specific items making up her/its body. The animus behind these objects is unknown and had no apparent physical or magically-detectable manifestation. However, sightings confirm that her/its right arm is almost always unlike the others. Instead of being made of stiff, stick-like objects it is typically a noose of hempen rope that moves of its own volition. In addition, her/its left arm is usually made of a stiff component lashed onto a sharp metallic tool or weapon of some kind. Other than this, all of her/its known body components are replaced frequently and unpredictably, but at the subject's last known sighting, the right leg had been constructed from a broken flagpole, the left from a telescoping machine component, the left arm from a pair of garden shears bolted onto a gentleman's cane, and the head from an overturned pot with a smiling face daubed onto it in pastel paint.
Known Past:

SpoilerShow

Only two significant incidents have given us important insights into the past of this creature. The first comes from a victim of hers/its to whom she/it chose to tell a strange story, which we believe relates to the subject's own past. This victim's soul was captured and posthumously interrogated. What follows is the most accurate possible transcript of the subject's original words:
Ah, yes, you ran very well... quite fun. I'm afraid I have to hang you from this tree now, but since you were good I will tell you a story first. A long long time ago... very long... so long... yes, there was a person, a girl, yes and she was human and pink like you, I remember now... then this girl went into the woods to do something, some fleshy human thing... but that's not important, what happens next is very much more important, because she fell into a hole in the ground, but it wasn't any small hole or ditch, no, no, no, it was very very deep and dark, and so very very deep she could never get out... there were many caves and passages and tunnels and she wandered, and then she heard it... yes, I heard the deep, great, cold voice from below, and he said to me "I have given you a gift, a gift that you shall never die" and the pit opened, and the stars were below... But then, then I did not understand how great this gift was, so I wandered for a long long time looking for a way out, but there was no way, and so I killed myself, I broke my neck, but then I woke up with my neck broken, my lungs not breathing, but still alive... I knew I couldn't find a way out, so instead I dug, yes, I dug into the wall until my hands and fingers were torn off and my arms and legs wore away, and until my bones moldered... Until one day, finally, someone else came down into the pit, many someones, with shovels and digging machines and I realized that I couldn't greet them when I was rotting away and had no limbs, so I hid in the dark and made some new arms and legs out of the tools I stole. And then I tried to greet one of them, yes, but I couldn't remember how, after so long, and I was so strong, that he broke, yes, and he died... but when he died like I could not, then I realized how very very very wonderful this gift I had been given was, yes, yes, yes, and I said hello to may many more humans, yes... So the moral of this story is that you should always be well-dressed, in case someone comes to visit and you end up wearing sticks for arms like me. It's time to hang you now.

This story appears to point towards the second piece of information, the doomed excavations beneath Mithil-glane Hill. Among the few pieces of information recovered from the disaster were accounts of a lurching, makeshift horror that throttled workers. It is reasonable to conclude that Mithil-glane was subject "Schadenfreude"'s point of emergence into the world. The subject's own account of the source of her/its powers (namely, a strange pit, a voice, and a gift of undying life) agree with the recovered reports from Mithil-glane stating that [INFORMATION REMOVED] Further information regarding the above statements is classified. This information refers to Subject: Mithil-glane Hill, not Subject: "Schadenfreude". This information requires a security classification of Alpha-Ace or higher for release. [INFORMATION REMOVED] ,so, it is clear that human beings cannot withstand the effects of this transformation and as such the hill was sealed under solid concrete and then bound by silver, ice, and bone, as per protocol.

In the time since the expedition, reports of people mysteriously killed by hanging or stab wounds have traced an erratic trail across the continent, followed everywhere by stories of a lurching nightmare, a vengeful geist, the spirit of man's tools come to life and other such fanciful tales. These are not as revelatory as the above incidents, but they do, collectively, reveal a certain trend. There is one quality of the subject even greater than her/its murderousness, and that is her/its total erratic inconsistency. She/it once carefully slipped notes under a man's door for five days, repeatedly inviting him to a private lunch until he finally gave in to curiosity. When he arrived, the (disguised) subject immediately killed the waiter and left, never addressing a single word to the victim who was so carefully lured. Should any agent encounter this subject, be aware that her/its nature changes mercurially and without warning. Call for backup and attempt to incapacitate the subject immediately. The subject is largely unaffected by any type of physical damage, and in fact this is counterproductive, so use restraints only. It is of the highest priority that this subject be apprehended and sealed along with the source.

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

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Name: Miss Blacklight
Gender: Female, and then some.
Race: Oh she's a saint, oh yes she is.
Colour: i'll tell you what

Backstory: When someone discovers something very dangerous it doesn't take much to hold them responsible.

