The information regarding the silversmith was little… but hardly unexpected. That aside, boarded up within the past week? Coincidence? Possibly. But the timing just seemed to tickle his interest. That avenue would bare some additional investigation if he had anything to say about it.
The rest of the group’s efforts to socially shmooze with Madame Marcie were either quite effective… or the latter was acting just as opportunistically in return. Between all the nonsense trivialities, it seemed that the Madame claimed to have no grudge and already offered options to settle the debt. Aside from that, there was little else to note.
Upon arriving at the loft, Hugh was pleasantly surprised to find that the structure was not a former stable, but instead merely hay storage. Overall, it appeared much tidier and more secure than he had been resigned to putting up with. Cecily’s mention of a “Mr. Fields” prompted him to utter, “Fields? Isn’t that the guy we’re supposed to pass our loaned cart off to?”
While Kathryn and the Tiefling set about attempting to comfort the child, he chose to join the Bard in scouting out and setting up his possible positions in the upper hayloft, an area he expected would be much safer if they ever had any surprise unwelcome visitors. Not to mention, it would be warmer than the lower floor.
After the Bard returned to the lower floor to inquire about funerary rites, Hugh settled on making his bed in the northern half of the upper loft, a secure position that should keep him nicely untargetable by arrows while sleeping. As an extra measure, he shoved and rolled a couple hay bales over and left a space between them, creating a cozy little makeshift shelter against both attacks and the cold. It was nothing fancy, but hopefully, it would be better than nothing if it came down to it.
The Nightman Therapy Clinic was a two-story, rectangular affair, sizable enough to be approximately a dozen rooms deep on the shorter width of said rectangle -if she had to guess at a distance... the distance in question being several hundred feet away atop a rooftop overlooking the detestable institution of her ire.
Chinami's crimson eyes narrowed at the building, a barely restrained snarl on her lips. Her blood was still curdling in rage from the letter she'd received at Kiburi's earlier that morning. Its contents... They were damning, but devoid of context, and once she had finished lying through her teeth with a straight face to the faculty, they had been robbed of credibility as well.
After all, who were the staff of Kiburi going to believe: one of their star, model students... or some crackpot letter filled with baseless accusations?
Obviously not the latter.
Unfortunately, the ease with which Kiburi's had accepted her lies had also been the same ease they foisted off the solving of this problem to her. The clinic -assuming it was legit- would unfortunately have enough sway that they might be able to threaten her enrollment. Certainly, they could make themselves enough of a nuisance that it might be more trouble for Kiburi's than it was worth to keep her around. That said, even if it was the incompetents at Kiburi's, it was plain to see that they were just as baffled by the letter as she was.
The Letter (and it deserved the fucking capitals) had made some shockingly accurate observations about her past. Objectively, she could see where her frankly abusive and negligent childhood could seem concerning. In fact, she could certainly see how the Final Tomb Event could be the straw that broke the camel's back. However...
That was 4 years ago!
It should be blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes that she had -quite possibly by divine or demonic providence- come away from those events remarkably mentally intact -if not flawless. While her athletic body may have been scarred beneath her baggy clothes, her mind was a stubborn iron trap. She had survived at half their age where many adults would have faltered. She had survived, conquered and prospered, overcome every obstacle, slain every enemy. And now, finally, she was ready to rest, had been resting for nearly half a decade, only for this... bullshit to come up now!
The first sign that these people were hacks was their blatant disregard for the most basic principle of psychology, something even she knew: you can't help someone who doesn't want to be. They will resent you. They will hate you. They will double down on their every issue and bite, scratch and claw the whole way down, doing themselves as much harm -if not more- than they are helped. To ignore this simple thing already, to ignore her firm and reasonable rejection of the initial invitation...
Already, that had her attention.
In psychology, you couldn't help someone who didn't trust you, and she most certainly did not trust them! They would have to be utter fools not to know that, and yet still, they persisted. So, that was issue number one.
The second problem began to crop up once she realized that she would inevitably have to go to the Clinic and started doing some research. What she found was... strange.
On the surface, the reviews for the institution seemed legit, positive even. Only... they were too positive. Frankly, the wording, the way the writers almost seemed to- to gush over the experience was just... People -real people- just didn't talk like that! Or rather, what she was reading sounded more like statements from people who had just found religion and were getting way too into it, and it was consistent, a constant litany of heaping flowery, purple prose praise!
And worse?
There were no negative reviews.
Not. A. Single. One.
There were a few ways to take that, and none of them were good. After all, the simple Law of Averages dictated that with the sheer volume of totaled reviews, the absence of even a single dissenting opinion should have been outright impossible. Moreover, every rating was marked as high as it could go, Five Stars across the board! A lukewarm opinion? Mere satisfaction? What were those? They certainly couldn't be found here! Every review might as well have been frothing at the mouth with joy, and that fucking terrified Chinami to her core.
The Goth girl couldn't help her gorge rising as she processed the number of... of victims laid out before her. Just... what had been done to these people? Could it be undone? She couldn't say until she had the opportunity to examine a victim personally. Even so, just how long had this operation been going on under the peoples' noses? How entrenched were they economically and politically? They seemed to have enough sway to inconvenience the Four Academies, literally some of -if not- the most integral institutions in the whole country.
Someone had discovered her past. Had they divined it? Had one of her former colleagues been too loose-lipped even after she got their oath of silence? It could be all too many things in this mad world, where the gods and demons alike bestowed absurd power upon irresponsible mortals. Someone wanted her here. That, or they wanted her specifically away from Kiburi's for a time. Given the odds on the latter, she was more inclined to think that this was a trap specifically targeting her, not the school. So, they wanted her at this so-called "clinic". They wanted her "treated" with whatever the fuck all these poor souls had been snorting. And they had access to information that no-one should have!
Something stank to high heaven, and she was going to have to get to the bottom of it... whether she wanted to or not.
That said...
Like hell she was walking into a trap.
If there was anything her years of spelunking in mysterious and cursed tombs and ruins had taught her, it was that you never resorted to tripping the trap to pass it if you could go around or simply disable it. More often than not, such mystical obstacles had fail-safes designed exactly for cheeky people who thought that tripping them was the way. In fact, most mystical traps were able to automatically reset anyway. Thus, disabling traps ahead of time was the only intelligent thing to do.
Yo, just a quick heads up to any who have yet to chime in who are (or aren't) in the Discord, we have three available arcs now, and these are who have chosen/been assigned to them thus-far. If you wanna get in on the ground floor, might want to voice your interest in a particular one before things really get rolling!
(First 3 Arcs.)
Midnight (mentioned above): Andras, Vera, Michael(?), Pizza Time (Parker)
Afterschool Incursion (mentioned above)(takes place at Clausewitz): Alyona, Cel, Wolf
"Therapy" (NEW)(much description, very wow, yes): Chinami, Ken, Reverio
The 3rd "Therapy" clinic plotline has the most mystery surrounding it (might even be a mystery solving/investigation plotline). Multiple characters have been lured there for reasons either legitimate or faked. Looking for sinister undertones in a place that claims to heal the mind? This might be the place for you. As one of the players in it, however, I'm as blind as everyone barring the one running it, so take my words with a grain of salt. :3
O O F. Sad, but understandable. Thanks for letting us know. My interest will remain, regardless. I've waited this long. If a good opportunity arises, I'll definitely keep myself appraised.
I know they've got the fewest students so far, but you've certainly got 1 vote of interest from Lord Kiburi's for Afterschool Incursion. The setup for this scenario sounds like it's right up the reasonable alley for Chinami to be involved... much to her chagrin.
"What? Do you need something? Kinda busy here." Height:5'10" An athletic unit of a girl.
Name: Chinami Nadakai; "Liliya Montoya" (disguise) Monikers: "Iron Maiden" (bestowed arena name), "Barb-Tongue" (unfriendly moniker). Age: 17 Sex: Female. Eyes: Crimson (current), Brown (former). (The demonic dagger changed her in more than one way...) Hair: Raven-black wavy locks, shoulder length. Nationality: Izumo (mother's origin), Rhea (current) Grade: Lord Kiburi's School for the Truly Exceptional. 2nd year
Born to and raised by a pair of Archeologists, Chinami's sociability was stunted from day one. Her parents loved their job, perhaps too much so. They traveled often and always brought her with them, preventing the young girl from properly developing long-term friendships or even getting a proper schooling where it didn't relate to archeology. Over time, Chinami began to stop even attempting to make emotional connections with locals, mentally exhausted from constantly having to leave them behind. She had swung right past loneliness and entered a state approaching apathy.
Though she loved her parents as most children do, by age 10, she was coming to resent them for the fact that she couldn't be a "normal" kid. Instead of improving her mind, she was forced to improve her body in order to walk -or even survive- long treks through jungles and climb steep ruins and mountains. She had no friends except the adults among the larger archeology team that traveled with her parents. As a result of these influences, she came to mature mentally far more quickly than any child should, becoming pithy and foul-mouthed.
