Antediluvixen

Caravan: An Episodic Fantasy with Worldbuilding! [Always Accepting]

A star fell upon the world of Alwyne.

From the furthest reaches of the upper heavens a bright orange streak gradually grew in the sky, like a comet of the outer worlds - but in broad daylight, burning high in the sky. Across the towering mountains of Alwyne it soared. O’er its emerald plains and forests it flew uncaring and unthinking of that which lay below. Across its azure seas and crystal lakes it went, gleaming reflection twinkling in the glassy surface of untainted rivers and streams. And over the cities, towns, and villages of this patch of the world it flew, attracting gasps and muffled swears as onlookers gathered to watch and to marvel at the unusual phenomenon. One man swore, pointing up at it and announcing it was a sign of anger from the gods that the judgement of a local witch was unjust and she ought be set free. In a small fishing village, panic took hold - would more stars fall? Would they be trapped in a pitch black world at night, without the stars to guide and comfort them? Astronomers took note, too, some with telescopes pointing them at the strange object - and staring in disbelief at the makeup of this star. Others simply watched and observed, unable to see in finer detail what was occurring so high up, and so far away.

It hurtled through the air, smoke and flames trailing from it in a trail visible for over two hundred leagues in all directions. The air rumbles slightly beneath it as the falling star burns its way across the sky. A sound like the distant roar of a dragon trickles down to those below, perking up the ears of those who had not seen it before.

All eyes turned towards the star as it split apart, pieces of the star separating from each other as the flames grew brighter still. The distant roaring grew louder still as distinct booms and thumps echoed down. Onlookers held each other tight, wondering what this might mean. Meteors were known - but something this bright visible during the day? The ominous booming noises?

The star continued to fall, nearer and nearer to the ground. Another part of the star broke off, this one wreathed in even more flame, a bright, brilliant white light that shot downward from the shard of the star as it began to slow its descent. The other burning shards raced ahead of the smaller shard that continued to slow further - though it still flew at a breathtaking speed, unlike anything else imaginable.

The star, and its children, dipped below the horizon. And shortly thereafter, a new, greater sound rushed towards them. The ground shook beneath the feet of the onlookers, and then a deafening stillness took hold over the world.

---

A throbbing pain awoke Commander Hoshitsune Fumiko. She groaned, blood racing in her ears. Everything hurt. Absolutely everything hurt. Her shoulders screamed at her in pain from where the straps had dug in so tightly it seemed they had almost ripped the limbs from their sockets, or fractured the bone. A million diagnostic readouts flared in her vision. Warnings, error messages, and more. [WARNING: CONCUSSION INDICATED, SEVERE HEMATOMA INDICATED IN [ERR: RESPONSE LOOP TERMINATED], SEVERE PHYSICAL TRAUMA FROM HIGH VELOCITY IMPACT INDICA-]

Fumiko shut her eyes, trying to block out the sounds around her. Pain. Her entire world was pain. Why the fuck did everything hurt so much. Why was everything pain?

Her eyes snapped back open. The impact. The crash. The deafening wail of the atmosphere screeching against the outside of the hull. The total blindness as viewing cameras shorted out one by one. The horrific sound of pieces of the ship tearing off in the firestorm that had raged outside. Waking up to see a planet rapidly approaching, initiating high-burn evasive maneuvers only to trap themselves in its gravity well on a collision course with the surface. Nothing. She stared, stared into space a thousand light-years distant, into the infinite expanse beyond.

Slowly, something else forced its way into her consciousness. Words, gentle and calming.

_{"Commander, you need to wake up. Commander, please..."}

Fumiko blinked again, wincing as the pain forced itself back into her consciousness. She looked to her left - and came face to face with the blank, dead stare of her copilot.

She stared. She had seen death, she had seen it far too many times before. But there was something about this that shook her. Messages flashed in her vision again - [WARNING: SEVERE SUBDURAL HEMATOMA INDICATED IN FIRST OFFICER TA-]

She reached out, brushing her fingers over his eyes as she whispered a prayer. She would need to find a place to lay him to rest here. Wherever ‘here’ was.

Ah, that was right. She did not know where ‘here’ was. This was not her own world, that much had been obvious from a cursory glance at it during emergency maneuvers. And that meant…

Fumiko screamed, driving her fist into the unpowered control panel in front of her, uncaring about the pain that joined the rest of the pain in response. She didn’t know what else to do. What could she do? She was… she had violated one of the most fundamental universal constants known, or at least, that’s what it seemed. She was somewhere far, far away, on a planet whose atmosphere might not even be breathable - sure, the scans she’d seen indicated a nitrogen-oxygen composition, as absolutely incredible a coincidence as that was. But what of microorganisms in the air? Poisonous proteins that might block some vital function.

She felt the dead presence of her copilot beside her once more, and instinctively turned away. This was wrong. This was all wrong. A million thoughts raced through her mind, she could feel the swoosh of the blood circulating from the artificial pump in her chest as it coursed through her body. The world closed in around her as she frantically clawed at the quick release, falling facefirst into the control panel as the straps holding her down released her. Down, apparently, was forward.

A hand on her shoulder broke her from her panic, and she looked back, the kindly face of the ship’s spirit looking down at her, semicorporeal feet still planted firmly on the floor in brazen defiance of gravity’s mandate. She looked at him, and for a split second, she allowed herself to relax. She was, at least, not going to die alone. He squeezed her shoulder, and she nodded, prying herself up from the control panel. She looked to her copilot again, then to the crash kit near her chair, reaching for it and pulling herself towards it. A mask, with a portable oxygen supply, her sidearm, sword, spare ammunition, and numerous other useful implements for the stranded pilot.

“The distress beacon is active, commander.” The spirit said, floating behind her, “Also, please do not forget the shrine.” He paused, “It would be rather lonely here.”

Fumiko winced as she pulled her gear on, shaking her head. “Not gonna.” She grunted, “Distress beacon’s useless. Nobody’s gonna hear. Need to check topside, just need to…” she reached an arm out, hauling herself vertically, towards what would ordinarily be the floor, “get to the damned…” she grabbed another handhold, muscling her way up, thanking her lucky stars she’d been compatible with the myofibril implants. “Escape hatch!”

She hauled herself up in a burst of energy, grabbing hold of the ladder that, ordinarily, would lead down. But, in this case, it also lead to a port airlock. She pulled at the latch, listening as the hiss of hermetic seals filled the air as the airlock vented and began to open, ship’s spirit standing beside her - and then, nothing. The door was stuck. Something was blocking it. She was trapped inside, no way to see what was outside, no way to open the airlock from within.

Fumiko stared, disbelieving. She had survived all of this - to be trapped by a stuck door.

Name Change Request

Oh! Well my apologies, I somehow hadn't noticed that at all. Thank you.

From Ashes We Rise: Chronicles

In The Ducts

_{CW: graphic}
The sound of fabri-printed boots echoed down the corridors of the station, through its myriad pipes and passageways, their true layout long forgotten for millennia past. A man swung his rifle back and forth to an inaudible tune as he walked, eyes scanning the empty halls around him. Another person struggled to keep her eyes open, hunched over and shuffling along with the group - but careful not to be left behind.