Maria-Johanna Lord Cassadin Black was born to Lord Cassadin Benevolence Black and Arachnide Darjeeling, sorceress-spideress of Galgadine swamp.

When she took a wrong turn on magic avenue, Maria-Johanna Lord Cassadin Black discovered the cave where wishes die. The entire cave was lit up with tiny little luminous crystals and the walls smelled like honey, and curious little Maria-Johanna ended up seeing how deep down it went. The deeper she trod, the redder the walls got and the heavier her shoulders felt. There she found a brilliant black star. Crying, probably, because it made the twitches her rabbit did when she was five and Whiskers had to go on a trip. She took the little star with her (even if it felt like holding a really large ice cube) and asked him what was up with the psychedelic honeytrap disco cave.

The Cave Where Wishes Die, so she was told, was under the jurisdiction of Antimony Blacklight, but Miss Blacklight got bogged in a big intergalactic drug investigation and until Commisar-Commisar Commisar finishes his impertinent heckling of a Saint Desirée (and her shareholders and missions from the attorney embassy) she has been deemed unsuited to continue her job. As a result, most wishes are just lying around in the cave emitting that dreadful smell.

Maria-Johanna said it smelt rather sweet, actually. Blackstar said Jesus.

Former-Lord Former-Cassadin Benign-Every-Minute-Of-His-Life Emily Including-Where-He-Gave-His-Name-To-His-Beloved-Daughter Darjeeling-Black had taught Maria-Johanna to offer her aid wherever she might find a use for it, and this seemed about as good a time as any to offer. She asked if there was anything she could do for Blackstar.

This counted as a “yes” in Blackstar's book and could be construed as such in court. Maria-Johanna would, like it or not, become the new Saint Desirée.

Description: As if on scene cue, the fog that had occupied the cave sprang out and wrapped around her, winds with tiny little thoughts and bearing tiny little hearts, danced around her body until they found a shape they stuck to and weaved themselves into a ball gown. Gems of all colors in the hem and in the seams. Her hair turned silvery and grew to the floor to hold the ribbons it had braided into it. Gems in the knots and in the tips.

All of these gems, she would soon find out, are the desires of ten people. Just ten. Miss Blacklight figured she'd need a bigger dress soon.

As of the moment, Miss Blacklight is wearing a slightly larger and slightly fancier ball gown, still crested with gems on every side or corner she could find, and wearing a shawl around her that clings to her like a ghost, while hardly ever actually touching her. The little thing extends seemingly into infinity, but mostly because it's pretty shy and it'll coil you a misleading way if you ever try following it all the way to its end. Because, like, who does that, pervert.

With the ball gown in the way, nobody knows if she's wearing shoes. Nobody knows if she even has feet.

Whether the Miss Blacklight that got entered into Quietus is Maria-Johanna or Antimony is up for dispute, no one's heard much of them either way. The Saint Desirée is as spaceless as she is timeless, Maybe Antimony threw off her rather bitter past after some years of community service tending to the Orion Belt. Maybe Maria-Johanna grew a little bit less kind having to spend an immortal life tending to honeygems.

Whatever the case, the two met each other halfway despite having never even talked. That's not to say, however, that they are incompetent at what they do. They could be called the one true pathomancers, despite there being two of them presently. They call their trade rather unispiredly 'desiry.' Their skill in handling the desires of people is unmatched in any place or way, so in case they couldn't persuade you personally they'll find the desire in you that they need and get that one to change right at the root.

However, having a thousand desires near you is like having a thousand people talking to you at once. So you can imagine how that gets with the amount Miss Blacklight has. Miss Blacklight often makes twitches with her mouth, the only perceived motion from her so called mini-chats with the wishes around her. They happen entirely instantly because spaceless timeless blah-blah-blah, but you might see her mouth move, or even change posture entirely in an instant if the conversation got her going.

Items/Abilities: Miss Blacklight practices desiry the way you would practice fingery, or how a sugarmancer would go all Fantasia on everyone at every tea party he visits. This doesn't just include cursory mind-reading to find out what you want, but also extracting those very thoughts or embedding the ones she has on hand (quite a lot) and seeing as a man is just the sum of his desires, you can see how you wouldn't want this girl on your bad side.

Miss Blacklight knows exactly one distinction, what she calls nice desires. You wouldn't find a pattern if you had a list of every single one of them. Most commonly they're the desires people believe in the strongest, but with people being people, those are more of an exceptional encounter. She's personally less likely to tamper with those, so that works out well seeing as those are also the hardest to tamper with anyway.