By the time she was 12 years old, she was perhaps as much of an expert in the art of tomb-raiding as her parents, and she was the senior authority to the majority of the team as a whole in terms of time spent among them. She knew how to survive, how to treat wounds, to safely trip and disable traps and otherwise Indiana Jones her ways through absolutely lethal mystical ruins. Careless as her parents were, she'd been injured on many an occasion in her explorations. Cuts, bruises, broken bones, concussions and more that she often had to heal from naturally; the girl had an almost unnatural pain tolerance. Frankly, she was a somewhat scary child, almost comparable to a child soldier in grit, but despite the unease of the other adults, her parents didn't seem even slightly aware that something was off, instead praising their daughter for her accomplishments.
Chinami did not feel very accomplished. She had long since recognized her own lacking in intellectual pursuits and had begun to seek teaching from the other adults on the team, choosing to spend all of what allowance she had on books in the rare moments that she was in civilization proper. She saw archeology as a dead-end (even literally) profession, filled with too little profit and far too much danger. Weighing her pros and cons, the young girl had already started on the path to abandoning her family and team to set out on her own. All she needed first was the knowledge to make it out in the world. Thus, the self-education.
Little did she know, her plans would come to fruition, just not in the way she'd intended.
In the twilight months of age 12, her parents entered a particularly dangerous mystical ruin in search of rumors of a "cursed dagger" that could apparently inflict death with the slightest prick. Unfortunately, between the pair and their daughter, they were quite competent and capable of navigating the ruin's traps finding it. The young girl was not happy with this, as a gut feeling of impending doom had begun to well up within her. Whether it was a divine premonition or not, it mattered little in the face of her parents' reckless joy.
As they approached the dagger, which floated suspended ominously above an alter, Chinami warned her parents to be careful, but they dismissed her worries, sure in their security after successfully disabling any traps that would shut the doors on them and prevent escape. Her father grabbed the dagger, and everything quickly began going wrong.
A large golem was ejected from the ceiling and slammed down atop her father. If that didn't kill him, then the firm stomp on his head a moment later did. The dagger was sent flying, and the tomb guardian's attention was clearly zeroed in on it. Despite this, Chinami's mother chose to grab the dagger, only to get casually swatted by the unnervingly quick construct. Even injured, however, somehow her mother had the reckless and/or selfish presence of mind to toss the dagger Chinami's way.
Panicked, the girl unthinkingly picked it up from where it has slid across the floor to her and then was forced to flee the guardian. She put every last bit of her training and experience to the test, as she fled through the halls of the ruins, but the guardian was an enchanted being meant to catch far more dangerous intruders than a mere child. It was only her small size and agility that kept her ahead by a hair till the inevitable happened.
One of the guardian's attacks just barely clipped her side, but the sheer strength behind it made even a featherlight touch damn-near lethal. Ribs broken, Chinami was thrown like a skipping stone, and her uncontrollable tumble saw the dagger plunged into her gut. Despite being a dead girl walking, Chinami's harshly-earned pain tolerance and will to survive held strong and pushed her to struggle up and continue to stumble away as fast as she could, leaving the dagger in her gut to stem the bleeding. She took advantage of the distance gained from being tossed to exit the ruins and begin scaling the side using thick overgrown vines, the guardian on her heels like a bloodhound, as it stabbed its appendages into old stone to scale after her.
Flopping onto the top with the guardian practically breathing down her neck, Chinami ripped the dagger out of her stomach and swung at the guardians hands in despair, only to be genuinely surprised, when the dagger parted the mystically enchanted substance like butter, causing the guardian to lose its grip and tumble down to the ground. Filled with renewed hope that she could at least take this monster with her, Chinami's face turned ashen when the guardian revealed the ability fly, and she only barely managed to roll away from a slamming blow that would have ended her as surely as her father.
It occurred to her then that she was about to die, and she had something of a mental blue screen... and a realization. Something about that very concept offended her on a personal level, more than anything had ever irked her before. It was a visceral hatred, a bone-deep revulsion. The very idea that she would die, that it was inevitable?
No.
She was a survivor.
She would not die.
She refused to die.
As the guardian's arms rose for a final blow that Chinami was far too weakened by blood loss to avoid, the girl raised the dagger with every intent of chopping those arms off the moment the came down, using their own momentum against them, and gave a blood-curdling scream of animalistic defiance. Suddenly, both Chinami and the guardian were surprised by a pearly-white ghostly fist impacting the side of the guardian's head with a sound like thunder and such force that the construct was nearly beheaded by the single blow.
As the guardian reeled back, Chinami goggled at the sight of the ghostly white figure standing over her with an appearance reminiscent of a feminine golem with ethereal blue "hair". It glanced over its shoulder at her, gave her a simple nod and then, without fanfare, ripped forward with a flurry of blows so fast that Chinami's eyes watered, a series of thunderclaps shaking the ruins, as gusts of wind buffered her hair and eyes.
The ruin guardian tried to fight back, but it was suddenly outclassed so entirely it somehow ceased to be humorous, even despite it mercilessly hunting her down moments before. The pearly-white ghost utterly dismantled the golem in moments, its fists caving great craters into enchanted stone and metal, and the aftershocks seemed to be doing almost as much damage internally. It felt like a small eternity; when in reality, the barrage lasted no longer than 7 seconds, before the spirit halted its attacks and casually turned its back on the guardian. A moment later, as if suddenly remembering it had been struck, the golem seemed to implode from the sheer force of the blows, before the force finished its inward journey and exploded out and away, scattering the golem's parts across the jungle below.
Her pulse pounding in her ears, Chinami initially feared for her life, but the longer she stared at the being that had saved her, the more she came to recognize a strange connection there that hadn't existed before. As much as she wanted to explore that oddity, she needed to go see if her mother could be saved. It was around this moment that she noticed -to her great unease and simultaneous relief- that both the dagger and her wounds had disappeared, nowhere to be found.
The situation being as urgent as it was, the young girl was forced to abandon thought in that direction and hurry. She returned the inner ruins and found, indeed, that her mother had survived, but she was seriously injured. The girl performed emergency first aid to the best of her ability and confirmed that, luckily, her mother was in a state to be moved, if barely. At Chinami's request, her new ghostly companion carefully picked up and carried the woman, and the two left the ruins to seek aid from the rest of the archeology group.
Chinami's tale of daring and lethality and the seriousness of her mother's injuries prompted an immediate evacuation back to civilization to seek treatment for Chinami's mother and prevent the rest of the team from potentially falling prey to threats similar to what Chinami had miraculously vanquished. While they were able to save her mother's life, she was permanently injured enough to make performing her prior job all too dangerous. Between that and the reality-check of her husband's funeral, Chinami's mother chose to abandon archeology and take up being a botanist in Rhea.
While distraught that it had taken her father's life and nearly her own to make her dreams come true, Chinami couldn't help but be pleased with the outcome. She was almost unnerved by the sheer feeling of triumph that seemed to sweep through her body the minute she stepped into her new permanent home. She had survived everything the world had thrown at her. She had survived an almost certainly cursed stab from a artifact and could only theorize that the dagger must have been part of some sort of divine or demonic "test of worthiness". She couldn't begin to imagine why she had passed where others had assumedly failed, and she couldn't help but worry about what had happened to the dagger itself, knowing that it hadn't returned itself to its original resting place.
But in the end, such concerns were irrelevant. She had survived. She had conquered life's trials and tribulations, and she been rewarded with power and the opportunity to grasp the life she had begun to dream of, a successful quiet life, devoid of enemies or danger. All that was left was to not waste that opportunity.
And the best way to do that was to get an education.
She had been studying the four great schools of Rhea, weighing her options. Unfortunately, her options were slim. Laurels' and Clauzwitz' were too high class for her lackluster education to keep her enrolled. 13 year old Chinami hadn't the greatest opinion of her scholastic ability, and both schools looked too strict for her to have time to catch up before being expelled... assuming she could even get accepted to begin with. Mephisto's just seemed like a bad idea for her overall reputation, and the school itself was impossible to even find, much less enroll in. Chinami could only assume that the school reached out students rather than the other way around, and one might possibly get in through a recommendation the Chinami didn't have.
Kibari's was the only option left. With its lackluster standards of attendance and gaudy decadence, somehow, this was the only option left to her amongst the most "respectable" schools. Despite that, it had fair education facilities, so it would have to do. Chinami had only about 2 years to correct her scholastic deficiencies and train her new power, so she set to both with a fervor like nothing before.
And with time and dedication, 2 years later, she swept through the acceptance process and took her first steps towards peace and success. From that day forward, she swore that she would work hard, harder than anyone else, in order to compensate for where she was lacking and, more importantly, where her new school might also be lacking.
Powers: Drawn from the stab of a demonic dagger, Chinami's main abilities stem from the "Blessing" of Pride now infused into and bloating her soul.
