Zeroth

The Legend of Zelda: Fragments of Hope

Also, @Zeroth, about how much longer do you think the Knight will keep fighting before he collapses? I've got the plan set for how to get him out of there and over closer to Oasis, so I'm just waiting for you to get set up for it.

@Double

Ah, he needs to actually fall first? I thought you just wanted me to cause enough chaos for Rath and the others to notice.

The Legend of Zelda: Fragments of Hope

<Snipped quote by Double>

That sounds like a GM call, here. There are instances in Ocarina where the bearer of a Triforce piece gained a mark on the back of their dominant hand that glowed when in the presence of another Triforce piece. Or great magic. Or just because. Being as our characters have a portion of one of them (Wisdom or Courage), I would argue that it would react in some way. Well, at least at first or if brought close together.

@Sigil

The Knight's has been absorbed into his body and appears as a smaller triangle than usual on the back of his hand whenever its power activates (so far, it's only guided him out of the Dark World). I was also thinking that they would glow or react in some way when they got close to other bearers of the shards.

The Legend of Zelda: Fragments of Hope

For instance in real life, you get hit, you get hit. Grabbed, tackled, eat something bad, there's no "chance to stop it" or "chance to stop getting sick", it happened.

@Sho Minazuki

Except that also in those circumstances people have reflex reactions. If someone grabs someone else's hand, that person's first instinctual reaction might be to jerk their hand away. That kind of thing triggers in the same amount of time. Sure, unless someone has super reflexes or martial arts training of some sort they may not be able to stop your hand grabbing theirs. But by the same token you wouldn't be able to stop them jerking their hand away.

I'm pretty sure the unspoken rule is to always ATTEMPT, never just DO, unless you have GM permission. Instead of having Sigurd yank them around like children, say instead "Sigurd reached out with an iron grip to try and pry the bickering man and Deku apart," and then have your dialogue.

As it is, you kind of just ragdolled them around a bit, said your piece, and then walked off without giving them ANY kind of chance to respond to anything you did or said. That doesn't leave them with a lot of options besides just accepting their powerlessness in the face of your badassness. You don't wanna take freedom of options from other players because that lessens the power they have over their own character, which isn't fun.

Redemption: Shadows of Esarion

Can I just point out that Edoric hasn't actually said his name to anyone? :p

@ClocktowerEchos

I just used it in the narrative sense, so it'd be easier to tell who was talking and interacting with who. Xega won't call him by his name until he actually learns it in character.

The Legend of Zelda: Fragments of Hope

Castle Town

The Temple of Time
ReKill the ReDead

---

"RRRAAAAAHHHH!" The Knight's fist smote the first monster on the chin, dislocating its jaw to hang limply as its head snapped around almost a hundred and eighty degrees. Another screamed at him, freezing him in place, and a third climbed upon his back, wrapping itself around him as its yellowed teeth tried to bite him, to suck the life out...but the rotten molars simply clanged against metal, the Knight's armor too close to his body for it to make contact with his flesh. When the paralysis wore off, he reached up to grab its head and threw it to the ground, the impact driving the breath from its shriveled lungs just before the Knight shoved his claws into its throat and pulled out its desiccated windpipe.

Another scream, and the knight struggled against it, but to go towards the crowd of corpses rather than away. His bones creaked under the strain of his own strength, and suddenly he was free, exploding forward like he had been shot from a bow. He slashed through the belly of one ReDead, dumping foul smelling innards to the ground; he grabbed another by the arm and jerked it with such force that its shoulder burst from the socket. The body was used as an impromptu flail to dash another one to the earth and hammer them both to death together. Another jumped on his back, but this time he turned and caught it before bringing its head down face first onto the metal plate of his knee caps, shattering its face and cracking open its skull. He picked the body up over his head, and with another roar lowered it before charging forward, battering through the melee until his body shield had been pulped. He found himself standing at the top of the stairs leading down to Castle Town proper--but though he did not intend to retreat, such a route had already been cut off. More ReDeads were coming, and with them, a leader...

