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The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

“I was,” replied Narkissa, poking around at the weapon pile. Her reply came noncommittally; after all, this was the person that she had witnessed assaulting the man who she knew now was Donovan, and there was also the fact that he had only waited until now to introduce himself. Despite his apology, first impressions really were everything, and she internally looked at the androgynous man with a healthy dose of skepticism.

“I suppose so,” she continued, with a light wiggle of her book. Considering that it appeared that they had all just woken up, Narkissa found it an odd thing to point out, even if she was carrying a book. Looking through the weapon pile, she would have preferred a sword. Despite being a professor and archeologist of good reputation in her past life, she had also found some joy in the questionable hobby of historical reenactment—and had found some preference for swords in the course of that. Unfortunately, there weren’t any particularly suitable swords she found in the pile, and she was left with an old war axe. To her, it really wasn’t an ideal weapon, but it looked the sturdiest.

And it was good that she chose the sturdiest. Before she could respond to Malphas any further, trouble appeared outside, precluding anymore polite conversation or practice of magic.

Of all the things she had expected, a giant stone golem was not one of them. But considering what the goddess had said, it was likely that this was the guardian that she had spoke of.

She had words for Donovan on his mad rush, but it really did buy the rest of them some time. “Don’t need to say it,” she spoke back to Leannah, before immediately making good on her words. Narkissa had not expected to be given a new life, and she didn't intend to needlessly squander it. Dashing outside, she made it her priority to run in the direction opposite of where the golem was headed.

@Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

No matter what Narkissa would have tried, the nature of the situation and the fact that she had dodged the voices earlier meant that any manner of greeting after that would be some degree of awkward. Compounding the fact was that immediately after popping out, she was stunned by the ethereal workers that were building a makeshift staircase up towards her. If it weren’t for the strangely reassuring Scottish voice from the closest to her, she would have had even heavier doubts about the group.

“Scottish? Now that’s a sight for sore eyes,” she muttered, before returning a greeting in a standard British accent. “Narkissa. You’ll have to forgive my behavior… I just woke up to this, and I’m… still taking it all in. Speaking of which, what is that?” She pointed at the disappearing specters, and the now completed makeshift staircase.

Although she still remained suspicious of them, now that the stairs were completed, there was actually some room to maneuver. She stepped down towards the group, magic tome in hand—already she had learned quite a bit in the first few pages.

She still had many questions for the others –where did they come from and who they were, for example—but the strange cat-eared girl answered the first question straightforwardly without any prompting. “I see… and that fellow?” she thumbed with her free hand towards Malphas, the only person that had ignored her thus far.

Further questioning was stopped by Leannah’s exclamation. “Something dangerous? I don’t have a weapon…” Now that she was downstairs, it was clear that she was the only person that remained unarmed, despite the shoddy quality of the others’ armaments. Realizing this, she didn’t wait for a response and began to look around for the closest weapon—but at the same time, idly went through the motions for a spell, curious if she could do so.

@Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

@Cu Chulainn

For somebody who just had the experience of a lifetime, Narkissa definitely had an odd reaction to it. Throwing caution to the wind by archeological prospects in the books before her, she had a one-set mind to go through all the tomes in the decrepit bookshelf. She vaguely remembered that there was supposed to be some sort of danger in the vicinity, but with no way outside of the room, studying the books remained the best thing to do. Unfortunately for her, most of the books were so faded that it made them impossible to read with her naked eye. She was well aware of advanced archeological tools that could scan such pages and discern the faded ink to make pages legible –such technologies were used to scan ancient Roman scrolls in the past—but that was something she hardly had access to.

As book after book turned up blank or crumpled to pieces, she began to despair. But at last, she came across a book with legible letters; a strange book, in a language that she had never seen before, but somehow, she found herself intuitively able to make sense of it. Although it was in quite a bad state, she could still tell the title from spine, and an intriguing title it was. If this were in the past, she would have simply dismissed its title as a novelty book, but with recent events, there was a very real possibility that it could be useful.

So, she began to read. Using some broken furniture as a makeshift chair, she carefully cracked the tome open.

Every so oftern, she would stop and peek out from below, to see what the situation was. Narkissa wasn’t completely oblivious. She knew that she would have to deal with the people down below eventually. She had no idea who they were, or their intentions, so making contact was indeed risky. After all, having been in a pod in an isolated upper floor, there were no indicators for her to assume that there were people similar to herself.