Desires also function on their own a little. The closest simile would be a a big net of clockwork for every person. It's easy to take out a gear, melt it down and mold it into whatever new shape of gear you want. In theory, the different gear is gonna make the clock tick faster or slower, or backwards if you want to get fancy. But there's a fair chance that the new gear you made just won't fit, because it's too different from the others. The skill of desiry is making sure that you play with desires in such a right way that you can sneak them right into the clockwork of the soul.

And that's probably what makes Miss Blacklight the most dangerous person to have ever lived.

Theme Song because I'm cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqXtamir5U

Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.

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Right, let me preface this by saying that every entry I received was phenomenal. That being said, I was forced to cut the twenty-three profiles I received down to eight, something I basically spent the past three days agonizing over. The final roster for Quietus is as follows:

• XX: Sonora
• Ixcalibur: Florica Hearn (#797979)
• Schazer: Robin Pearson, D.Asc (#0C690C)
• Seedy: Amaranth Benedicta (#CBA9CF on #403B4A)
• One: Arokht (#003366)
• Anomaly: Anila Vakmero and [nameless] (#FF4E00 and #0078FF)
• Jacquerel: Chaete (#A21D00)
• Agent: Rachel Wylite (#CC5000)

Again, every entry I received was amazing, and if you wish for me to elaborate on the reasoning behind my choices feel free to PM me and I'll try to explain as best I can. Thanks for giving me so much to work with and making my decision this hard. The battle proper should start with the next post, at the top of the second page.

Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.

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We have finished.

Eight entities, pre-occupied with their normal manner of activity, suddenly found themselves forcibly ripped from their home universes. Near-instantaneously, they turbulently crossed a multitude of interstices and boundaries, before finding themselves floating in an alien locale. Fragments of obsidian walls enclosed the area they now resided in, shielding the beings from the seething void beyond. Just as they attempted to reorient themselves and adjust to the vertigo, they found themselves frozen-- their eyes still free, but now staring at the human-like form coalescing before them, unable to look away and see the others trapped with them.

The figure appeared bit by bit-- first as an azure, grinning mask in a facsimile of an actual face, but soon accompanied by a torso and long, spider-like limbs wrapped in countless layers of tattered fabric. It resembled a human, if only barely. The figure's head tilted, examining its captives and colding regarding them with an inscrutable precision. A few of them shivered, reacting both to the cold void they were only barely shielded from and the apprehension stemming from the alien scrutinizing them.

Welcome.

The word rolled into the minds of the assembled beings, drowning out the many other thoughts they had. The figure now addressing them seemed to be incapable of wholly controlling its telepathic communication-- its pronouncement reverberated, as though there was an unfamiliarity with the idea of language and it was merely approximating its intended message.

We are the Outsider.

An image accompanied its words-- dream-like and vague, existing only on the periphery of the captives' perception. The beings present watched as ancient entities roiled and swam amongst a sea of void, incomprehensible in scope.

We have watched the teeming inhabitants of countless universes as they swim / proliferate / struggle. We have found ourselves asking questions as we watched. We found ourselves wishing to understand. We have called you together to assist us.

A new set of images and impressions synchronized to its next series of intonations-- scenes of gruesome violence, dreams of death, an inexplicable awakening of the primal urge to destroy.

We wish to understand death / betrayal / futility. We have collected / called / gathered you to watch your end. We are to watch you struggle and defeat each other.

The ideas it spoke knotted themselves together, pushing through the captives' mind as one simultaneous concept. Just as quickly as the Outsider's communication rattled through the minds of the captives, the images and urges that came with it subsided.

We will watch seven of you die / cease / expire. We will transport you to seven locales. At each, one of you will expire. There will be one survivor that will return to their home.

The abomination before them paused, as if to let the magnitude of its pronouncement sink in.

Some of you may attempt to band together to stop us / defeat us / escape our machinations. We expect this. It will not help. Your end is inevitable.

There was another odd half-pause. As the side-effects of the horror's attempt at language faded, it began again.

We believe you will want to know your fellow contestants / captives / sacrifices. We do not think you wish to be forgotten.

The figure raised a hand, pulling a new set of impressions forward. A woman, dressed in a mixture of plain cloth and durable armor, came into view. Her face was obscured underneath a grate-like mask, and puffs of purple smoke drifted upward from the flowers attached to either side of her metal veil. As the Outsider spoke, the beings present saw the image of the missionary shift, changing to that of a plant, followed by icons of religious devotion.

Amaranth Benedicta. She is a missionary and servant of her society. She has spent her life in preparation for the trials of the outside / to spread the powerful symbiote she bears. We will see if her faith remains true.