They’d been patrolling this way for some time, now. Ever since that… whatever it had been had impacted the station. Whatever was loose was something they needed to find, even if it was something they might not have wanted to. The number of mutant attacks had dwindled since then, as though something had been drawing them away - or perhaps keeping them away. Whatever the cause, it had been eerily quiet. Some had relaxed, taking the reprieve to repair and patch up their defenses or to simply sleep a full night. Others knew something was wrong, even if not what. Were they simply experiencing the calm before the storm, or had something worse entered the fray?

It was quite possibly that. They’d seen hide nor hair of living mutant, but now and then they were finding pieces, shards of bone and claw, mangled viscera. Always the parts of the organism with the least nutrition, as though something was eating them. Or hunting them.

Did they want to find whatever was hunting these things? Did they even have a choice in the matter? If they were all to die to a new unstoppable superpredator, it’d be better to know it was coming.

And, at the very least, it got the constant clicking of Arash’s slapping the cylinder back into that gun out of the goddamned community. But that also meant it was with them now. An annoyance at best, giving away their position at worst.

“If you weren’t actually useful with that thing, I’d have cut your arms off by now just to get some peace and quiet.” Another member snapped, whirling on the man. “Do you need to do that? Or is that just your way of trying to kill us all before the mutants do?”

“Ah piss off, Kaveh, we’re all gonna die sooner or later. We’ve lost contact with the rest of the station. We might be all that’s left before the muties kill us all. Can’t a man have his simple pleasures in life before the end?”

“We might die even sooner if you keep at it, you know.” Came another voice from the head of the patrol. A heavily augmented woman, her hair fanning out behind her as she turned to the squabbling pair. An autocannon that, ordinarily, would have been mounted to a vehicle, or at least a tripod, nestled in her augmetic arms. “By alerting whatever muties are still around, or by starting a shooting war amongst ourselves. So why don’t you shut both of your mouths and keep your eyes peeled. We don’t know what we might be facing out here, an-”

She froze, the sound of a heavy boot treading in something wet, interrupting the unfolding argument. Flashlights, or augmented eyes, turned down to the floor. One man let loose a string of muttered curses in some unintelligible dialect from another region of the station. Others simply stared. The woman in question held only a look of absolute disgust as she stepped back, shaking her foot to clear it.

A half-eaten human corpse looked up at them through eye sockets devoid of contents, only a thin trickle of blood seeping from when something had pried them from the still-warm body. The bare ribcage poked up, a boot-shaped imprint still visible in the ripped and mangled innards it had trodden on. A stray strand of intestine clung to her boot, still, but she like the others seemed not to notice, instead continuing to stare in dismay at the corpse.

Where might ordinarily be the unmistakable marks of razor-sharp blades of warp-altered bone and armor-piercing claws, there were none. Where one might have expected to find the telltale signs of gnashing jaws and knifelike teeth, they saw only smooth skin. The eyes had not been bitten out as if by a ravenous beast, but rather plucked out, deftly, by human hands. There, the marks of fingernails - not claws - around the eye socket. The gash pulled open in his stomach - those same marks. Something human, or at least, human in form, had done this.

One man - Kaveh, who had spoken earlier, seemed nauseous. It was one thing to see a man dismembered by some mutant, feral beast. Abominable constructs of whirling claws and gnashing teeth were, though terrifying, at least sensible. Such things would of course want to hurt and kill and hunt and rip and tear and maim an- it made sense. But this? What sense was there to make of this? In a world gone mad, had they finally lost the one thing they could rely on? Was a human face and form now just another guise for the predators who would hunt them? Was it not enough to die in agony at the hands of amorphous monstrosities, never seeing the light of the sun and stars sung of long ago? Did they now have to fear themselves and each other, too?

The corpse was far too damaged to even hope to identify. Whether it had been one of their own or someone from another part of the station seemed immaterial now. If he had survived then perhaps he might have brought news, or he might simply have been one of their own who got lost. Whatever he might have been seemed immaterial compared to what had killed him.

They all looked around at each other, each one trying not to say what was on all of their minds. Thumbs rested on hammers, and one made a gesture over his chest, warding off bad luck.

Someone broke the tension, pointing further down the hall. More carnage, mutants this time. They hadn’t seen it before now with the variably dim lighting in the area. Flashlights turned towards it, illuminating jagged spires of shattered bone and torn cartilage. All of them picked over clean by the same human hands that had killed the man they stood around. Dead, empty eyes stared out from a misshapen mass of flesh that sprawled before them, closest. There was no apparent cause of death that could be seen on it. It was as though something unearthly and terrifying beyond even the fearlessness of the mutant’s degenerated brain had simply reached out, and willed an end to its life.

Others lay piled further behind it. Eyes, chunks of liver, hearts - these had all been forcefully ripped from the bodies with exacting precision. The hands, whoevers they had been, had seemingly known the exact easiest route to the most nutritious parts of the beasts. Hardened and malformed plates of bulletproof chitin had simply been peeled back, ripping away skin and flesh from bone. Images of the battle seemed to conjure themselves in the onlookers’ minds. Or perhaps less of a battle than a slaughter. The creatures seemed to have gone from hunting to fleeing.

“There’s more.”

The voice dragged the horrified group’s gaze back from whence they had come. Their leader, the augmented woman, crouched below a piece of open ductwork, inspecting something on the floor. Then she stood, reaching up towards the ductwork to pull back… what looked to be a piece of liver. Her lip curled, and she tossed the meat down, then pointed towards something indistinct. The group drew nearer until it became apparent what she had found.

Handprints. Human handprints. Scaling the wall and then into the ducts. Little tiny human handprints, no larger than a child’s.

---

The child stood, looking at her handiwork. She was proud. Right? She had accomplished the task successfully. This was something to be proud of, right? She wondered if this was a test. Something had taken her, she knew that much. This was not where she had been made. So had she been put here to find a way out? To test her ability to survive? She wondered when it would end, when she could go back to sleep. It was warm in here. But not warm like the tank. This was a different warm, it clung to her in a way the tank did not. She looked down at her hands, the bright crimson liquid covering them shining in the light. It was blood, of course. It suffused the circulatory system of complex, multicellular organisms bringing oxygen bound to hemoglobin and nutrients required for basic vital function. It also served to carry away metabolic waste to the kidneys, liver, and lungs for disposal.

The words slid into her consciousness easily, from where she knew not. Perhaps they had been placed there by her testers-slash-creators. Had the words always been there? Or had they been placed there now, to educate her about something? Had they already educated her?

She crouched down, looking over the body. Where to begin? The eyes were the tastiest. The liver was the most nutritious. She pouted. This was a dumb test. She already knew all of this. She wanted to go back to sleep in the pod.