Chinami's primary ability is to manifest a pseudo-physical "punch-ghost", a uniquely personalized projection/extension of her soul, which can move up to 5 meters away from her. It acts at Chinami's will and mental command, being directly connected to her soul; for this reason, it is often prone to react early to threats Chinami's main body couldn't see coming but subconsciously recognized through gut instinct and the like. The "Spirit" can selectively tangibly interact with the world and is completely unaffected or hindered by any effect that does not specifically target souls or -to a lesser degree- life force. If it is harmed, however, any damage it takes is reflected back on Chinami, but not any special esoteric effects beyond that. It can use its selective tangibility to peek through or reach inside and meddle with the insides of targets, and this same selective tangibility allows it to overlay itself upon Chinami's main body, letting her use it as armor.
On the flipside, the silver lining of being able to be harmed by soul/lifeforce attacks cuts both ways. The Spirit is able to physically interact with -and use it's third secondary power on- objects and effects that normally can only be targeted/opposed on a spiritual level.
The core nature of this power is: "A projection of the user's soul." As such, both this power and the derivative, linked sub-powers cannot be copied by the typical means of most "Gift copiers". Rather, copying this power merely causes the copier to manifest their own unique "Spirit", complete with its own set of abilities derived from their core self. Her power and its derivative abilities also do not qualify as magic for the purposes of forces that interact with such, like anti-magic. They are a purely spiritual phenomenon.
This power passively enhances all the standard physical abilities of her "Spirit" so that it is more than a mere ghost, but these enhancements tend to weaken in unison with Chinami's own accruement of injuries and/or exhaustion. At full strength, it is able to move at super-sonic speeds with reaction time to match. Strength-wise, it's somewhat less intimidating, able to lift weights equivalent to a truck and toss them a short distance -though certainly not casually; luckily, Chinami has enough control of this strength to ensure that she doesn't accidentally kill others. Its 5 Basic Senses are dialed up to 11, along with its 6th/spiritual ones, but they seem to have protection against being overwhelmed and are thus unhindered by blinding light, deafening sounds and the like.
Durability is included in these enhancements but doesn't weaken like the others. Even if her Spirit can be harmed by effects that target souls or life force, those effects must be of notable strength to actually break through the Spirit's durability. The result is that, even if she knows she will take damage regardless, it is still safer overall to use her Spirit as a shield against effects that can hurt it and mitigate some harm.
Both Chinami and her Spirit are able to perceive spiritual/soul/lifeforce-based phenomenon in the world, to the point, for example, that she is able to witness someone's soul leaving their body on death and can use her Spirit to interact with such things before they pass on should she be fast enough.
Chinami, at all times that it is summoned, shares senses with her Spirit. This doesn't appear to cause any disorientation, and due to the semi-autonomous nature of the Spirit, she is able to multitask well enough to simultaneously control both her bodies at full effectiveness. As a side effect, sharing her Spirit's senses allows her to perceive the world in extreme slow motion if she wishes, allowing her a great amount of time to think and strategize.
A power that Chinami strongly suspects may be her true main power, with her Spirit merely a means to channel it. She has noticed that she can cause selective alterations to objects/creatures her Spirit touches, at the cost of getting strangely too spiritually and physically exhausted to safely use it in rapid succession without risking self-harm. Chinami's high willpower and ability to mentally push through debilitating injury tend to be detrimental here, as if she isn't careful, she is fully capable of literally exhausting herself to death from overuse, which is why she typically limits herself to 10 uses per short period/fight out of caution. Under the right extraordinary circumstances, it is possible for the backlash of her power to even damage or potentially destroy her very soul
The size of her target doesn't seem to be a factor, other than size often innately causing the needed change to often be more "extreme" or "exotic". The ability seems to allow her to affect any aspect of a target (material, integrity, enchantments, etc.), but inflicts greater exhaustion the more extreme or exotic the change she wishes to make, unless she takes time to slowly inflict it over the course of a minute or so while maintaining contact. Targets must, at their core, remain the same thing they were when they started, performing the same base function in the world. However, this ability apparently considers "change of location" a valid part of its purview, allowing teleportation. While she can affect and boost herself and others with this ability, she cannot affect her Spirit itself, no matter how hard she tries.
When she first discovered this ability, the changes she caused tended to be temporary, lasting only mere minutes. After years of training, the changes have come to consistently last between 3-4 hours, with the strange exception of healing and teleportation, which are always permanent unless she specifically attempts to have them not be. Chinami has good reason to suspect that in time and with training, she will be able to consistently make all her changes permanent.
Chinami has yet to identify the core principle of this ability's function, but she has her suspicions, rooted in a fair amount of high-level theory. She has also taken great care to conceal the full extent of this ability beyond healing, paranoid -or perhaps rightfully worried- about what knowledge of its existence might bring upon her.
The truth of this ability's functionality is as simple as it is terrifying, and it is this high concept truth that currently evades Chinami's realization and stymes her mastery of this power. Her power, quite simply, swaps targets with an alternate dimension version of themselves. Rather, to be specific, it doesn't actually transfer things across dimensional barriers but instead merely "copies" an alternate existence and then "pastes" it over the one in Chinami's world, overwriting the prior existence.
As a result of the battle with Nightman and being pushed too far past her safe limits, Chinami's soul has become cracked, making it lethally vulnerable to the backlash of her "It's My Life" power. Unless she should allow the damage to fully heal, using that power before then is nearly guaranteed to be fatal. On the somewhat more positive side, much like a broken bone or torn muscle, her soul will eventually heal back stronger, resulting in the power's safe limits being further loosened once it is safe to utilize again. A notable visual indicator of the lingering damage is crimson lines reminiscent of cracked glass scattered across her Spirit's body.
Chinami appears to be the equivalent of a Goth; though she barely dresses the part. More notable than her appearance is her attitude and sharp tongue. She seems almost allergic to the very concept of romance, and she has very little tolerance for the social games others do, choosing to be blunt and brutally honest with her words. While she isn't typically the sort to resort to violence, despite her caustic attitude, she has no tolerance for others attempting to get in her way or sabotage her scholastic achievements. She prefers not to fight, but when she must... She plans to win by any means necessary.
Chinami on the surface doesn't have any rivals she is aware of. As she seeks a peaceful life, she pays little attention to those that despise her, since she knows that is often the best way to prevent them from having any power over her. Indeed, she chooses to be as dismissive as possible and completely banish such things as "enemies" and "winning or losing" from her mind; the only thing she appears to care about is merely succeeding in life. This standoffish attitude doesn't earn her many friends, given how business-oriented she is in regards to education and how disdainful she seems to be of most of her fellow students, who she sees as coasting slackers. As a result, she has something of a reputation as a bitch and general try-hard. However, those that manage to get into her good graces will find themselves stuck with an almost obnoxiously steadfast ally, who perhaps tends overmuch towards less moral options when it comes to aiding them.
-Harumi Nadakai: Chinami's mother and a botanist in Rhea. Chinami both loves and resents her. Chinami has chosen to hide her healing abilities from her mother, allowing the woman to stay permanently injured, as Chinami believes this is the best way to keep her from having any ideas of returning to her former dangerous tomb-raiding profession. In order to preserve her mother's life -and her own quiet life- this is what Chinami believes is the greatest kindness she can give, her trust in her mother's own judgement forever tarnished. Harumi, on the other hand, does actually love her daughter and seems to have learned her lesson from the incident that widowed her, and she apparently fully supports Chinami's ambitions, to which the latter feels rather guilty about not knowing how she should feel about that.
-Mina Taurus: She's dummy thicc and also just dumm. Her so-called "Gift"-shaped curse has made her vulnerable to particular sorts of people. At least, this is Chinami's thinking, and the Goth's particular grudge against mental manipulation drives her altruism in defending Mina from both others and her own actions (and more often than not, protecting others from the cowgirl's impulses). It also helps that Mina strikes right within Chinami's preference zone, to her own guilt. Without a way to cure or mitigate Mina's "curse" long-term, Chinami feels like actually exploring her desires would be taking advantage of the bovine babe. Of course, there's also Mina's "boyfriend", Suzakura, to consider. Chinami has enough class not to be a homewrecker, despite any implications that it could be more than a duo...
-Suzakura Plagerzes: Chinami sees him as an obnoxious asshole with an entirely absent capacity to take a hint. His lecherous ways appeal poorly to her, as Chinami upholds stable, loyal romances as an ideal. As such, she has never even half-heartedly considered his advances seriously. Early on, she attempted to play dense to drive him off, only to realize Suzakura has Sanji-levels of black-hole density to match... at least in regards to her seemingly. If her Pride were to allow her, she'd have bluntly told him off long before. Unfortunately, it's rather devolved into a game of chicken. Chinami further dislikes his seemingly pointless bullying; though she is only prone to step in once he starts going too far. A certain level of jealousy drives Chinami as well, envying him for his relationship with Mina. Despite this, Chinami has made no serious attempts to separate the two and usurp his position, believing it's not her place... not yet.
-Cel: Phone Number: (666) 420-6969... somehow. Strange guy. Their ambiguous gender bothers her a fair bit less than how they seem to flaunt that ambiguity; a forever unsolved mystery niggling at the back of her mind. She can definitely respect their academic motivation and skill as an ambitious peer. If only they were less violent... and didn't fuck with her powers just by existing within line of sight.