Its body was more muscular than the other corpses. It had once been wrapped in burial shroud, but now the white was stained brown and yellow and black and red, from all manner of bodily fluids and filth. A red scarf, formerly a cape--much like the Knight's own--adorned its rasping throat. The broken handle of a shield was clasped in one hand. And the other dragged a sword.

The ReDead Knight gave its own scream, louder and more terrifying than its minions. Though the Knight felt its magic lock up his body once more, he screamed back at it, the sounds echoing out across the town's cobblestones. The ReDead warrior approached its frozen foe, as did the many lesser corpses behind him. Their captain raised his sword, right over the Knight's head, and began to bring it down...

Once again, he broke free! And immediately, on an instinct so deeply ingrained, on muscle memory that had been beaten into his body, that no madness could drown out, he acted. He dropped and rolled to one side, around to the ReDead Knight's back. He came up, out of the roll, body still spinning, claws lashing out.

Hylian Knight's Hidden Skill: Back Slice.

The ReDead gasped as it was struck, the blow cutting it from one hamstring up through the middle of its back. The wound wasn't deep enough to be fatal, with the short reach of the Knight's clawed gauntlets, but the sheer force of it knocked the undead captain to the ground. It caught itself on all fours, its sword still held in one hand--but the Knight's shadow appeared above it, his visor blazing with red light.

"HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Hylian Knight's Hidden Skill: Ending Blow.

With the Knight's full weight, momentum, and gravity behind it, this time he drove his claw straight through the ReDead warrior's back, right between the shoulder blades. He punched all the way into its chest cavity and then through its heart and sternum, before ripping his hand back out. Black blood trailed the arc of his arm, and dripped from the elbow down. The ReDead's glowing eyes flickered, then went blank. Its minions shrank back in fear, but only for a moment. Then, with multiple screams, they began to rush the Knight. Body after body piled on top of him, until he went down. He grappled and flailed at them, but they outnumbered him, and though their teeth and that deadly kiss could not reach him, their claws and fists beat at him relentlessly, rattling the body within the armor. One of his hands scrabbled on the ground...then closed around his salvation with an iron grip.

The ReDead Knight's sword.

The rusted iron, wrapped in the same burial cloth as its former master, pierced up through the many bodies. The Knight rose behind it, hacking and slashing with wild abandon, screaming his fury for all to hear even as the ReDeads screamed back, his body freezing again and again as they rained blows upon him...

Redemption: Shadows of Esarion

Posted. Should I be using the colored text for the characters? I typically just use formatting to try and make it clear who's speaking.

Redemption: Shadows of Esarion

XEGA

The silver-haired young man seemed to have recovered his wits, and now stood behind the woman with a sheathed sword at the ready. The way he held it, like a club, either spoke to a lack of training or the condition of the blade. There wasn’t any way to tell which, at the moment, but nonetheless Xega did not let the weapon intimidate him. He flexed his fingers, one at a time, curling them to his palms in a languid motion, then opening them in the reverse order.

The woman introduced herself. Lyanna of Badarium. Another nation’s name that rang a bell, but no distinct memories would come forth. The woman seemed satisfied that no violence needed to be done here, and she sheathed her weapon and lowered her shield. She cleared her throat, slightly, and then addressed Xega.

“Wise magus, do you know what is happening here? Are we the only ones of…” she hesitated before continuing “…sane mind?” the word was weakly uttered.