Tiny little fingers dug into the skin in the upper right abdomen of the corpse, gripping harder and harder until the skin ripped apart under her grasp. The soft hands of a child reached in, feeling around in the hot, sticky environs of the organism. There, the liver. She grabbed hold of it, but it slipped from her grasp. She frowned, ripping the cavity open wider, tearing off a chunk of the body - rectus abdominis muscle, she thought, contained within the rectus fascia comprised of the anterior abdominal aponeuroses and the internal and external oblique muscles, an important postural muscle responsible for respiration and the flexing of the lumbar spine. Muscle tissue was nutritious, but it was not what she needed. She was a growing girl. She dove deeper, glimpsing properly the reddish-brown tint of the liver, and fastened her hands around it. Her eyes glowed with a golden hue as she pulled, and a ripping sound echoed through the hall as it tore free.

She sat down, happy, pulling chunks off and stuffing them into her mouth. These creatures always tasted the best. The spiky-monsters tasted funny. Some of their organs weren’t good. It was always hard to tell, but she was getting better every time. Soon she would be able to tell on sight if a monster was good eating or not. But these, these ones were always good. Barely anything truly toxic, as long as she avoided the digestive tract. She made a face at that memory, bad taste, very bad taste, and shoved more liver into her mouth to clear the thought, happily munching away. She pulled it apart further, separating the yucky bits out. The hepatic portal vein, hepatic ducts, inferior vena cava, the gallbladder, all of them she pulled out and tossed aside, splitting the liver into its four lobes.

The anatomy of the creature was strikingly familiar. It reminded her almost of her own - at least, superficially. Some parts were the same, others so… simple and silly. She reached down, fingers digging in around the eye socket, clenching, and then pulling it free. She looked at the eye, like this, for instance. It was so much… simpler and yet less elegant than her own. She held it in her hand as she studied it, blood dripping down to the floor. She understood everything she saw and what it meant, but not why she did. Sclera. Vitreous body. Optic nerve. She popped it into her mouth and chewed. The vitreous was soft, gooey in a way - and then a crunch. The cornea, the transparent frontal portion of the eye that acts to help refract light for vision. She chewed some more, pondering, as she reached for the second eye.

Or perhaps it wasn’t a test? Or at least, not a test as she would think of or know it. Perhaps whoever had been making her had been planning a test, a different test. But whoever had taken her had wanted to do their own test. Was this a test? Was she failing? Was her test to see what she would do here, in this strange space station? What did they hope to learn from the test? Why was she packed in here with these strange creatures? So similar to her but so weak and stupid. This one had been running - logical, of course. But then it had seen her and had stopped. Obviously, it stood no chance against her might, as she chewed on its eyes, but why had it stopped? Why had it started walking toward her, making noises she hadn’t understood?

Why would she know the anatomy of these creatures so well, as well as her own anatomy? She did not know the anatomy of the spiky-monsters nearly as well or of the teeth-things, the flesh-pits, or the skin-walls. So why these? Why these… almost harmless, weak, stumbling things? Why, when she looked upon them, did words and definitions and thoughts force their way into her mind? Who had put them there? If this wasn’t a test - and she was truly starting to doubt it might be - then had she been taken before she was ready?

Was it by the white-faces? Those figures that moved almost like her, but burdened. With the white, crinkly skin and the polarized acrylic faces. They looked different from her, or from these creatures. But she had seen them outside the tank. Turning dials and knobs on control boards whose readouts she could not see. It probably was the whitefaces - who else could it be? She poured over her memory, searching for names or faces, or for words to offer themselves up to her. Who else could it be but the white-faces? She did not know any others who had interacted with her before she left the tank. Not well, anyway. She did remember… a man. She remembered a man, or something like one. Hazy and unclear, clouded by saturation and the patchwork nature of memory, the edges fuzzy and indistinct. He looked at her with an expression she did not understand. But she did remember him, if just barely. Maybe it was him, then, or the white-faces.

She looked down at the creature, chewing. She was small, it was very large. Almost as big as the white-faces. But she was stronger than it, stronger than the other creatures too. It and the others like it had exuded fear and anger when she had killed them, too. Nothing like the curiosity and diligence of the white-faces.

Fear, that was what she had felt. And anger, too, or something close to it. She had run towards it, and it had begun moving towards her - until she jumped. She remembered its fear as she did so, and the crunch of bone under the impact of her hands. It was a fun feeling! The satisfying cracking of something unyielding finally giving way beneath her hands. She had squeezed harder, laughing as she shattered vertebrae and collapsed the esophagus. She was just annoyed at what the creature had felt. The fear and anger sat in the back of her mind like something heavy in her stomach, spoiling all the fun. It always came back whenever she sat down to think, and she hated when it came back. She wanted to have fun, to break more of the funny things and hear the crunchy bone sounds. If she wasn’t being tested, that meant she got to have fun. And if she got to have fun, that meant she didn’t want it being spoiled by their mean thoughts.

Something pulled her from her contemplation and she froze, looking down the hall. Sounds. Footsteps. The sound of something clicking - mechanical? It was definitely mechanical. She looked around for an exit - there, a duct. She grabbed everything she could carry, ripping the heart out and stuffing it in her mouth, throwing pieces of muscle and liver up through the hole, as much as she could as the footsteps came closer. There were voices, now, she could hear voices, and she stepped back, taking a running jump as she clambered into the duct above, dragging as much of her haul with her as she could. Just in time. They were almost below her, she would flee. Flee back into the network of ducts and ventilation and forgotten passageways until they left. She turned, carrying the meat, and scurried away.

Name Change Request

Hello, I'd like to change my username to "Antediluvixen".

Caravan: An Episodic Fantasy with Worldbuilding! [Always Accepting]

<Snipped quote by Lady Lascivious>

The reptilian overlord will permit it.

Approved. Drop in the char tab, whatevers.

@Tortoise

HURRAH TIME FOR NERD SHIT

<3

Caravan: An Episodic Fantasy with Worldbuilding! [Always Accepting]

>Lady proceeds to put a space soldier with a PhD in chemistry into a fantasy RP

@Tortoise

SPEAKING OF THAT HERE SHE IS WOOOOOOOOOOOO SPACE. History and some other stuff is pretty truncated but like, I mean. I'll fill in more details on her tools, too, if Tort in his magnanimous beneficence lets me.

Still has no art so I'm gonna work on that NEXT and update the stupid picture thingy i made too. All that redacted text in there, y'all? It'll get uncensored as you get to know her and find out more about her and her history IC. Because reasons.