-Lord Kiburi's School for the Truly Exceptional: As one of the very few students that is actually exceptionally scholastically motivated and attempting to do more than the minimum, Chinami is held as something of a prized star student by the faculty. While they are too lackadaisical to afford her any real material benefits, she has their favor simply for how little trouble she causes them. Given how hands-off the school already is, somehow gaining an even more hands-off stance from the faculty is worthy of note. The ignorant and jealous among her fellow students might see her as something of a teacher's pet, despite her only doing nothing but showing genuine interest in the taught lessons. And these opinions might be shaken somewhat if any realized just how much she actually disdains the entire school as a whole.
"This One hungers. Wouldst thou perhaps be willing to donate to a worthy cause?" Length: 1'8" (6" hilt, 14" blade)
Name: Caelum Ripper "The Hungering Maw", "Bane of the Heavens", "The Darkness that Swallowed the End". Age: Centuries. Forged no more than century past the creation of the very first Devils and Demons, it is truly ancient. Sex: It's a dagger. But it will answer to "He" for simplicity's sake. The baritone voice supports this. Appearance: Seething with pilfered souls and magic, an ominous green mist drifts from the obsidian-black barbed blade of this unholy dagger, and the length seems to pulse with eldritch light from within. Upon the hilt, a toothed opening akin to an eel's maw seems to palpably hunger. Nationality: It's still a dagger. Though, it claims strict loyalty to the Devil race, no matter what. Grade: It's definitely still a dagger.
Demons and devils. Long have they retained a natural connection to such things known as the Seven Deadly Sins. Literally. In the past, the Seven Deadly Sins was the title of the Original Seven devils, created when the Gods desperately experimented in their efforts to recreate the process of making humans in the absence of the Over-Deity. But, like all others, the Devils were deemed a failure and set aside.
These seven, aghast and bereft of purpose, came to nurse a particularly strong grudge against the Gods, being created and then cast aside like trash as mere failed experiments. Unfortunately, the Original Seven were powerful, far more-so than the Gods might have preferred, being created early on in the unrefined process. As a result, they were born and injected with a truly reckless amount of power for ultimately mortal beings early on in the experiments, and after being thrown away, these seven vengefully waged a war against the heavens, a war that quickly stalemated... but not necessarily in their favor.
Though they had obtained victories, even wrested control of several lower planes away from their Divine creators and severely injured a number of the former owners, they could not escape an inexorable fact.
Given that the demons/devils would have naturally had a startlingly low population compared to humanity at the time (and even presently), they ultimately could not win a war of attrition against the human champions and the Gods themselves. So, the Seven settled into a cold war for a period, beginning to bide their time, looking for ways to increase their personal power and the population of their armies. This state of affairs suited several of them better than others, but few were more disgruntled than Lord Wrath, Lord Greed, Lord Envy... and Lord Pride.
Wrath's rage was unquenchable, and the cease-fire drove him nearly as mad as the sight of his creators. Greed wanted. Always, wanted more, never satisfied with mediocrity, with simply living. Envy practically frothed at the mouth at the thought of the worship and luxury the Gods had. Pride? Retreat and defeat burned him. After all their efforts and losses, the humiliation of giving up in the end? Unacceptable.
Lord Pride was a conniver, a leader, and -were he so bold as to say it- the most fit to rule of his fellows. But despite his congenial grin and silver tongue, it might be fair to say he hated the Gods more than any of his fellows... and was the most willing to take risks to see his revenge through.
That said, he was also practical enough to not recklessly "storm the gates" as it were, like Lord Wrath would have preferred. It burned him, made his indignation curdle all the harder at the acknowledgement of reality, but he knew they would have to wait for the right time to strike.
Lust was busy striking up a new business of having demons breed with as many humans (and each-other) as possible to increase population and sow chaos among mortals, and Pride could acknowledge the viability of her methods long term, leaving her to them. Sloth's nature meant that once he finally wound down, he was more trouble to wind back up than was worth bothering with long term. Gluttony was... consuming and generally being a net drain on their resources, so Pride encouraged him to take his indulgences to the Mortal plan alone to spare the rest of them the costs. Gluttony did so without any real complaint.
That managed, Pride proposed his plan to his three remaining allies. Their obstacles were simple: population, divine immortality, personal power, and the power the Gods had. Lust was handling the first, so that was not their issue. Immortality was a concern. The devils could die, and they'd failed to kill even a single God thus-far. The latter two issues one could easily mistake for being one and the same, but Pride elaborated: While personal power was nice, the real problem was that the Gods still held sole Authority over the ability of Creation. With it, they could continue to make all new dangers to the devils while also getting closer to creating humans again. If they succeeded in the latter, then the numbers game may become a distance the Seven couldn't ever close.
They needed a way to kill the Gods, and they needed a way to obtain the power of Creation or deny it to their creators. Personal power and improvement? That would come in time, and unfortunately, Pride suspected they would have a sizable wait ahead of them indeed before they finally finished preparations.
Pride knew just what to look for, but it would take time to uncover through sending out agents to the Mortal plane. In the meanwhile, he began to take up capturing and dissecting those that had received the Gods' blessings. Between the magics of Greed and Envy, they were able to forcibly extract and implant such blessings in others, not always successfully, such was the volatile nature of such things.
The devils sought to discover the principles behind the function of these "Gifts" that they might replicate such abilities for themselves... and also begin to bestow their own warped versions upon humanity, especially amongst the cults they were fostering. Pride, however, in particular, sought to find a way to turn such things against the gods directly.
Pride had begun construction of a weapon, a great and terrible conglomeration of destruction and perversion. Using dozens, hundreds of stolen Gifts, he created a sword that would be able to slip through the Gods' innate defenses through possessing a portion of their own power. With help from the rest of the Seven, they imbued it with demonic might in counter-balance to the holy and anointed the unnatural union of powers within using the blood and souls of countless humans and demons alike. It would be worth it, they decided, even at such a steep cost to themselves. For, in truth, the terrible power of this sword was realized better than any of the devils could have hoped.
The sword, thusly named Caelum Ripper could invert the normal recollection process for distributed Divine essence, allowing it to steal the power of the Gods and deposit it into another... in theory.
But Pride wasn't satisfied with just that.
Taking power from them was nice and all, but Pride would only settle for the death of the Gods entirely. Nothing less was sufficient to soothe his wounded... well, pride. Certainly, the sword as it was could hurt them, badly even, enough so to perhaps destroy their physical bodies and force them to engage in a strenuous resurrection process. But it couldn't kill them, couldn't extinguish their divine core even after weakening it. But... he knew what could change that.
The one thing the Gods truly feared.
The sole existence the Gods couldn't handle.
The Great Evil.
The rest of the Seven, even Wrath, called him mad, but Pride assured them that this was the only way. As they were, by the time they achieved the personal power required to slay the Gods, the latter would likely have long since gotten stronger in turn and recreated the absent Over-God's human creation method. And finally, decades after their initial clash with the heavens, Pride's investment in agents on the Mortal plane had borne fruit. They had discovered a fragment of the being, large enough to communicate... to negotiate, and more importantly, large enough to have the power to fuel Pride's plot.
Understandably wary, the rest of the Seven opted still to come with him to treat with the fragment, as Pride made his sales pitch to the Gods' nemesis. Surprisingly, even suspiciously, the Great Evil was thoroughly accommodating. While its goals remained as mysterious as ever, slaying the Gods was a blatantly important step to them, and a true opportunity to make that happen even in its diminished state was one it claimed it could hardly pass up.
The Great Evil offered each member of the Seven two boons individually. Firstly, its own twisted form of the Gods' blessings, one that would enhance their current ones and enhance them further in turn, allowing them to mostly close any physical gaps that might exist between them and their creators (durability, speed, etc.).
Secondly, it would enhance their personal weapons. While such enhancements wouldn't allow them to kill the Gods without great effort, it would still allow them to hurt and incapacitate their creators... long enough for Pride to finish the job. Indeed, the weapon Pride had championed the creation of had a sufficiently strong foundation that it could accept power far beyond that of any other weapon at the Seven's disposal, and Pride was seemingly more than happy to forgo the physical boon in order to reserve more power being dedicated to the weapon alone. In fact, he insisted on it.
Other non-standard acceptances were Gluttony and Lust, the former who didn't trust something he believed was looking at him like a predator would, and the latter whose connections to the true primal nature of desire screamed warnings to her about allowing such a being direct access to her body. Both chose only to have their weapons enhanced, feigning "following Pride's lead" to have stronger offense.
With those little hiccups out of the way, the Seven accepted the Great Evil's power and set out to finish what they'd started, evading the divine agents that had caught wind of the meeting and sought to disrupt it. While they were too late to prevent the worst of it, the fragment of the Great Evil was weakened enough after aiding the Seven to be destroyed once and for all. In the aftermath, initially, Pride had the Seven go incognito to experiment with and understand their new limits, while he made some final personal... and clandestine touches to Caelum Ripper.