“No.” Xega said simply, folding his arms into his sleeves. In a way, this was a movement of similar nature to the woman’s sheathing of her blade. It, as well as the finger flexing from before, seemed to be reflexes. Even if his memories weren’t entirely intact, it seemed his body’s muscles, slight as they were, remembered whatever movements they had been trained to perform in tandem with his spellcraft. “I do not know what has happened here beyond the obvious; we’ve risen from the dead, and I presume that the rest of you suffer the same condition I do in regards to our memory faculties. I hypothesize, thus far, that it is the work of a necromancer who intends to deliver unto us some fell task or use us in some abhorrent ritual.” He shrugged. “But one would think such a sorcerer would be present. And seems to me that such effort to raise the dead, in such a condition as we are--made wholesome once more despite our cause of death--would be more taxing than simply capturing some schmuck to bleed out on one’s altar.”

He took a few steps off to one side, looking around the chamber. As he did so he continued to speak to Lyanna and Edoric, though in the way a lecturer might to a student, and without looking directly at them.

“We are also not the only ones to have risen. I have already met a Miss Syrenia, of Iliandur, on the other side of this blood-soaked tower. And with her is another woman, who called out to us in hesitant confusion. I believe Miss Syrenia awoke before I did, perhaps by now she has learned more of our situation. I do not know how many more of these corpses will rise...nor what condition their minds will be in when they do.”

He heard a sound then, and turned towards it, his hands reappearing and falling to his sides. It sounded like a growl of some sort.

“Ah, of course. There is also the matter of animals. Of course I should have suspected we might encounter some blighted beast; there’s plenty of scraps for it, after all.” He looked back at Lyanna and Edoric, and simply nodded in the direction of the sound. Afterwards he began to approach it...Slowly, he rounded another pile of corpses lying some few feet from the tower, and came across a shallow pool of the murky red fluid. Standing in it, covered head to toe in it, was yet another woman, this one with pale alabaster skin and hair that should have been blonde, but had seemingly been washed in blood. Her appearance, like Lyanna’s, would have been quite pleasing to the eye were she not wearing the guise of some horrific ghoul. When she tried to speak again, only that strange growl came out. Xega stared at her for a long moment.

“...Has your tongue been cut out?” he finally asked, before he stroked his chin with one hand and muttered to himself. “How strange...I was under the impression that we had all risen with our wounds healed...but perhaps it is only whatever that caused our death that has been cured? Would Lyanna and Syrenia, being trained warriors, perhaps still bear scars that were gained before they died? Hmm…” He stood there, tapping his foot, for some time before he looked up, as if he had just remembered there were others there with him.

“I am Xega, of Xir.” he said plainly to the woman who apparently could not speak. “I mean you no harm, should you mean myself the same.”

Redemption: Shadows of Esarion

XEGA

This place was damned, to be sure. A scream echoed throughout the cavern. Others were shifting among the corpses. Had they all returned to life as well? No...for the moment, it would seem that only a few of the dead that filled this place were rising again. Still, to be reborn with all one's faculties intact, no trace of the wounds that had preceded his death...what powerful necromancy, if indeed that was what it was that had called them back from beyond the grave. Xega glanced around the chamber before the woman answered him. She cleared her throat before she spoke, and spoke calmly. So she did not intend violence with that blade, it seemed.

"I have no idea where we are...I don’t remember anything like this. I have never even heard of anything like where we stand. As for my name? My name is Syrenia… of Iliandur. Who are you?"

"I am..." He paused. Xega? Was that his name? Why was he unsure? Where was he from? Iliandur? No. He didn't know where that country was, or if indeed it was a country, but he knew he did not come from there, somehow.

"I am Xega. I am...or perhaps was...a practitioner of the Arcane. I am from..." Finally the word came to him. "Xir. I am Xega of Xir."

Saying it with more emphasis gave him confidence. Yes. He was from a place called Xir, a nation of magi. Iliandur, that was another country, famous for its clerical knights. Perhaps this woman was one of them, judging from her state of dress and the familiarity with which she held the weapon.

“Whoever is there, show thyself! Now!” Another voice rang out, another woman's tone. Xega turned towards the noise with a look of some consternation. Though there were holes in his memory, his personality was very much intact, and he would not be ordered about.