Anyway uhhhhh yea space fomsk

Hoshitsune Fumiko

Commander Hoshitsune Fumiko

Image Coming Eventually™

Race, Age, Time in the Caravan:
Kitsutamin, 194, <1 day

Kitsutamin:

A race of humanoid, and indeed human-derived, people from a planet far, far away. Best described as animistic spirits, or ‘Kaisa’ in their own language, controlling empty human bodies that shift and alter their physical makeup to match the spirit controlling them. Visually, they look almost like humans - but sport unnatural eye colors, foxlike feet, long claws, large canine teeth, large fox-like ears, and large fox tails. They reproduce normally, and reproduction with humans will produce a Kitsutamin offspring. There are two notable attributes of the people that set them apart from the norm. First is their ability to adapt to new environments over a period of some years, adapting resistance or immunity to any injurious traits of the environment. Second is their lifespans - utterly random, utterly unpredictable. Go to sleep every night, not knowing if this will be the last one. The connection of spirit and host body is a tenuous one that can break easily. Some among them have nine tails, a part of a long and arduous process towards some sort of immortality and gaining immense power along the way. Others, like Fumiko, born to these individuals, do not possess any remarkable powers - but are notably more stable in their spiritual connection to the body, granting them the opportunity to some day gain power like their parents. How humans evolved on another planet, however, is another matter entirely…

Appearance:
Fumiko has snowy white hair that reaches well past normal military regulation length down to her waist, with large fox ears and nine fluffy tails of an identical shade. She has two amber eyes - one framed by a thin amount of peculiar black material and a long broad scar that runs across it. How the eye appears to still be fully intact from such an injury is anyone’s guess. She stands at approximately a 171cm and sports a well-muscled physique born of intense physical training and the rigors of combat. She wears her pilot’s suit, and carries her weapons strapped to it, though will rapidly seek a cloak or some other means of obscuring its nature to onlookers.

History

History:

Part 1: Peace

Commander Hoshitsune Fumiko was born on 12/14/4032, in the city of Akharata, Koshin Prefecture, in the South Kamita Federal District of the Republic of Yatovina. The daughter of an experienced Kyukitsutamin mage who had devoted her life to the practice of art - specifically poetry, she was displayed a marked interest in the subject herself from a young age. Though raised communally, as is custom among the kitsutamin of Yatovina, her fascination with her mother’s work went well beyond what was normal. Many joked that she would follow in her footsteps, another poet bearing the family name on for the next thousand years, perhaps even more.

As she began her secondary education, however, she found an additional love, one that came to surpass that earlier childhood love. Science. She loved science in all its forms, seeing the ways the world around her fit together, learning the mechanisms and laws that governed the world around her. Her mother would take her to the cosmodrome for launches, and she would scream in excitement as she watched the rockets lift into space, silhouetted against the frozen sea beyond. This love never faded away, and in fact only grew stronger.

A change began as the child grew older, however. Her temperament soured. She could be found getting into brawls and arguments. The authorities became involved - the heavy hand of the law of the old Yatovinan regime not as brutish or as strict back in those days. But even so, she fell out of education, much to the dismay of her mother. The child grew more violent, more outspoken - until finally she took it too far. The world of organized crime had never been particularly huge in the republic. Even without the sun’s nurturing warmth, they had found a way to stay alive, supporting themselves in their cities through subterranean hydroponics systems and other, less pleasant sources of food and energy. But as the decades and then the centuries had worn on, this slowly began to fray. The increasing deprivation and hardship felt by some in the nation as others took more than their share wore on them, and the Yatovinan criminal underworld surged back to life, and Fumiko had gotten caught up with them.

When she was released from the penal system, she emerged a changed woman. She was fortunate, so many years ago. The rot had not seeped in where she lived yet, the system still worked as intended. And it was that working as intended that saved her. She had begun a correspondence with a researcher working at a nearby university who re-enkindled in her a love of learning and seeing the function of the world around her. Fumiko emerged determined, disciplined, and with a fresh start on life.

She had rediscovered her love of science, and enrolled in the university with the researcher with whom she had spoken. Certainly, the extra tails had probably helped - having a kyukitsutamin, even if just a born one, attending was always prestigious. But so too did the endorsement of the researcher. Magic was all well and good. But magic could not be understood in the way science could. When a dragon flew - in the unfrozen southern lands, of course, what gave it that ability despite the sheer impossibility of it from a physical perspective? Many had tried to determine what, or how, enabled this process - and all had come up empty. There was a reason research into physics and chemistry was still needed. A mage could, with decades of practice, certainly produce formidable results. Certainly her own mother, a kyukitsutamin of formidable power who had gone through the process of transformation, rather than being born into it, could produce magical effects the likes of which few could dream. But a mage couldn’t be mass produced, and not everyone could train to be a mage.

And so that was how young Hoshitsune Fumiko’s life progressed. She was a natural genius at the sciences, double-majoring in biology and in chemistry, voraciously devouring any information she could get her hands on. With those degrees under her belt, she moved further, into advanced studies, receiving a masters and then a PhD from a new university, and threw herself into the research with gusto. The decades passed in a blur as she devoted herself to her passion. Her old loves manifested, too. She wrote poetry of the wonder of the natural world that learning about the sciences had instilled in her. She fell in love, numerous times in fact, bringing four children into the world who she raised together with the rest of the community, as was custom. She and their fathers always moved on, eventually, but they remained a part of her. Her life was a happy one, working under researchers centuries her senior and learning everything she possibly could from them, and eventually becoming a minor figure in her own right. In her spare time she pursued the study of the magic of the world, too. Though she had devoted her life to science, she could not simply ignore the other side of the world, inscrutable as it was. She never became a true mage, but she did gain a good appreciation of the body of knowledge surrounding the phenomena regardless.

Despite this, the world around her was not so blissful.

Part 2: War

The Republic was in crisis. The earned authority it had been built on had been concentrated, abused, used to extort and squeeze the people of the republic dry when they already made do with so little in the ice and snow. The leaders spoke of how under their guidance they would find a way past the heliopause once more and reignite the artificial sun that had once burned bright in their sky. But in truth there was only hardship. Empty bellies. Tightening belts. And eventually it became too much, and the people of Yatovina rose in revolt. The revolt began in the east, in Kamita where she lived, and from its inception it had Fumiko’s unreserved support. She was a believer in tradition, in authority, in the functioning of systems and their mechanisms - for the good of the people. A fervent believer in the rhetoric of the revolution, or returning to the system laid out long ago. She would support the revolution from the backlines, pledging her knowledge of science to the cause.

And then her mother died. Fumiko had not even known she was in the army, let alone fighting. Volunteered to serve a noble cause and an ideal of a nation she remembered from long ago. Using her formidable mages’ skills as a self-created kyukitsutamin.

And she was dead. All those years. Fifteen hundred and thirty six years gone. Gone in an instant. It hadn’t been easy, she’d heard. Her mother had died a hero, her sacrifice saving an entire city. She wasn’t even her only child, far from it. Over fifty living children, many of them centuries older than Fumiko herself. Others dead even before that from the random nature of their lives, born before she had completed the process. All of those years on this world, pushing for its improvement, writing and singing of its beauty gone. Gone in a single act of heroism.

The next week, Fumiko had volunteered for the army. She couldn’t wait behind the lines, now, not anymore. Perhaps it wasn’t what her mother would have wanted - but she didn’t care. She was no formidable mage or experienced soldier, but she didn’t care. Even if simply an armed grunt, one of millions, she would fight, spirits as her witness.

However, she would not be just another footslogger. She was instead funneled into the armored forces, where her educational and professional background initially indicated she serve a backline support role. But that wouldn’t satisfy her - she would fight, one way or another, their arguments against it be damned. Eventually, she won out, and began training as a pilot for the MV-9 assault vehicle.