Eventually, she was able to get a better sense of the people down below. Although they were clearly strangers to each other, it didn’t seem like they were the menace spoken of in these ruins, and it was clear they knew she was there, because they were now repairing the staircase to her level and making good on that progress.

She stuck out her head once again, this time less discretely. “Er, hi. Who are you people?”

@Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

Narkissa let out a gasp, sputtering foreign fluid as she was unceremoniously ejected from the strange pod. Temporarily blinded, she thought it was quite strange that she was choking on water. Sure, the submersible had sprung a leak, but after hitting the bottom of the sea floor, it subsequently rolled off the coastal shelf and into the abyss of the deep Atlantic. By all rights, there shouldn’t be a chance to drown.

But despite being drenched, water really wasn’t entering her lungs. In fact, she was coughing it out, and a moment later, she thought to clear her eyes and blink. Expecting darkness, she was surprised to find herself in an unknown location. It was far from the watery coffin that she had expected… but then she recalled a fleeting dream, what she thought were hallucinations in the milliseconds before her instant death.

What that actually… real? Did she actually speak to a god? Rubbing her eyes, she hastily took in her surroundings. She was in sparse, ancient room. Aside from the strange, test tube-like pod that was still slowly emptying out into the room, there was what appeared to be remnants of furniture scattered about, and a few intact shelves along the walls. More curiously, they still seemed to hold some of their contents.

Looking down at herself, she was surprised to find that she was not wearing the comfortable oversized t-shirt and jeans for her underwater trip, but something else entirely. Although they were soaked, there was no denying that the clothes she now wore would be better described as ‘dapper.’ A dark vest with pockets covered the simple white button shirt she was wearing, and a pleated skirt that matched her vest clung to her lower thighs. The uncomfortable wet feeling made her want to strip and dry off, but in want of more information, she held off.

If this was still part of a hallucinatory dream, it felt very realistic.

She wracked her memories for whatever she remembered of her interaction with the goddess. If everything she remembered was true, then she really had died in that tiny pressure can. Then… was she in another world? Looking at the pod behind her, she felt more like the was the unwilling participant in some strange, unethical, illegal experiment. As she checked her own body, she was beginning to feel it really was like that.

While she had been in her late thirties and considered herself pretty fit for her age, as she began to stretch out her cramped body, there was no denying the newfound spryness in her body, nor the strange white color of her hair in the corners of her eyes. If she really was given a new body, then why was her hair already white? Even so, her hair was soft and lush to the touch, nothing like the hard, scraggly strands of old age.

No matter what she thought, the evidence really pointed to divine intervention. There had been no saving her down in the depth, and her current circumstances were strange at best. To drive the nail into the coffin on the matter, she had found her good-luck charm in her new vest’s pockets –a golden pocket watch and a family heirloom from two centuries past. The body was warped and the face of the timepiece was shattered from the pressure of external forces, frozen at 10:51, indisputably the moment she had met her end.

It might have been destroyed, but apparently it was enough of a charm to bring the intervention of a god in her favor. Recalling the blessing bestowed upon her, she let out a chuckle to herself.

It was destiny, wasn’t it? With what she knew and what she could do, it was fated for her to restore the British Empire in a broken world.

In the meantime, though, there were some more pressing concerns. For example, the ancient books on the bookshelves, just waiting to be inspected by an archaeologist like her, but probably more importantly, the voices she could hear calling out to her from below. There was no way to get downstairs though, at least, not without a faith-testing leap, and in fact, if she was hearing right, it sounded almost like there was a scuffle downstairs. She peeked her head out from above, and did so in time to witness a man being assaulted by another person.

She had been tempted to call out to see why other individuals might be in this forsaken place, but thought better of it and ducked back down. She was probably better served checking out those books on the wall, and so she did.

@Cu Chulainn @Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Right then, CS is up! Thanks for having me.

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

The queen is dead, long live the queen

Narkissa Langdon

Female

Appearance:

Even as she grew older and her body more frail, the youthful spirit and the sense of adventure within her never died out. The presence of a new body only made things more perfect. Narkissa has the appearance of a youthful, slender adult. She stands an average height of 5’ 5”, and while fit, weighs a paltry 111 lbs. Although her hair and eyes have taken a strange albino coloration, her professional sartorial aesthetic remains.

Goals:

What more can Narkissa wish for than to rediscover progress and reclaim the world? To build an empire under a reborn flag, so large in which the sun would never set on its lands? What more can it be than providence?

Past Life

Would it really be fine if it ended like this?