”Hello?" Another new voice, this one less sure of itself. And another woman. Xega quirked an eyebrow. "I’m coming over! Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you, I promise!”

"'Twould seem we've quite the crowd." he said to Syrenia of Iliandur. The woman who'd spoken last was headed in their direction, and now that Xega had a look at her, she too seemed some sort of warrioress. Her armor had been battered and corroded by time, pieces of it stolen, but Xega felt the coloration strike a chord with him somehow. They were probably the colors of her homeland. This twinge of memory told Xega what he had already begun to suspect. He might be in a new place, but his old memories were very much intact. They were simply...hidden...from him for the moment. He just needed to find something to trigger them, to restore them. Speaking with these people, learning what they knew, would likely help with that. As would finding his staff and foci. He at least knew, deep in his core, what he was; a most prestigious magi. Already he could feel the Arcane Stream again, a sensation that felt like drawing breath for the first time after nearly drowning. He supposed the first breath he had taken upon his revival might have felt like that too, had it not been for the agonizing pain that came with it.

"Miss Syrenia, if you would greet our newcomer," he nodded towards the other woman in armor, "I'll address...the others."

Turning on his heel--his actual heel, as it seemed some grave robber had stolen his boots and now he was barefoot, which made him grimace--he walked around the pile of corpses, giving it a wide berth and covering his nose with his sleeve against the stench. He did his best not to look at it; he did not consider himself weak of mind nor stomach, but such carnage was too much for any sane individual to witness. Soon he came into view of two more freshly risen: a fierce eyed woman, though her stature was not at all unpleasing to his own eye, and a man whose features were almost as delicate as Xega's own. The man was the source of the screaming, as he writhed on the ground. Was he still in the throes of revival, or had he simply been driven to hysterics by the horrors around him?

"I, Xega of Xir, deign to show myself." he said to the woman, placing one hand on his own chest. Then he gestured to her, his eyes narrowing. "Now name thy own self."

Redemption: Shadows of Esarion

XEGA

”Wh-why…? Why here? I was not meant...not here...I can’t...die…”

Pale, thin hands grasped futilely at the haft of the spear sticking out of his chest. Even touching it sent waves of pain through him. He vomited, his own blood. Suddenly he was on the ground--why weren’t his legs working? Everything...was...cold...and…

Cracked lips parted and drew breath. Lungs that had atrophied, shriveled, suddenly began to inflate again, their long dried flesh somehow filled with life giving blood again, their veins beginning to swell. A heart beat, forcing new life through the mummified tissues like squeezing water through a dry-rotted hose. Violent coughing, a body jerking in agony as muscles unused for who knew how long were forced to spasm and stretch. A scream. A sucking chest wound began to exhale as it pushed out a rusty spearhead. The corroded metal clattered to the ground.

Xega opened his eyes, blue sparks dancing through them.

He suddenly jerked up, as if from a dream. As he did so, the corpses he was lying underneath rolled away, further down the pile, until they landed with a splash in a pool of fetid, blood-hued fluid. Was it water, stained by the blood of the corpses? Or something else, dripping and flowing from some ungodly creature’s lair?

“...How?” He opened and closed his fingers, felt his arms. He had been dead. He knew it. He had been dead, and yet now he was not. Now his wounds were gone and he was alive and he could breathe. He did so now, a deep, shuddering breath. He looked around the room, taking everything in.

Piles of corpses. Stone floors...some unspeakable, nameless mass of flesh suspended from up high. A tower of some sort. Stairs, a walkway. Braziers...still burning. Who was here?

Movement, near the wall. He snapped his head around, holding up one hand...a woman, with a sword. Pink hair. Small of frame, but something about the way she stood with the rusty implement that spoke of training. Fear and confusion in her face.