It all passed in a blur, for her, but what she knew now was that she was a pilot, trained and certified both to pilot the machines and to fight as elite augmented infantry should the situation call for it. And as she entered the war, she found she was an excellent pilot. The war came naturally to her. The fighting, the killing. It came disturbingly naturally. She had never thought herself a truly violent person - her youthful insubordinations had never truly harmed anyone. But now? Now she was violent. Now she had killed many people. Too many people. And yet she pressed on, determined to fight to the bitter end no matter the devastation to her mind, to bring about victory. Slowly the revolution linked up and pushed their way through the snow and ice, with the aid of an unlikely party of intrepid heroes.

But despite her fearsome skills, Fumiko’s time as a pilot with the ground forces was coming to a close. A new generation of brain-computer interfaces was being rolled out, and for whatever reason, they didn’t work with her. Why, how, they didn’t know. A buildup of glial tissue. The words were a blur to her. She had been unable to receive the full suite of augmented infantry implants, but had been given supplementary implants to make up some of the difference. Certainly, they were far less overt than others. But it was not enough, now. To her dismay, she was phased out of the ground forcesr ranks.

Part 3: and Peace…?

Transferred to space and got assigned to captain solo patrol missions in deep space, big downgrade in terms of prestige even if it was way safer and paid better
Transferred to the Aerospace Forces, Fumiko reluctantly began this new phase of her career. Flying two-person crew scouting corvettes around the system on routine, uneventful patrol. Three person, if one counted the ship’s spirit. Older vessels, still in service due to the demands of the war on the surface, and perfectly suited to a skilled BCI pilot with an ID-13 interface.

She adjusted to this as well, over time, as her people had done so since they had existed. The cramped walls of the corvette eventually came to feel like a second home. The ship’s spirit helped. A young one, relative to the venerable spirits they had aboard the real warships. She even found an experimental treatment that promised to aid her, perhaps let her rejoin the fight. A part of her jumped at the chance - she wanted to fight, to be a part of the victorious army that would bring about a better tomorrow. But another part of her balked at it, traumatic memories of war flashing across her mind. But still, she accepted it. The treatment showed promise, and she was due to be re-evaluated for compatibility with the new interface.

And then the world came apart around her.

Personality:
Fumiko’s personality is in many ways the direct product of her upbringing. She carries herself in a strict, disciplined manner, and seems always to be on the alert for some unseen threat that might be lurking just out of earshot, or just beyond her view. She is a harsh, severe, uncompromising individual who adheres rigidly to an internal code of law and morals that she views as representative of the nation to whom she owes allegiance. And yet she can also be mischievous, teasing, nurturing, and more. She is not an automaton of the state, but rather someone who believes wholeheartedly in the righteousness of the cause for which she fought and the laws and values of her nation. When not in conflict with that, or with her duty, she is as pleasant company as ever one might wish to find. Keen to crack a dirty joke or lend a shoulder to cry on, and just as keen to pass on what knowledge she herself has to others. She is inquisitive, thoughtful, obstinate, righteous, mischievous, indulgent, and many other words besides. _{(That is to say, I prefer to explore the character’s personality IC).}

Motivation:
Before she came to this world, Fumiko’s motivation was simple. Victory. Victory over the forces that threatened what she believed in with destruction. Victory in a brutal war that had raged on and off for over four decades. Victory, so that she could find peace, and return to doing what she loved. Now? She does not know, now. It could be said that her motivation is to find out what happened to her - and that is certainly true. Understanding the nature of… whatever strange occurrence it was that brought her to this place does motivate her. But is it the motivation that drives her? What would she do if she found out? There is no returning whence she came - perhaps in someone’s fantastical dreams or stories a ship might be able to simply lift itself off from the planet. But not here, not in this cold, hard reality.

Perhaps it is to find a way to live in this strange new land. To understand its laws and its people and find a place for herself in it. Or to understand other, far more baffling things - how are humans present on this world as on her own? Perhaps she will finally learn magic and try to adapt herself to it. Find a little corner somewhere and settle down. Build a tower and become an eccentric local. Would she start another family here? Certainly, she is liable to long outlive most anyone she would know. Would she want her children here to outlive everyone around them? Without the communal society of home, how would she raise them? Who would they become here?

Perhaps, then, Fumiko’s goal is yet to be decided. Perhaps her motivation is to find a motivation.

Skills, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Tools:
Skills:
Combat Training: Trained for a period of some years as both a pilot for the MV-9 AMAV and as an augmented infantry soldier, Fumiko is both highly proficient and highly experienced with all manner of weaponry and in both ranged and hand to hand combat.
Scientific Knowledge: Fumiko is no ordinary dabbler in science, she holds a PhD in organic chemistry and has over a century of experience working in the field - though almost all of it with reagents and materials far more advanced than would be found easily in her new environ. Nevertheless, her understanding of scientific principles, mathematics, and more is immensely formidable and will prove useful even in this new world.
Mechanical Knowledge: Not a particularly strong asset, but an asset nevertheless. Fumiko is, by virtue of her origin and training, a decent hand at understanding and repairing complex mechanical systems. Certainly above the average for this new world.
Basic medical training: As a soldier, Fumiko received basic training in medicine and field triage. She is no learned doctor back home - but she knows the aorta from the spleen and knows techniques that, absent some other means of healing, can prove life saving in an emergency.
Magical Learning: Though she possesses minimal actual skill in the use of magic, Fumiko herself does hail from a world where it is a commonplace phenomenon - her own people inherently magical. She understands the phenomena to some extent, and this is perhaps her greatest avenue of integrating herself into this new world. She can, if nothing else, always talk at length about the nature of undeath or of pyromancy with the avid practitioner, even if lacking deeper knowledge.

Strengths:
Combat Veteran: Fumiko is a combat veteran through and through. She has seen horrors the likes of which few can scarce image. She has killed more people than most will ever encounter in their lifetimes. Almost nothing scares or startles her, and she can be relied upon to stay cool and collected no matter the situation.
Disciplined: A product of the many trials her life has put her through, Fumiko is an immensely disciplined individual. If given an order for a plan or scheme to come to fruition she will follow it to the letter. She will not stray from it, will not allow personal whimsy to distract her from it, and will carry it out to the best of her ability.
Extremely Knowledgeable: Fumiko’s knowledge, scientific, medical, military, or otherwise, is without a doubt exceptional. While significantly less applicable here than back home, her expertise is undeniably a major asset.
Heightened Hearing and Smell: As a product of her nature as a Kitsutamin and in addition to all the other differences it conveys to her, Fumiko has excellent senses of smell and hearing, like that of a fox.