In the end, they waited another two decades, allowing the heat to die down from their risky meeting and allowing them to finish their personal preparations and master their new limits. It also allowed Lust's plan to bear further fruit, skyrocketing the demon population to a size sufficient for an army and successfully compensating for the mass sacrifices used to create Caelum Ripper.
Eventually, the day came to enact their vengeance.
Initially, the Seven ambushed several gods that had descended to the Mortal plane for one reason or another, outnumbering and overpowering them in duels of seven verses one or two. While most escaped, their schemes satisfactorily bore fruit. Caelum Ripper was able to successfully slay the God of Realm Traversal, leeching their power into itself, before using the stolen power to reinforce its capacity to steal even more next time.
They knew the Gods would quickly realize what had happened and begin preparing countermeasures, so speed was of the essence. A prolonged fight was outside their best interests, even with the Great Evil's aid, so they chose to storm the heavens directly, planning to do as much damage as possible in the Alpha strike, before retreating and returning to guerilla tactics for the remainder of the new war.
The Seven went alone, leaving their armies on the Mortal plane to keep the Gods' champions from interfering. Assaulting the divine realms, the Seven found their opposition waiting for them, but while the Gods were still scrambling for a unified plan of action, the Seven still had the momentum. Near to a dozen more Gods were severely injured before the remaining united enough to turn the tide, driving the Seven into an unfavorable pitched battle. Their bloodlust sated for the time being, the Seven began to struggle through a fighting retreat, ready to escape the heavens and initiate the next stage of their plan.
The Great Evil had other ideas.
In truth, through granting the Seven its "blessings", the Great Evil had taken the opportunity to preserve its essence within several of the desperate fools. In this way, it had spread itself out in a manner that would allow it to avoid destruction and cultivate a recovery of its lost power. The Seven couldn't have made themselves more convenient tools if they tried, and the Great Evil had absolutely no intention of retreating.
For two decades, the Great Evil had bided its time. The horrible truth was that what the comparatively young and naive devils had found was not a mere fragment at all, but a far larger portion of the eldritch being. For such a large portion, its touch could easily be the water to the devil's sugar. It could have consumed them at any time as easily as any God, but it knew if it was hasty it wouldn't be able to invade the heavens. It was only now that it fully exercised the true power it held, overwhelming the minds and spirits of the Demon Lords and consuming and subsuming them into itself.
Pride, Lust and Gluttony, through foresight and wisdom, were spared this fate, but they could only look on in horror as the chaos erupted, their possessed comrades becoming all the stronger in the face of what was effectively true death. However, the Great Evil wasn't striking at just the Gods. No, even now, it still couldn't kill them as it was. Only one thing could, the sword wielded by Pride.
The remained Deadly Sins were forced to struggle to even survive in the face of the three-way brawl that things had devolved into, even as the Great Evil boasted of its success and gloated over the inevitable demise of all but itself.
Right up until Pride's blade ripped through Envy's body and consumed and extinguished the fragment of the Great Evil within just as easily as any divine target.
"What?!" "What, indeed. Did you really think I wouldn't anticipate your betrayal? Last I checked, you weren't actually the one winning your little pissing match with the divine, so I figured a weapon that could kill them could be tuned to include you just as well. In case you haven't noticed, I took precautions. Your essence was strictly confined to specific tasks within this weapon, and now that you've stopped playing games? Well, it's the perfect way to seal you... Lust, take Gluttony and run. I'll finish this." "Non-" "Sweet cheeks? Shut up and let me be Prideful one last time?" "..."
Hesitantly, Lust and Gluttony took the opportunity to flee, and Pride faced what he felt in his gut would be his end with a dignity few might have expected from him. The Great Evil, now unleashed upon the heavens themselves was a voracious and indiscriminate foe, and while it couldn't yet kill the gods by its own power, without Pride's blade... it was only a matter of time before that changed. The Great Evil began to consume and repurpose the holy fundament of the realm, growing in strength and menace with every passing moment.
Pride, for his part, suddenly found himself agreeing to a temporary ceasefire with the gods. His blade was the only thing they had at their disposal that could stop the Great Evil, and the Gods couldn't safely so much as lay a finger on it (the being or the weapon) without becoming victims. As such, they became the Devil Lord's shields, giving him openings to strike at the Great Evil and his subsumed former comrades. Though it burned at him to accept their aid, Pride had always been good at not living up to his namesake when it mattered most.
So, he fought alongside the beings he had long dedicated his life to slaying, acknowledging the bitter truth that whatever else he might want, he could see now his foolhardiness in treating with the Great Evil. In fact, he had realized in some part how doomed the Seven were long before when adding his final touches to Caelum Ripper in the last two decades. Finally able to study the power of the Great Evil contained within the weapon personally, he had realized their folly, realized that four of his comrades were dead men walking... and that his arrogance was responsible for their fates.
Whatever else he may have been: an overconfident schemer, manipulator, liar and vengeful spiteful person, Pride... truly did care about the rest of the Seven. They were family to him, basically siblings, and now, it looked like he'd led all but two of them to a fate he'd not have wished on any but the Gods.
Slowly, but surely, the Great Evil was robbed of its advantages. The living corpses of Wrath, Greed and Sloth were pinned down and laid to final rest, and the Great Evil, now bereft of effective meat-shields was driven into a corner, lashing about furiously like a wild animal, desperate to get some final catastrophic parting shot in. For it knew well, even the death of a single one of the Gods before it would be an absolutely devastating blow to all the realms and likely the true death knell to the Gods ever being able to create more humans. In the absence of the Over-Deity, each God, no matter how large or small was almost unanimously a critical aspect of that procedure, a critical fragment of their creator's power that, once extinguished, would close that door forever.
The Great Evil knew this, and it had finally stored up enough power, enough to make something stick. It chose carefully from amongst its potential targets, before settling on what it saw as the most devastating option, the Goddess of Rejuvenation, a healer and critical portion of the divine resistance lain out before it. She lingered on the backline, purging and replacing the corrupted flesh of her fellows who had recoiled from its dread touch.
The Great Evil lunged with a speed borne of desperation and spite, a blow with all its remaining strength behind it, an attack far too dangerous for any of the Gods to risk blocking. And so they dodged, moved out of the way... leaving the far from martially inclined Goddess wide open.
Blood splattered across the scarred and ruined divine courtyard.
The Great Evil felt pain.
Pride, who had also been standing on the backline being protected by the Gods, had intercepted the blow. His blade had successfully blunted the strike somewhat and pierced the Great Evil dead center, but the attack itself, a largely physical blow, had only been fully redirected from the Goddess by blowing straight through him instead.
With a bloody grin, Pride activated one of his final touches to the blade, expelling the majority of its gathered power into the Great Evil, even as it drew in the Great Evil's essence and used it to continue the cycle of its own destruction. Every scrap of divine energy pilfered so far, every stolen blessing, the power he and the Seven had invested, the power of countless human and demonic souls that fueled the thrumming runes and black magics. He expelled just about all of it, every bit of spare power, as much as he could manage without having the enchantments fall apart at the seams.
And with a shrieking crack that sounded like the world coming undone, the top half of the blade fractured and then shattered under the onslaught, driving fragmenting shards all throughout the Great Evil that indiscriminately unleashed whatever payload they could manage. There was a howl of reality sundering, as the space between stars almost seemed to bleed into the heavens, the Great Evil coming undone and evaporating to nothing. A violently vibrating Caelum Ripper, bleeding a familiar kaleidoscopic magic was cast by the weakened Pride into the closing gap and thrust without destination to places unknown, only presumably a location in the known realms.
Pride died.
In truth, even with the Goddess of Rejuvenation directly beside him and urgently tending to him in the aftermath, his death was inevitable the moment the Great Evil had so much as touched him, never mind pierced him. He was no God, and his constitution was nowhere near sufficient to delay the encroachment of the Great Evil's power well enough for the Goddess to work with. Even so, she was able to delay the inevitable for a while, long enough for Pride to convey a final message to Lust and Gluttony, to call off the war and the direct hostilities with the heavens. Long enough for him to ask why they were trying to save him, even after he'd masterminded the death of one of their own and nearly revived the Great Evil.
The Goddess replied simply that, if nothing else, she was trying to repay the favor. She then assured him that he had, in fact, failed to kill the God of Realm Traversal. For if he had truly succeeded, then the Seven would have never managed to enter the heavens to begin with. It was here and now that Pride was told of the true nature of Gods... of what they had lost when the Over-Deity disappeared. Even a single death amongst their number would have meant the degradation and ultimate destruction of a fundamental force of reality. Inevitably, it would be a calamity that spared no-one, certainly not the devils. It was more likely than not that the God of Realm Traversal had simply cast himself away to safety to recuperate, exchanging his body for a convincing fake.
Though his pride burned in shame at his folly, Lord Pride could only acknowledge their luck at avoiding that fate. In the end, it would have meant more than the deaths of four of his brothers. It seemed now that at least two of the Seven would survive where it might once have been none. And so, he lay dying in the heavenly realm, only able to reflect that at the least he could take pride in knowing he had not died to a God's hands.