“Who are you?” he spoke, pushing on the corpses below himself to stand up. His voice carried a tone of superiority, despite his uncertainty--for indeed, if anything was certain, it was that he, Xega, had already apparently trumped Death once, and that he would not be cowed by fear of the unknown, not on his pride as a researcher. “What is this place?” He almost stumbled as he made his way down the pile, his robes--now tattered and torn--catching on a limb and his feet unsteady on the pliant, dead flesh of others. But soon he stood on solid ground--his legs shook, but he hid it with a sweep of his cape--and faced the woman. He waited for her to answer, his eyes casting further glances about the room. Where was his staff? His foci? Their protective runes should have kept robbers from them, and they had been with him when he fell...

The Legend of Zelda: Fragments of Hope

Castle Town

The Temple of Time
Inside the Dark World

---

The Temple of Time. Once a holy place of worship to the goddesses, a place that held the most magnificent treasure of the realm and protected the gate to the Sacred Land. But now, by the very hands of the Hero that should have saved it, that gateway had been opened and allowed a king of thieves to steal away the very lifeblood of Hyrule. Now the Temple was a nest of darkness, a place where the denizens of the Dark World were birthed forth from the portal to join Ganon's armies. The Knight stepped through that same doorway, back into the world of light that had been thrown into a shadow nearly as black as that of the land he just left.

But Courage pulsed in his hand, brighter than ever. He felt its pull and followed it with trodding steps, his back hunched as if under an incredible burden. His arms hung loosely at his sides, giving his gait a predatory slink. The light, from windows high above, had a reddened, malicious tint to it, and the sheen of his blackened armor gave him a demonic aura under those crimson rays.

As he neared the entrance to the temple, two figures came into view. Their flesh, rotting and riddled with poisoned veins, was stretched tight--too tight, so tight that in places it tore--across their skeletons, which were twisted as if in agony. Their faces, too, were frozen in the gasp of suffering, their dried and cracked lips drawn tight over yellowing, chipped teeth. Only their eyes, occasionally glowing red, showed any signs of life. The two corpses, ReDead, stood guard over the temple and watched as the Knight slowly, determinedly, walked towards them.

Their orders were simply to stop anyone entering this place, and to direct those who would serve their Master, the Dark King, towards his castle. As the black knight approached, at first they thought him a Darknut, perhaps, or an Iron Knuckle. But when they saw that the crest of Hyrule still gleamed on his breast, they looked at each other in confusion. Then, one cast his seemingly empty eyes towards their fellow Dark Worlder.

"Screeeah?" it called. The Knight stopped and stood there, staring. The red light behind his own visor pulsed just once. Then he rose up a bit, his spine straightening.

"URRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"

In an instant he leaped across the room, his clawed grasp finding the ReDead's face before he slammed its skull into the stone wall behind it. With a crunch the rotten bones and flesh gave way, and black, stagnated blood with a foul stench splattered over the masonry. The other ReDead took a breath for its paralyzing scream, but the Knight's head snapped towards it and he flung the corpse of its comrade at it. As the two carcasses--one returned to death--tumbled head over heels, the Knight leaped into the air and came down on the second zombie's chest with both feet. Again a horrific crunch heralded the splash of dark ichor, and the Knight threw back his head like a wolf after a triumphant kill.

"GAAAAAAARRRAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"

He rushed down the steps, past the now-fetid baptismal pools and the dead shrubbery lining the front of the Temple. As he neared a Gossip Stone, a mysterious device which--for those who weren't Shiekah--was merely a magic timepiece, more ReDeads began to ascend the steps from the town below. They had heard the screams and come to see what was going on, and now as one pointed at the Knight and let out its terrifying screech, they began to swarm. In the distance, other screeches answered, the sounds echoing across the town as almost every ReDead in Castle Town received the signal.

The Knight was frozen by the paralyzing magic of the first ReDead's cry, but the muscles beneath his armor strained until it seemed they might burst. Then suddenly he was free again, shaking back and forth like a rabid animal. With another roar he dove forward to meet the monsters.