Weaknesses:
Stranger in a Strange Land: Fumiko is not from here. Fumiko is not from anywhere NEAR here. And it shows. She is completely out of her element, out of her depth, and out of her mind. Terrified at the alien world she has arrived at, and at what circumstances might have brought her here, she is adrift. She does not understand the native languages or customs, she cannot meaningfully interact, she is without the home and people she has known all her life, and she cannot begin to reason a way out of it. Whatever her formidable strengths and skills, they are fatally undercut by her being cast adrift from everything she ever knew.
Overconfident: As an extension of the former, Fumiko is accustomed to being an expert, a skilled professional, confident in her knowledge and grounding in her world. Here? She is nobody. She knows nothing. And she forgets this fact all too easily, speaking down where she ought not, acting as an authority in that which she is not anymore, and so on.
Alien: In her own life, her own world, Fumiko is one among millions. Unremarkable except for her extraordinary skills. Here? There are no others like her. She is unique, a literal alien. She will stick out in any crowd and cannot go unnoticed or unremarked. The strange additions to her body - black, reflective surfaces, an eye that glimmers too much to be wholly natural, and more - these only add to her alien nature.
Haunted: Not by ghosts - except perhaps figurative. Fumiko has seen and done horrible, terrible things. She sleeps poorly at night, kept awake by memories of war and suffering, of things she did. Illusions dance in the corner of her vision, pulling at her spirit and threatening to drown her in a yawning abyss. She can still see it. Still hear it. Still smell it.

Both:
Hardened: Fumiko is hardened by war. She is callous in the face of death and violence, desensitized and dulled to death’s crimson harvest. This can be both an asset and a liability. Where one might see a resolute defender, another sees a sociopathic monster that has no place in society.
Visibly Scarred: Similarly, Fumiko is marked by war in a physical, distinct way. The scar that runs across her eye is not her only scar, and her otherwise beautiful foxlike features are marred by the damage and marks of war. Some might be impressed by these, others intimidated, and others might shun her. Whatever this strange creature did to get scars like that can’t have been good, after all.
Cybernetic: Fumiko is not wholly organic. Though her body has not been replaced to the extent of the other pilots, her muscles have still been augmented, the eye she lost was replaced, her mind stores vast sums of scientific data - the bulk of which is now useless. Her heart, too, is synthetic, and she has no pulse, no beating of that life sustaining organ. This gives her many advantages, of course, but also disadvantages. She must eat. She must eat a lot, far more than one might ordinarily expect. Electric currents can prove incredibly disruptive to her, far moreso than normal, and can incapacitate her longer than a normal individual. Should something go wrong, she is the only person who can fix it.

Tools:
Revolver: An eight shot high powered 7mm revolver she carried as a personal sidearm. Will fill in more details on this later, reptilian overlord permitting.
Sword: A sword from her home country in the characteristic slightly curved, two handed pattern and partially made from advanced materials, but also bearing enchantments enhancing its hardness and toughness. Will fill in more details on this later, reptilian overlord permitting.
Flight suit: An advanced ground forces pilot’s suit filling numerous different functions and serving as light armor, and it also has a lot of pockets. Will fill in more details on this later, reptilian overlord permitting.
Cybernetics: Fumiko’s body has been enhanced with subtle cybernetic enhancements. Will fill in more details on this later, reptilian overlord permitting.

Tort plz lemme do some nerd shit here I’ll help u conlang an alphabet!

Non-Optional: Extra Details

The ruffling of a sheet of paper fills the air as the strangely clad woman sets herself down with a slight grunt, followed by the dim sound of a sword scabbard thumping against the floor. The cracking of someone’s mouth opening, then closing, then opening again. “And you are wanting to ask me questions why, again?”

Her words come slowly, and are stilted, thickly accented, as though only just recently learned and poorly practiced. Certainly, she is not from here. Not from *anywhere* near here. The strange black material in her face and adorning small parts of her body, the contraption strapped securely to a strange pouch on her thigh, the sword and scabbard made of materials wholly unrecognizeable. That enough was sufficient to mark her as an anomaly - but the two large, white, foxlike ears that protruded from the top of her head, and the nine large white fox tails that trailed behind her, unlike anything else seen before, only added further mystery to her origins. She looked almost human, were it not for those ears, those tails, the odd color of her eyes…

“I had questions for you, newcomer.” Comes another voice, and the sound of shuffling paper fills the room again. “You’re clearly not from here. If what I’ve heard is to be believed, not from this world. So what are you? Where are you from? Why are you here?”

The woman sighs, “Hoshitsune Fumiko, Commander, Yatovinan Aerospace Forces, serial number 5-81- [UNTRANSLATEABLE]. Look, I do not know, yes? I am just as confused as you. Can I go?”

“What do you most want, then?”

“To find out what [UNTRANSLATEABLE] happened to me. Failing that? I just want to find place here, getting home is not option.”

“Would you consider yourself more lawful or chaotic, and would you consider yourself more good or evil?”

The woman laughs, “What? [UNTRANSLATEABLE] is this question? I- fine. Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil? We need structure. We need order. I fight- fought, for order and peace. I have done bad things. Things I think at time were good? I still think are good? But I do not sleep well. Is it evil to kill a hundred innocent people to end a war sooner? If it saves a thousand, or ten thousand others, is it okay? You can decide.”

“Three likes?”
“I- okay. Learning new things, fresh baked bread, naps.”

“Three dislikes?”
“Stupid questions, quantitative analysis, selfish people, overcooked vege- that is four, my apologies.”

“Do you follow your heart or your mind?”
“My mind. Hundreds are dead because I follow my mind. Thousands w- this language is hard. Thousands are alive because I did not follow my heart. I follow my mind to understand universe, understand cause and effect, I let my heart decide less important things.”

“Worst fear?”
“Forgetting my children’s voices, forgetting sight of snow covered mountains in Kamita, forgetting smell of seared tonbama. Never seeing home again. Losing who I am. Forgetting.”

“Favorite color?”
“Emerald. Or red.”

“What animal are you most like?”
Fumiko simply grins, large shiny white canine teeth glinting in the light as her eyes glimmer with foxlike mischief. “Is it not obvious?” After a moment, she adds, “A raven.”

“Favorite time of day?”
“Midnight. Before I joined military, I liked to go to roof and look at stars and listen to sound of generator humming in bac- nevermind. Or afternoon. Is an excellent time for naps.”

“How do you dress?”
“You mean, when I am not in pilot suit? What I will wear here as time goes on? Probably something soft, with many pockets. Something soft and fluffy to go around my neck.” She rubs the lining of her suit, visibly made of an incredibly soft and comfortable material. “I will be sad when this is wo- you have mending magics yes? Perhaps I will not need to!”

“Favorite season?”
“Oh yes, seasons! We did not have these in my part of world back home. Just eternal nuclear winter. Sun is dead you see an- nevermind. Winter.”

What Gods/Spirits/Whatevers They Worship (If Any):
“That is question with very long, very complicated answer. Technically, I am spirit myself, yes? Possessing empty human body, altered,” she gestures to her ears, and to her tails, “by my presence in it. But I will save long answer for later. I do not worship any gods, here or back home. But I miss spirits of home, and spirit of my ship. He was kind.”