In the aftermath of the Devil Lord's passing, the Gods and Demons finally drew up a proper cease-fire, united under a desire to avoid calamity. With the remaining Devil Lords now aware of the truth of the Gods' role maintaining reality at Pride's final request, Lust and Gluttony -already the sort to prefer avoiding violence- were more than happy the meet the Gods halfway. They withdrew their armies from humans to land that was not yet properly claimed and agreed to surrender the weapons enchanted by the Great Evil, which were to be thoroughly purged and destroyed to ensure nothing could come of them. In return, the Devils were given the patronage of several Gods -some more sinister than others- and could finally be rid of the jealousy they had carried for humans for so long.
At the end of things, however, neither devil or God alike was able to locate or retrieve Pride's sword, cast into the boundary between worlds. By the time the God of Realm Traversal had recovered and returned, it was far too late to recover it. Though he was able to determine the location it had initially landed -somewhere on the Mortal plane, it had already been found and hidden away by persons unknown. After an extensive and exhaustive search, decades of lacking results ultimately determined that they would simply have to await its reappearance... for better or worse. Ultimately, the primary worry was that the sword still retained some of the Great Evil's essence, but they would be unable to determine if the purge initiated by the weapon itself had been total until it was found.
The reality was that the sword -now more a jagged dagger than anything else- had been obtained by an Aztec-like society of the age, an occultist society that soon discovered the devastating power of the dagger, able to kill with so much as a single prick of the blade, draining the life-force and souls of the unfortunate. In fact, the blade could kill even without a cut and demonstrated a will to drain those that so much as wielded it for extended periods. It was also discerning enough to punish those that sought to "cheat" such a thing and pass it periodically through different owners. The blade was temperamental and its standards unknown, but it was certainly noticed that over time, the initially jagged, damaged form was smoothing out and repairing.
Thus, it soon came to be the superstition that the blade was a divine artifact, a weapon that clearly commanded mortals to only wield it for worthy causes, and so, it was relegated primarily to a ceremonial purpose and otherwise hidden away under the best magical and physical defenses the time period could bring to bear. In time, the society that found the blade fell to ruin -as so many inevitably do, and the now dagger was lost to history.
The truth of the blade, now lying dormant, however, remained a lingering proof of Lord Pride's foresight and magical genius.
Once he realized the near-inevitable doom of himself and his comrades, he began repurposing some of the systems of the blade. The Great Evil's power had been successfully purged fully from the blade in Pride's final death strike, as he had deliberately designed a receiver for the Great Evil's power and limited the storage to the upper half of the blade, where it would be most useful against his divine foes. Thus, the destruction of the blade was as much about the overload of power as it was the removal of every scrap of infected material from its form.
Acknowledging the possibility -even likelihood- of the Seven's deaths, Pride had set about preparing a contingency system of inheritance. Using the essence of the Seven within the blade, he created a series of runic "ghosts" that could emulate the Seven. He determined that the blade's stored power and remaining Gifts could only be partitioned to those that met criteria determined by the will of one of those Shades, and anyone who didn't meet the criteria would be drained and used as fuel for both the weapon's standard functions and the inevitable repair it would need to undergo once the Great Evil was purged.
The end result was that once a worthy successor to any one of their legacies could be found -regardless of their origin, race or creed, they would be imbued with demonic essence, allowing them to awaken their own "blessing" of a Gift independent of the Gods. Inheriting the blood and authority of their benefactors, chosen would be able to take up the mantles they had left so dearly empty. And so long as this blade existed, the Devils would always be able to rise from the ashes in some time or place, even if they were otherwise wiped from the face of the earth.
And then, one day centuries later, a little girl with more grit and spite than most grown men unwittingly took the dagger's test... and became the first to pass with flying colors. And in the aftermath, though she was unaware, the dagger had hidden itself in the only place it could, the only place it could find solace and further its purpose... within her. For who better to show it the way than the inheritor of Lord Pride himself?
It would not reveal itself quite yet, naturally. For all her worthiness, she was just a child. She needed time to grow, to mature her power. She could not yet afford to be threatened by those that sought the Caelum Ripper. And in truth? As diminished as it was, the blade too sought time to regather itself from the sharp expenditure of power required to awaken the first Inheritor. So, it would wait, watch and prepare; for the Claiming had finally begun.
Powers:
Caelum Ripper is imbued with countless terrible runes and magics, both given and stolen. At one time, the unified purpose of these powers created a weapon worthy of slaying Gods and able to extinguish a remnant of the Great Evil at steep cost to itself. The dagger has the ability to manipulate souls and raw magic with a frightening ease, but it currently must make direct physical contact to perform its work. However, while its objective practical knowledge is intact, its ability to perform proper spell-casting with pilfered power is utterly crippled. The dagger's power is entirely limited to internal and touch-based manipulations; the functions for anything further are either destroyed outright or still undergoing strenuous and delicate repairs. The dagger can telekinetically move itself, strongly enough to do battle using its own edge, but it prefers not to show this off except as a last resort and in short bursts, since those functions are still badly damaged and tend to leak truly wasteful amounts of power.
In terms of durability, Caelum Ripper has done battle with divine weapons and endured the onslaught of the Great Evil, even successfully safely containing the power of the latter for a period measured in decades. It was only shattered in the end by what was effectively a self-destruct. Nowadays, while it wouldn't loose outright to either the Gods or the Great Evil, it certainly wouldn't oppose them carelessly without taking further -even serious- damage. Many of its enchantments are damaged or lost, but it at least doesn't rust and is fairly indestructible to most mortal means.
In terms of sharpness, Caelum Ripper was never particularly famous for actually being sharp. It pierced the defenses of Gods and the Great Evil by essentially using their own power against them, like a backdoor into their systems. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have stood much of a chance. That said, as a weapon independent of its anti God/Great Evil capabilities, it is still top tier, crafted and refined by Lord Pride, himself, over the course of the better part of a century. The edge does not wear down by normal means and, in fact, is self-repairing. It is still only a dagger, however, devoid of such modern improvements like a vibrating edge or ability to split molecules or other nonsense like that. It can part steel with relative ease, and its ability to eat magic means that targets that rely on such for durability -via enchantments or the like- are as easily pierced as anything else. The weapon is effectively the bane of most magi-tech; though it struggles with highly advanced pure technology in turn.
The primary method by which Caelum Ripper does all things, as it is primarily fueled by raw magic, soul and spiritual energy, both ambient and generated. The dagger can sense souls and communicates in part by listening to surface thoughts through the soul by proxy. Given that the soul is the core instinctual self, this makes it effectively impossible to lie to the dagger. The dagger can do the inverse to "speak", but without a way for the recipient to sense through the chaos of the dagger's aura, it is capable of deceiving others in turn.
The same goes for general spiritual energy, and the dagger is able to sense the world around it akin to a bat's echolocation through feeling the "ki of the world". Thus, it can "see" and "hear" by identifying the patterns in the subtle way the ambient ki is affected by things like sound waves. Its grasp of the other standard senses is much shakier, especially as it considers them far less important to its needs. The range of its senses is fairly large, but the further it tries to sense, the more garbled things get, especially if the area is being disturbed by Gifts and magic being hurled around in great quantities. Generally, Caelum Ripper pulls back to only sense things about a hundred feet in every direction, but it practiced narrowing its focus to keep detailed watch in a specific direction while entombed, keeping a close "eye" on the far distant entrance to its resting place.
Amongst the many things it can do with such control over raw supernatural energy, it can freely absorb from or transfer magical and spiritual energy to living beings and itself, absorb and trap souls or release them, and nigh-instantaneously identify the power source and effect of spells and Gifts it witnesses in action. It can use gathered souls as rechargeable mana batteries without destroying them, cycling through the drained souls once another set is ready and letting the old set "rest", and in an emergency, it can sacrifice and consume them wholesale for an extra-large boost of energy in the short-term. It can also hide itself within the soul of another.
Caelum Ripper is sentient, truly so, a function Lord Pride did not intentionally include. It is not sure when exactly this became the case, but it is the truth nonetheless. The dagger can think and act of its own volition. Though it has programmed directives, it is entirely capable of being discerning and flexible with them, even ignoring or acting against them outright, not that it's particularly inclined to. It is fully capable of manually adjusting the wording of its directives to account for new factors, and it is able to create or remove directives entirely.
In the latter case -the alteration, removal or addition of core directives, however, it must recieve approval from the majority of the "Ghosts" of the Seven within it. Caelum Ripper is unable to alter the "Ghosts" by any means, as it is a function specifically denied to it, added after the dagger's sentience was realized by Lord Pride. This, to its knowledge, was not directly to chain down the magical AI, but instead to ensure that the memory of the Seven had absolutely no chance of being tampered with.
Core Directives:
1): Under all circumstances, Caelum Ripper is to prioritize its own preservation above all else. The only exception is if it knows for a fact that to do so would mean the end of Devilish/Demonic kind. Devil-kind can recover from total extinction so long as Caelum Ripper exists.
2): Second only to Directive 1, Caelum Ripper is to preserve and facilitate the safety and prosperity of Devilish/Demonic kind.