As the darkness surrounded her, accompanied by the creaks and groans of her vessel of demise, a lifetime of past thoughts flashed through her eyes.

Even now, Narkissa was fascinated with the past. As long as she could remember, her mind had always fluttered to the tales of the past, the mystery, the majesty, and the grandeur of countries long past.

But of them all, there was only one country that had them all… and it wasn’t too long ago that her country had stood at the peak of the world. There was nothing more that could fascinate her than the story of the early modern era, of the rise of the British Empire, and its maritime hegemony. She couldn’t love the history any than she could love her own country.

Well, in other words, she was a nationalist.

But unlike others, Narkissa really was more interested in learning about things than shitposting on the internet. She became a scholar of history of early modern Britain. What was it like in the early modern era? How did people live? What technology did people use, how did it work? What food did people eat? What was life at sea like, how did people survive? Those were the questions that she asked, answered, and taught.

By the time she was beginning to reach her middle ages, she had become a marine archeologist, traveling to the ends of the world —and the depths of the sea— to explore the secrets that the oceans had swallowed long ago.

It really would be the past that would cause her demise, too.

Narkissa recalled the closing years of the American Revolution, when the British Empire had won a great battle against the French off Dominica. The battle won, the fleet sailed home with their prizes, only to meet their untimely demise in a hurricane in the Atlantic. It was the topic of her research.

Her life’s work had finally culminated in finding the wrecks at the bottom of the sea, and for the first time in almost 250 years, human eyes finally beheld the hulls of the wooden battleships.

It really was just a damn shame that the pressure hull of the research submersible began to leak.

Abilities:

Physical Conditioning: Peak human
Your body is naturally tough, durable, and strong. The pinnacle of human physical strength, endurance, and agility. Keep training, and surely you can surpass even stronger beings.

Soul Flare
The ability to turn ones soul into a weapon itself. Needed for most basic magical feats. Channel the mana present in the air through your body to achieve great feats. Allows one to interact with supernatural things, and perceive things others may not.

Affection of the Sea:
The goddess has given you some of her own favor. The sea itself seems to bend to your will. Should you travel by it, you'll always find favorable winds and currents, the sea always seemingly directing you to where your destination is need to go whilst also hindering whatever may wish to do you harm. Theoretically, it can also extend to anything or anyone you 'own' as well, such as ships and sailors, but they will need some sort of relief or symbol to do so. Perhaps should you gain more favor with the goddess, you may even be able to command the seas themselves on some level...

Inventory

Her clothes on her back… or maybe not?

From Oubliette to Oublioth [R.I.P]

Well, RIP.

The Epic of Beginnings - An Isekai Adventure/Civ builder

Waitlist me please, captain.

From Oubliette to Oublioth [R.I.P]

Artemisia de Chauret

If they could read each other’s minds, Artemisia would find a comrade in the way Locke thought. Although her studies were sometimes considered less than scrupulous, she shied away from unnecessary bloodshed. In fact, it was the very reason that she had decided to put up a nice shield wall instead of expending her remaining energy on flinging spells, which, in hindsight, would have been rather effective in the confined space they were in earlier.

With a nice big shield, and a sturdy horse to carry her right to the southern gate, Artemisia was probably one of the better candidates to lead the charge to freedom from these godforsaken ruins. But her pragmatic sense of self-preservation meant that sticking with the group and taking a conservative position was the far better option at this point, even if she had been impatient enough to charge out in earlier instances. It would be stupid if she got smote at the final stretch.

So… she just bumbled slowly towards the gate with the rest of them.

From Oubliette to Oublioth [R.I.P]

Artemisia de Chauret

Like Locke, Artemisia wasn’t particularly in a position to do much more than what she was already doing. She might have put up her shields somewhat prematurely, but she was somebody who wasn’t particularly fond of leaving things to chance. So, she had the shields up before moving up to where she could actually be somewhat useful, not wanting to be riddled full of arrows before properly setting up.

Of course, she was beginning to think it was all a terrible idea to be protecting these people, since they were all so incredibly insane. To think that she had cast herself in with this lot… it did seem to be working, though.

Even if she wanted to help the rest of the party in properly ridding them of the imperial nuisance, however, she couldn’t really cast any more spells. She could, in theory, charge out with her horse swinging her puny sword around at the armored soldiers, but that was an obviously suicidal tactic. Artemisia wasn’t prone to suicidal tactics, unlike some certain people that were in front of her.