Caravan: An Episodic Fantasy with Worldbuilding! [Always Accepting]

But most roleplays that I've ran have, at some point or another, had at least one player think of some insane stuff that I couldn't have possibly anticipated when I wrote the rules out.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

uwu

From Ashes We Rise: Chronicles

The Falling Star

The stars around the Vestige of Hope are hostile, alien. Where the materium and immaterium merge together, the Maelstrom near the galaxy’s heart bares its teeth. The stars here hunger, home to Daemons and beasts warped in their image who hunger for humanity’s lost children, clinging to life aboard fragile worlds, and fragile stations. On this day, a day like any other where the station lights flicker and the monsters lurk outside of the corner of the eye, a star falls upon the Vestige of Hope, but nobody cares.

---

The enormous space station turned space hulk Vestige of Hope drifted through the void, its inhabitants going about their normal, day to day routines, living their normal lives. Somewhere in the station, someone cooked a breakfast for numerous others, carving thin slivers off of a massive leg of some indistinct creature surrounded by jury rigged glowing red coils. Elsewhere, a man polished a large knife fashioned from a scrap piece of ceramite cladding. Elsewhere still, the staccato thunder of gunfire in an enclosed hallway echoed as bullets and lasfire tore into a swarm of onrushing monstrosities. A dozen people crouched behind makeshift barricades and defenses, taking turns firing on the attacking monsters. Further in the hallway, several mutilated bodies of what had once been people sat beneath hunched over figures, both humanoid and insectoid, that ripped and tore voraciously at tender flesh as their fellows pressed the attack further. Acid spit and poisoned spines flew through the air preceding the gnashing jaws and whirling claws of their owners. The defenders sheltered behind what they could, firing and reloading in turn as the bodies of the horde piled up.

Amidst those people sheltering in the outpost further in, a mother and father tried to hush their squalling child. Others simply prayed as, one by one, they heard the defenders slowly become overwhelmed. Half of their number fell back to the next defense point, bringing whatever ammunition they could from the previous point. Behind them the triumphant beasts busied themselves tearing into the dead or too-wounded-to-move defenders who still lay where they had fallen, the screams of those still alive echoing down the hall as the gunfire resumed from a new defensive point.

A heavily augmented woman charged into the fray, carrying a gun that would normally have been mounted on a tripod, and firing long bursts into the onrushing crowd of mutants. Explosive rounds tearing bloody holes in flesh and bone as they carved a swathe through the onrushing horde. The others around her opened fire again with renewed vigor, and the battle raged on, as did a thousand others like it.

---

Through the empty void of space, a curious object hurtled towards its destination. Oddly shaped. Myriad wires, tubes, readout displays, and more adorning its form. No rock formed in primordial nebulae or long decayed archaeotech. It was foreign. Abnormal. It did not belong here on the cusp of the Maelstrom.

.TЯƎ⅃A .TЯƎ⅃A .TИƎИIMMI YTIЯӘƎTИI ⅃ƎƧƧƎV ᖷO ƎЯU⅃IAᖷ ⅃AƆITIЯƆ .TЯƎ⅃A .TЯƎ⅃A

The infant within the pod looked up at the sigils in idle curiosity. Suspended in the cushioning fluid of the chamber, numb to the cold and the soundless void that lay barely separated from her now. She pondered - what did they say? They meant something to someone, obviously, or had at one point wherever she had come from.

… where had she come from? She felt vague, indistinct shapes move in her memory. Dim recollections of muted sounds… voices? She had been brought here somehow. For some purpose. Memories bared themselves, floating up from the morass of her mind. She remembered looking out through the tank and seeing similar such symbols. She remembered other people looking in on her and her watching silently, half formed but aware. But she knew those eyes and those people would not have sent her here. Something else had.

Though she doubted the strange symbols that blinked in red a short distance from her eyes held the key to unlocking such mysteries.

She focused in closer on the symbols, they seemed similar. Familiar. And then - ah, of course. They were displayed on the outside of her world. For someone from abroad to look in. To survey her. They displayed vital readouts, developmental information, and more. Information for the white suited scientists to read, to look in on her with faces obscured by respiratory masks and cleansuits, sterile laboratory gloves. She was their creation, she remembered - created for something, even if she did not know what. And the flashing symbols were important for that. Important to ensure she came out right.

They flashed again, and with her new understanding she saw clearly now their meaning.

ALERT. ALERT. CRITICAL FAILURE OF VESSEL INTEGRITY IMMINENT. THREATS TO FIFTEEN DETECTED IN VICNITY. ALERT. ALERT.

Those words were certainly disconcerting. She did not know how she understood their meaning, and yet they slotted into place within her mind as easily as did everything else around her. She craned her neck forward, looking out through the small viewing window and beheld the looming bulk of the space station afore her as she sped rapidly towards it.

---

The horde of mutants continued to pour in. An inexorable wave of meat and flesh, blood and bone, whirling teeth and gnashing jaws that bit and tore and devoured whole. They continued on, heedless of bullets and lasfire that blasted great rents in flesh and sent them stumbling or collapsing into limp piles. There were more. There were always more. And they smelled blood. Hugging the walls, crawling along ceilings with sharpened talons gouging into plasteel, they came on in droves.

Another defensive position fell, the wall of the things pressing ever onwards as the augmented woman and her autocannon were forced back, taking down dozens of the monstrosities. Behind her her comrades continued the withering hail of gunfire. A mutant crawling along the ceiling dropped down in their midst, landing atop one defender and bisecting him in a shower of viscera, jagged jaws shearing through armor and bone. Beady brown eyes hauntingly like those of a human being’s looked out in hate and fury as a torrent of bullets tore the thing and what remained of its victim apart.

The battle continued on, reinforcements from further within joining the defenders and pushing the mutants back a ways - before all were jolted from their positions and thrown to the floor as an enormous impact shook this section of the station. Emergency lights flicked on overhead as mains power failed, bathing the grisly scene in an eerie red glow.

The mutant swarm picked itself up too, but instead of resuming the attack, it skittered off back into the bowels of the station - towards the point of impact. They left behind a trail of blood and viscera, slick blood and shattered bone in their wake, though many dragged their dead behind with them. The shocked defenders were left to stand in silence.

Somewhere, nearby, something had gouged a massive hole from the structure of the station. Ancient armor plating was rent asunder. Water lines, power connections, abandoned living quarters, warrens and dens of unspeakable abominations and transgressions against the human form - all had been pulverised into unrecognizeable rubble and debris in the span of a second and now only a smoking crater remained where melted steel glowed and slowly resolidified.

The atmosphere of the station was kept intact as numerous redundant void shield generators kicked into gear, still functional even after the time spent in disrepair, sealing the breach and preventing the decompression of the area. Already, the crater had attracted attention and visitors. Even as melted slag dripped down in sizzling metallic stalactites, eyes both human and decidedly not peered in cautiously.

The same argument erupted among the dumbfounded erstwhile defenders. Some, including the augmented woman, wanted to investigate - others insisted it was too dangerous, and that they had to remain behind to defend against another possible attack. In the end, those who wanted to investigate set out on their own, heavily armed and outfitted with plentiful ammunition, picking their way through familiar halls and passages towards the impact point.