3): Second only to Directive 2, Caelum Ripper is to preserve and facilitate the safety and prosperity of the Seven and their descendants.
4): Caelum Ripper shall never detrimentally drain spiritual or magical energy from a member of Devilish/Demonic kind unless it is freely offered to it by the subject or commanded by its wielder to do so.
5): Caelum Ripper is to anoint Inheritors. It is to be discerning and thorough in its evaluation, and settle for nothing less than the most ideal.
6): The Great Evil's power is to be eliminated wherever possible. It is not to be treated as an ally under any circumstances.
Caelum Ripper's primary purpose in this day and age is to preserve the legacy and authority of the Seven Deadly Sins. In anticipation of their potential demise, Lord Pride created a contingency system of inheritance for the Seven. In particular, he created a series of seven runic mimicries/simulations/ghosts of the Seven Deadly Sins and stored them within the hilt of the weapon. The purpose of these "Shades" was to ruthlessly evaluate any individual that made physical contact with the weapon, judging their "worthiness" as a potential successor to each of them individually. While any number of the Shades can voice approval and desire to "claim" a candidate, it still requires the unanimous consent of the other Lords to initiate the next step. Any candidate that is found wanting by the majority, however, is instantly drained of their life force and soul, both of which are put towards the weapon's functions.
As the "ghosts" are effectively semi-AI that operate with extraordinarily accelerated thought speeds, the evaluation process is functionally nigh-instantaneous, taking no longer than a single second from start to finish. For this reason, an unworthy target may potentially survive if they are merely grazed by the blade, but getting stabbed by or actually holding it outright is generally more than enough time for the deliberations to conclude.
To say the least, a candidate possessing the blessing of a God or the Great Evil is generally grounds for immediate failure, such is the grudge the majority of the Sins hold against such entities. In other words, those that selfishly seek power whilst already possessing it are more likely to suffer for their hubris than not, even if Greed and Envy may give such cases a token approval enough to not see failure punished with death. Generally, Pride, Lust and Gluttony will vote to spare a failure, especially if they failed only though having a preexisting blessing from a God, while Wrath, Greed and Envy will vote to kill them. Sloth tends to be unpredictable on the best of days, and his vote is generally based on who badgers him most... or on which side isn't bothering him as much. As stated: unpredictable.
Should the evaluation of the Seven be passed, however, the anointment process begins. Once their personality has been approved, all that is left is to grant them the power to match. The first step is a biological and magical transmutation, altering the candidate's biology and magical signature to become a true -if partial- direct descendant of the Seven Deadly Sins. Effectively, whatever their race, creed or origin was prior, it now contains an aspect of the Devils, bestowing upon them the position of an Inheritor, their fellow successors to be brothers, sisters and cousins in arms as the last line of defense against the annihilation of the Devilish/Demonic race. In essence, they become princes and princesses of the lower planes, "blessed" with the authority to take up the position of one of the Seven Lords.
As direct descendants of the Original Seven, their authority is one that any demon or fellow inheritor is able to subconsciously recognize on some level, but it is up to them whether or not to truly own and exercise that authority... assuming they can even get the demonic populace to accept them to begin with. This in itself is a test, as there can only be Seven Lords and only one occupying the position for each Sin. If they are weak enough to fail to force the lesser devils to fall in line, then they don't deserve to rule to begin with.
The weapon's creators were no gods certainly, but they did possess an innate form of twisted "blessing". Once one of the Seven claims a worthy candidate, their power is used as the catalyst to alter the chosen's bloodline and imbue them with demonic essence, allowing them to awaken their own "blessing" of a Gift independent of the Gods. In combination with the blade's remaining internal Gifts enhancing the process, a worthy candidate is not only guaranteed to survive whatever wounds they suffered being cut by the blade, but the process of their Gift's awakening is enhanced, ensuring a strong, worthy Gift that is as unique to them as any of the Devil Lords' had been. As the Inheritor is usually someone with a mindset compatible with the Devil Lord that approved of them first, their Gift typically takes after some aspect related to that Deadly Sin. It is not necessarily a power that was held by the original Devil Lord, but it does exemplify the inherited title in some manner.
Receiving this Cursed Blessing of the Devil Lords does not alter the preexisting personality of the recipient. Rather, it reinforces what already exists. In becoming a nascent Devil Lord, Inheritors will always, without exception, exemplify some aspects of the Sin they are empowered by. As a person, they naturally have a wide and often unpredictable variety of ways for that to manifest, but it exists nonetheless, encouraging stubborn, uncompromising action when it comes to their personal obsession. Physically, the outward signs of their transition are typically subtle in nature, enough so that they can easily continue to blend into the regular populace of their original race. Inwardly, they retain both the aspects of their original race while obtaining the Devilish ones. The genetic melting pot that is their body discards the bad and keeps only the good that it can manage from both, effectively making them far more constitutionally robust than the original Devil Lords.
Inheritors Anointed:
Envy: None. (Potential: Vera Goh)
Gluttony: None. (Potential: Mina Taurus, Darla Drake)
Lust: None. (Potential: Suzakura Plagerzes, Vera Goh)
Pride: Chinami Nadakai. (Potential: Zephyr Regrard, Darla Drake, Vera Goh, Maverick Maddison Maximiliano Majere)
Sloth: None. (Potential: Mina Taurus)
Wrath: None. (Potential: Luigi, Vera Goh, Suzakura Plagerzes)
The terror of the heavens. The weapon that nearly plunged to world into chaos... even wholesale destruction. At one time, at its height, Caelum Ripper was a sword that could have slayed the Gods, and it is only by literal divine providence that it failed. It is a weapon of such terrible might that it is hardly even referenced in legends, for the Gods and Devil Lords alike have agreed that the temptation of such a weapon's purpose is best left unawakened in the mortals. Even so, the chaos that it helped sow has led to not all such information being quashed, especially amongst Devil/Demonic kind, and through them, rumors of its existence have drifted into the world at large, lurking in wait for those that seek to find them.
-Chinami Nadakai: "The first of the Inheritors. She is young yet, naive in some ways, older than her age suggests in others. This One finds the similarities to Lord Pride... humorous? Bracing mayhap. Nostalgic perhaps. Were she not adopted by blood and magic, This One could easily mistake her for his natural born daughter. Once she breaks free of her chains, she could be the greatest of the successors. Of that, This One is certain."
-Cel: "If This One could drool, it mayhap would... Such a magnificent soul; This One would like nothing more than to swallow it."
-The Seven Deadly Sins: "This One's remaining creators are wise beyond measure. Truly, Lord Lust and Lord Gluttony have done their brothers proud. If only Lord Pride were around to see it, to see his dream realized. Oh? No, This One was merely... 'reminiscing' as they say. His death was inevitable, something he conveyed to this one at length. This One no longer truly grieves for the end he faced with a smile, but instead preserves his memory within and carries out his will."
-The Gods: "This One has mixed feelings. 'Twas they who This One was created for the sole purpose of slaying. Yet, Lord Pride's final wish was for peace, and This One shall respect that directive. This One posits that the divine creators have overmuch power, secure in their positions as individually vital life-lines of the world. However, This One acknowledges their own part in fostering peace and making reparations. As This One has said: mixed feelings."
-The Great Evil: "'Tis a vile, pestilence and scourge upon all the realms. 'Twas such a hungering maw of malice that tore the Seven asunder and slew Lord Pride and four of his brothers, and for that, there can be no forgiveness. Were This One to meet with such again, This One would be quite gladdened to demonstrate what it has learned since our final clash."
"Why settle for less than more?" Height: 5'7"
Name: Amelia Drake Age: 16 Sex: Female. Eyes: Amber-Gold Hair: Blonde Nationality: Albion Grade: St. Laurel's School of Divine Excellence. 1st year
"Never settle for less than more."
Amelia Drake did not know where she had heard the words or, indeed, whether she had truly "heard them" at all. Had they come from her father? Her sister? A business associate? Perhaps she'd picked them up from a particularly charming little story or piece of televised media... Or maybe she'd always known them, lived them, breathed them. She was a Drake. She was born in the concept of more. Molded by it. She could not conceive of the idea of less until she was old enough to comprehend that what her mother gave her was not what other children got.
And she couldn't have been more envious.
It was silly, really. She had everything else. A great sister. A father to inherit an empire from. Wealth for which there seemed no end. And servants and lessers beyond counting to serve her every whim. The best food. The best drink. The best financial and political contacts. The best investments. Tutors with Gifts specifically tailored to grant their students an inhuman capacity for learning and mental maturation. The best trainers and coaches to carve her a body that could compete athletically with the best of them. She was a prodigy. The best grades in her classes (aside from the damned Gift combat), earned legitimately and not through sycophants. She may have been the second heir, but she and her sister were not competitors... No! They were collaborators! And one day, this empire would be theirs and theirs alone, with no succession crisis to be found! She had it all!
Near enough to it...
But not a mother's love... nor a Gift.
She wasn't sure which of those things burned more.