As the illusory image of the missionary faded, another figure was pulled forward-- another woman, dressed in garb appropriate for an adventurer. Her skin had a slight blue tint, matching the wizard's hat adorning her head. Scenes of exploration and the unusual beings she had encountered-- among them the slime inhabiting her body-- accompanied the hallucination.

Anila Vakmero. A shapeshifting parasite resides within her. She does not have long to live as it integrates to her / converts her to its form. She is an accomplished adventurer. We will see if this helps her.

In stark contrast to the first two, the third amongst the group was an enormous alien, wrapped in a combination of segmented pieces of armor and an environmental suit. An enormous cannon substituted for a lower arm on one of his limbs. Scenes of martial order and battlefield chaos were broadcast alongside the indomitable figure.

Arokht. He is an iceworlder soldier. He has known nothing other than endless conflict in service of his xenophobic commanders. We wish to see how well he will fight when isolated from his compatriots.

The fourth captive the Outsider presented was another alien-- a worm covered in chitinous plates and dotted with numerous eyes. A pair of cybernetic arms were bolted onto the creature's back. Images of her churning maw appeared-- first churning through dirt and rock, then asteroids, then then a star as it consumed and devoured.

Chaete. A juvenile of her species. Her mouth has eaten through rock and the fabric of your universes. She is not used to want / hardship / struggle. We are curious as to how she will cope.

A new figure was presented-- a pale, melancholy woman in a black and white dress. Images of graves drifted past her, and the contestants could almost faintly hear whispering in a now-dead tongue.

Florica Hearn. She has been changed / altered / transformed. She speaks to the dead. We are intrigued to see how she will manage when faced with its pervasive presence.

The sixth among them was another woman-- a thin, haggard husk of a human, wrapped in a straitjacket. Flesh had been torn away, replaced with pieces of metal carapace and extensive networks of cables and jacks. A burning sun, brilliant and luminous, accompanied the dream-like projection of the girl.

Rachel Wylite. An experiment. She is a universal source of power. She is frightened of herself / her capacity to destroy / what she has become. She exists in a delicate equilibrium between extremes. We have yet to see if that balance will be maintained.

A new figure appeared-- a calm woman, robed in a green coat, who was somewhat plain compared to the oddities presented before her.

Robin Pearson. A scientist. A student of the arcane sciences. She is well acquainted with death. She has studied the magic relating to it. It will perhaps become more familiar to her than her theoretical work / laboratory studies / first-hand experience.

The final figure did not appear-- the beings present only saw the rushed, vague memories of its victims. A vague, indefinite silhouette was the only commonality across the images now presented. The captives could hear something alongside the Outsider's voice-- the sounds of their homes, muffling a faint cry for mercy.

The last among you. Sonora. A monstrosity. It might sound familiar to you. We find it curious.

With the introductions completed, the contestants suddenly felt a strong pull, yanked once more across universes. They found themselves separated from each other and away from the being that had instructed them. They found themselves in a valley, and could see the natural walls isolating it in the distance. A mixture of terrain was present-- plains, forests, and rivers all could be noticed.

What stood out was the war-torn nature of their new locale. The ground was pockmarked by craters and scarred by abandoned trenches. In the distance, the rattle of machine guns and thunder of artillery could be heard. The remnants of formerly-occupied battlements were visible everywhere-- even while nearly devoid of others, the valley had seen conflict many times.

The contestants steadily got up, adjusting from the surreal experience they had moments before and the vertigo associated with being flung across universes. One last time, the booming voice of the Outsider addressed the beings.

This is the Godsworn Valley. It is a place of conflict / violence / faith. Armies have assembled to fight in control this stretch of land. They do so at the behest of the gods who support and guide them. We will watch intently and see how you cope with this environment. You may leave when one of you ceases.

The Outsider's pronouncement faded. The contestants were now alone in this new location.

SpoilerShow

Right, so this round is set in a war-torn valley-- feel free to make up whatever terrain you like or suits you. It's all a pretty used battlefield, so there's likely to be trenches and foxholes and so on. There's also several, modern-day armies fighting over it and moving soldiers into it, in addition to the presence of the contestants.

Additionally, the Outsider was being literal about gods supporting each army. Each army is pledged to a god who offers them mythological creatures as support, as well as granting their priests thematically-appropriate supernatural powers of some sort. I'm leaving the sort of gods and mythological servants present up to you.

There's probably your usual variety of things associated with battlefields and violent religions-- horrors of war, religious dogmatism, so on. I realize this is a bit of a complicated opening round, but hopefully it'll have enough for you guys to play with and do things in. If there are any problems, let me know and I will do what I can. Good luck, and I'm looking forward to what you write.