No mutants accosted them on their way. The ancient tunnels were almost preternaturally still, as though something had drawn the horrors that lurked away from them.

When they finally reached the crater, they too peered down among many others at the smoldering remains of what had impacted their home. A strange… pod, burnt and blackened on the outside, some sort of unusual fluid having been evidently drained from it. Around it lay a swarm of mutants, violently dismembered by means that only the imagination could devise. And nobody else.

---

The world was silent now. Silent except for the hiss of steam and the dim blaring of the alarms still muted by the walls of her chamber. Silent compared to the all consuming maelstrom of noise and violence that had engulfed her world for a moment as she crashed into this new, larger one. She extended a hand, instinctively, and the pod opened on her mental command.

She stepped out into this new, larger world, and beheld her welcoming party. She looked out on them - beady, once-human eyes, fanged maws that gnashed and bit as they crept closer to her. She crouched low, instinctively, infant legs already strong and capable.

One of them lunged at her, only to freeze midair as she looked at it with disdain. She looked away, and the mutant crunched into a bloody pulp. Another leaped at her, and another, forcing her back from her pod and towards an exposed duct. With a mental pulse of energy, she killed or pushed away the remainder, and took a breath, surveying her surroundings.

She felt new presences approach. Discordant thoughts and feelings. Confusion. Alarm. Anger. She hadn’t felt these same things from the monsters. Were these different monsters? She caught a dim, blurry glimpse of one. It walked on two legs and made strange sounds, sounds that sounded like human speech. It and the others carried something - she pulled back further, into the shadows, into the ducts. Away from here and towards safety. Whatever she had been brought here to do she would not let herself be taken by monsters, no matter how familiar they seemed.

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Amesha

Character Name: Amesha Spenta Ameretat

Rank/Role:
Amesha seeks eternal life, at any cost. Already old by human standards, she seeks to push the limits further, to truly transcend the limitations of a mortal lifespan and preserve her intelligence ad infinitum. A master geneticist and an expert in cybernetics, she yet lacks the answer to the question of true immortality, having yet stumbled only on half-measures and imperfect approximations.

Appearance:
[Art will be done]
Perfectly normal human in at first glance, there are subtle oddities about Amesha’s outward appearance that bely the true nature of what lies beneath. While her body has not been replaced to the same extent of a Magos of the Mechanicum or the most extreme techno-barbarians of the desert, the white hair and immaculate, utterly flawless skin free of all imperfections or damage are at odds with the standards of most of those people of Terra. That beneath the robes lie a patchwork of stitches, cybernetics, and blotched skin is only further proof that something is deeply unusual about the woman - as though the body has been stitched over its framework not just once, but many times before. Mismatched eyes, one evidently cybernetic, and the other a piercing violet.

Biography:
Born many, many years ago to an Achaemenid noble, Amesha was once known as Azadeh Shahzad, second born child of Yazdegerd Shahzad. Raised in a privileged, comfortable home and provided access to the best of instructors who recited ancient tomes of knowledge to her, the young girl voraciously devoured any sort of knowledge provided to her.

Amesha wowed her instructors with the eagerness with which she learned. The ancient hymns of the genetic lines of man and beast came to her as second nature. The tongues of the ancient biomancers who worked flesh and bone like clay between their fingers seemed to her a natural fit. The sagas of the masters who wove flesh and steel together like threads of gene-spider silk, she memorized in full. And the stories of an even more distant, ancient past. The mythologies and tales of the time before time when gods walked the land and the ancient psykers wrought their magykes.

However the political realities of the world intruded upon her blissful little bubble. She was married off to another noble to secure a political alliance in the constant jockeying and shoving for power and influence within the Achaemenid Empire, and a young beautiful bride was a mighty prize indeed for the powerful Satrap of Iazd. The Satrap disgusted her, an aged, old man who saw her as a choice prize. She looked upon his decaying form with despair - was this what awaited her in turn?

She beseeched him - she had far more to offer him than base fulfillment and heirs before he died. Like many nobles, he used rejuvenants to extend his life and delay aging. But she offered him more. Like the snakes of the old stories she promised him to peel away the decay and decrepitude of age in exchange for her freedom.

He did not believe her at first, and set her three tests to demonstrate her skill.

First he bade her to restore the mangled flesh to a common man. So she set out into the streets of Iazd and found herself a veteran of many wars, one without arm nor leg, who depended on begging for his bread - and restored his body to him. The veteran jumped as he exited her laboratory, astounding the noble.

Then he bade her age a young man, and age him forward - so she set out into Iazd once more, and found a man willing to do so in exchange for a great reward. This she gave his family, and the young man walked out of her laboratory hunched over and decrepit, a wizened shell of strapping youth. The noble trembled at such a transformation, but conceded her victory.

Suitably impressed, he bade her complete one last test - not only would she restore youth to the young man, she would restore it to his most loyal bodyguard. Herself a veteran of many wars, the years had worn away at her strength and vigor, and she could not defend his liege as ahe so wished. And so where an aged, weakened man and woman entered her laboratory, out strode those same two - but now young, strong, energetic, and in the prime of life.

The Satrap was now fully convinced, and he agreed to release her from her marriage if she could restore his own youth. And so deep within the laboratory she had erected, she operated upon him. Skin and flesh moved like clay beneath her fingers, just as it did the old masters, and when he awoke, the Satrap looked into the mirror and saw the young, handsome face he had once thought forever lost.

He leapt to his feet in joy and proclaimed to her and to his bodyguard that he could never relinquish a woman so skilled, who claimed such mastery over life and death itself. And he proclaimed that she would be his for eternity, and that she and he would remain young and whole henceforth.

And Azadeh Shahzad, enraged at this betrayal, pointed an accusatory hand at the Satrap and, with a snap of her fingers - the Satrap fell dead. For within his body she had implanted a most lethal poison, to be released if he were to reneg. The Satrap’s bodyguard drew her sword, but the words of Azadeh stayed her.

“Would you kill for a dead man who could not keep such sacred word? You have no poison in your heart - for I had nothing to fear from you. He would have lived on, happy, for the next few decades - and I would have kept my word."

The bodyguard drew closer, "And yet you have slain my liege."

"And in doing so I freed you of you bond to an oathbreaker. Join me, instead. You are brave and strong and loyal - and when I find the secret of true eternal youth and beauty I shall share it with you."

The bodyguard hesitated, before at last inclining her head to her new liege.

"And know me no longer as Azadeh Shahzad. I will become Amesha Spenta Ameretat, she who grants eternal life."

And so with the Satrap's equipment and many of his former followers she set out from Iazd, to roam Terra in search of the answers she sought. For over a century since she has roamed the landscape, hiding from dangerous foes and trekking through ancient ruins to learn the secrets she sought. Gradually she learned more and more - but the true answer remained ever elusive as the years wore on her body and she felt even her treatments beginning to reach their limit. But she remained ever determined and continued on, confident she would find what she sought.

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (Duardin RP)

@Timemaster

u wot m8