Was she not worthy? Was she not ideal?! Her father had a Gift! Her sister had a Gift! Even that Rotten Lush had a Gift! So, why not her?! It couldn't be her wealth and advantages denying her the opportunity. Her father was so wealthy that some even said he surpassed the gods! Surely, if anything would be an insult, it was that, right?! But he was still given power. Her older sister, also born into the lap of luxury, had been blessed as well, and even now, she wove her schemes and forged her armies! And that- that Lush! That lazy sack of waste and unambitious stagnation, wallowing in a contemptable pit of disgrace! She was the proof that even garbage was worth the attention of the gods-!
So.
WHY?!
NOT?!
HER?!
But the gods were ever distant. Always had been. Always would be. At least, that was how she consoled herself. And so, begrudgingly, spitefully, she put her envy behind her. For in the end, it was not envy, not particularly a desire to have anyone else's Gift as her own. No, she just wanted more. Always more. Ever more. It didn't necessarily have to be a Gift the temporarily filled that pit in her chest that endlessly swallowed every fortune and favor she acquired. She could do without. She had to. She would. Because, as her father might say, time was money, and she was wasting time.
So, she invested. She schmoozed. She smiled and waved, partied and courted. She could not do what her father did. Nor could she do what her sister did. But she could find her niche in the family in other ways. And so she would. Admittedly, it had been more a hobby and passing interest of hers, but after seriously considering it, she would soon to begin the process of funding and maintaining a modern warship navy under the Drake family to protect... and ruthlessly enforce their interests.
Admittedly, these movements in the world by the daughter of such a figure as Arthur Drake were not quiet, and without a Gift to aid her own self-defense, she was for all her skill, comparatively vulnerable. To that end, in the course of her pursuit of becoming an alarmingly young arms dealer like her father before her, she would be gifted by her sister a personal automaton bodyguard. Dubbed Ivory, the combat model would be her quiet -if occasionally snarky- companion for years thereafter, till the present day. She wouldn't quite call them friends, but they had a bond that could perhaps be called genuine.
And then came the fall of Vauquelin... and the resulting assassins come to finish what the revolution had started. Admittedly, Amelia would not have been bothered on an emotional level should her drunken lush mother have fallen to their predations... But as a matter of principle, this scum that wanted to take what was hers deserved everything they got. Amelia had not thought herself a sadist, but she definitely enjoyed listening to the recordings she asked Darla to make of the... proceedings involving the captive hitmen.
Oh, publicly, she was plenty contrite, even genuinely unnerved by the level of frankly unnecessary sadism employed by Darla in her "experiments". Morbidly interested though she was, that didn't mean she didn't understand why her father would be... concerned when those indiscretions came to light. Privately with Darla, however, she could only muse at the hypocrisy of their father. It wasn't like those men weren't going to die anyway. Waste not, want not. The number of deaths caused by their father indirectly or otherwise simply made Darla's offense insignificant by comparison. And it was for that reason -and her already brewing thoughts of usurpation- that solidified Amelia's loyalties to her sister... in private.
Publicly, she put on a show, of course, carefully condemning the acts when she must, but otherwise remaining silent of the matter. And Darla was quite understanding, she thought, given that they'd discussed it in private. They both knew Darla could have rebelled against her father's punishment, even gone for a "promotion" a little early if need be. But for the time being? Darla would go to Rhea, would humor the Drake patriarch. And Amelia would play her part, waiting and watching for the right moment...
All Darla had to do was say the word.
Core Power: Golden Rule: A blessing from either the God of Wealth (or the Greed aspect awakened by Caelum Ripper). Allows her to mark objects and creatures she physically touches, including herself. She can be selective enough to target only a single article of clothing, for example, or to include the person wearing it and everything else on their person. The marks are invisible and remain indefinitely on inanimate objects and up to 24 hours on living beings. After taking "ownership" in this manner, her power archives the target in her memory. She will never forget a marked target, and she has an innate awareness of the exact position of all things she "owns" in relation to herself. Much like a brooding dragon, she will never lose sight of her hoard. Once marked, she can do a variety of things.
Sub 1: All the World's Treasure: Can instantaneously teleport anything she has marked to a position near herself (within 100 meters). When it arrives, it is always in the exact condition it was when she marked it, immediately totally repairing all damage and undoing all conditions (good or bad) it may have taken since then. This can function as a heal for the living, but it cannot normally restore souls that have already left the plane she currently resides in or other spectral targets, like someone's mana pool, only physical conditions. She must have a manner to physically touch a soul, for example, to affect it. There is a size limitation, but she can still manage something as big as a truck.
Sub 2: At Her Fingertips: For objects too large to teleport, she can make golden portals to their location and either extend part of the target through the gap temporarily or pass other objects or living creatures through to the marked target's location. Should she wish it, this function also repairs any portion of the target that she extends through the portal. She can also use this portal variant to move smaller objects, and any marked object that is extending through one of her portals is also under her telekinetic command, to the point of being able to launch them like projectiles at bullet velocities. What may pass through these portals is entirely at her discretion, able to selectively allow one person or object but not another, allow light or sound to pass through alternatively, etc. The portals are like mist to anyone and anything not allowed, passing right through them as easily as air without causing "telefragging" or other space-time related mishaps. Closing the portals while something is partway through them automatically safely ejects the target back through the side they entered, regardless of how far through they are, completely whole and avoiding dicing them with a space-time cut. The portals created in this manner are not static, and their orientation and size can be adjusted as needed. There is no strict limit on the number of portals that can be active at once, but they will automatically close in the case of the user's unconsciousness.
Sub 3: Clover of Midas: A luck power related to wealth. Causes her to stumble upon success in regard to acquiring money and other valuable objects even when she isn't trying. She is almost guaranteed to succeed in any situation where chance is a factor, making her the bane of any gambler. This even aids her in fights, as long as a prize is at stake. The focused and comparatively specific nature of this ability makes it disproportionately strong and extremely resilient to other luck-based effects. Indeed, nudging things here and there in manners mostly subtle (but not always), it is not incorrect to say this ability is very wide-reaching, operating much like a Rube Goldberg device, manipulating the butterfly effect to hurl wealth and success at its wielder.
WIP
-Darla Drake: Seems to care for and support her sister, even in her more... questionable pursuits. Once she finds a way to usurp their father's business empire, she's even planning to share with her! Oh, to be sure, she knows that only one of them can be the official top dog, the CEO, the head honcho, and she's happy to leave that in Darla's hands. As long as she gets a much bigger slice of the pie than she currently has, Amelia will be -if not content then- satiated.
-Arthur Drake (Father): Oh, Father... what can she say she feels about him? Love? Perhaps not. Gratitude? Well, he did raise her. Admiration? Oh, in an intellectual sense, absolutely. The wealth. The luxury. The power! The bootlickers, sycophants, servants and ants to be stepped on! She wanted all of it! Yes! He was an inspiration! In some ways, she almost couldn't say who she felt more kinship with between him and her sister... And that was exactly why, knowing the depths of his ruthlessness... that she could never truly trust him. Yes, they were too similar, she, her sister and him, and wasn't that a tragedy? One day... she would take that empire of his for her own. She's not super enthused with his attempts to "reform" Darla... even if she can see why he'd want to.
-Carla Drake (Mother): Unlike her sister, she resents their mother. The neglect. The drunkeness. The endless indulgence and drugs. It might sound ungrateful, but Amelia is a Drake. Surely, it isn't wrong for her to always want better? Why settle for less than more? She sees her mother as nothing less than scum, ashamed to share the same genetics... not that she'd express such openly. She knows that "Mother Dearest" is one of the few people Darla cares about, and for that reason alone, she will... tolerate her. For now, at least. To be sure, she perhaps... pities her, but with her mother's healing-based Gift, she can't imagine how the woman could be addicted. She could be so much better, so much more... if only she'd put down the damn bottle!
Reverio Galand: A strange boy. A wasteful and naive sort. It's honestly galling to her how he can seemingly be so... disconnected from reality. He's wealthy! She knows it! So- So, how could this disgrace of a Peasant Prince be so well off and yet so hopeless? Darla likes him though... perhaps a little too much, despite him being their cousin. Even so, she'll support her sister's flights of fancy until she hopefully sees the light.
@RoflsMazoy Coolio. I'm actually far more partial to the eventual slower pace, since that will let me actually participate comfortably. Only one of my RP's really has hard deadlines on posting (or get kicked out), but other than that, the other groups are chill/flexible enough that I should be able to handle a slightly faster pace for a while. We'll see how things go. On the Discord thing, I must be blind or something, but I've been looking both here and the old thread and can't find the link. Which page of what section is it on? EDIT: Nevermind, after much searching, finally found it after someone apparently equally baffled asked.
I'd assume there'd need to be a fair few more approved character sheets then. I only see three actually moved to the character section so far. I will say this still has my interest overall, but I dunno enough about what sort of posting speed to expect here to commit with all the other RPs I have under my belt right now.
Scrawl Banditta
RPM
esqueleto
xVampire3go
Guardian Angel Haruki
Neziul
