Tatiana was back on the darkened ice surrounding the Black Glacier, on the day of her unsuccessful hunt. All was as it was, her father standing there watching, the bitter unnatural wind that manifested around the Black Glacier lashing at her angrily. When the demon closed in on her with fangs bared, ready to tear her apart, she reached out to it, and just as she did on that day, ordered the demon to stop.
Only this time, the entire world stopped. Even the wind ceased. She glanced at her father and saw him frozen in mid-step, rushing to her aid.
It was then that she heard it. The voice of the Black Glacier itself, speaking directly into her soul. When she turned to face it, she found herself standing directly in front of it, close enough to gaze upon her own reflection in the mirrored darkness of the Glacier's shell. massive stairwell, she finally saw the source of the sound. Looking upon the streets, she saw them choked with legions of people. All of them stood shoulder to shoulder, every child, man and woman in all the empire seemed to have gathered in every conceivable space-- every street, rooft, and she felt the burning sensation begin to cease.
At that moment, she woke up.
Oh gosh. I like that a lot. It fits her character and what I was going for really well.
Astraea found herself waking up in what appeared to be a ruined war hospital. She was lying on a filthy old hospital bed, and the ceiling above her was heavily damaged by what she assumed to be mortar fire. Beyond the crumbling stones, she could glimpse a pale sky-- stark in its emptiness-- the kind of sky that only exists above Varya. When she sat up, she ccaught sight of the rest of the hospital, and to her horror, discovered that the ward seemed to stretch onward to a distant point in the horizon. Thousands of hospital beds were lined up in front of her, unending as they disappeared into eternity, all of them empty but hers.
Suddenly, from somewhere deeper in that eternal corridors, she heard the howling of a wolf. Astraea tried to get up from her bed, but for some reason, her body was heavy like a stone. Something was wrong. It's as if she had woken up from a long period of sleep. Nevertheless, she hobbled to the where the sound was emanating from, and soon enough, she found him. A cyan wolf with golden eyes, lying bloody on the tiles before her.
She could still hear its feint whimpering after she awoke.
this is really cool. I'm not sure how Astraea will take such a blatant sign from the Aspect! Nor how she will react to having to explain to Ragnar her reasons for wanting the pup.
Should be a fun little scenelet! I look forward to it.
@Lovejoy@Sisyphus RIGHT? Such trouble. And he's used to getting what he wants. He's lucky the Inquisition kept him on a short leash for all those years, because he's totally going to get in trouble with them and with EVERYONE. ^.^;;
By the way, can people he's commanded tell they were ordered, or is it like it was their idea? What about afterwards, or the next day?
@Lovejoy@Sisyphus RIGHT? Such trouble. And he's used to getting what he wants. He's lucky the Inquisition kept him on a short leash for all those years, because he's totally going to get in trouble with them and with EVERYONE. ^.^;;
By the way, can people he's commanded tell they were ordered, or is it like it was their idea? What about afterwards, or the next day?
While it's happening, they don't know that they're being controlled - it's not necessarily like it was their idea, more like they're just absolutely convinced that listening to Hassan is the thing to do, even if they're not sure why. Afterwards, most people will start to wonder why they did that and they'll probably put two and two together; the girl with the dogs, for example, is probably pretty dazed and confused about the whole thing, but about at this point she'd be starting to get it.
The Aspect of Lord Varya that appeared to Warband Phoenix during Culmination. The visions it showed each member of the warband left a mark on them in different ways. Some were perplexed by what I-XVII showed them, others were left horrified, while others were left thinking to themselves in silence. Despite each inquisitor having their own unique experience with I-XVII, each somehow knew its name upon waking, and felt its touch upon their souls.
Like other Divine Aspects, I-XVII has no default appearance, but is perceived differently depending on the individual who sees it.
Rodeon was brought to a place shrouded in darkness, where he felt the enormity of the world itself stretching endlessly around him, but found himself completely and utterly alone. The land beneath him was hard iron and his footsteps seemed to echo into eternity. As Rodeon traversed through the darkness, he could glimpse stars steadily coming into view. The stars grew myriad and beautiful until they exploded in an aurora of light and color. There, canvassing the darkness, he watched as they coalesced into a grand constellation of a massive dragon-like creature. When the dragon spoke to him, Rodion heard a woman's voice echoing in his mind.
"Remember me," it said.
Tatiana was back on the darkened ice surrounding the Black Glacier, on the day of her unsuccessful hunt. All was as it was, her father standing there watching, the bitter unnatural wind that manifested around the Black Glacier lashing at her angrily. When the demon closed in on her with fangs bared, ready to tear her apart, she reached out to it, and just as she did on that day, ordered the demon to stop.
Only this time, the entire world stopped. Even the wind ceased. She glanced at her father and saw him frozen in mid-step, rushing to her aid.
It was then that she heard it. The voice of the Black Glacier itself, speaking directly into her soul. When she turned to face it, she found herself standing directly in front of it, close enough to gaze upon her own reflection in the mirrored darkness of the Glacier's shell.
Her reflection spoke back to her, but not in her own voice, but in the language of the Black Glacier-- that mournful rumbling that was as apparent to every Lanostran child as the howling of the winter wind. Somehow, she understood it.
"Love," it repeated. Over and over again, until Tatiana woke from her vision.
Ziotea opened her eyes and found herself... exactly where she had been kneeling in the moments before closing them. When she looked around, she saw all of her companions on their knees with their eyes closed before the colossal doors of the Red Shrine, no doubt experiencing their own visions. Unsure as to what was happening, or if something had gone wrong, she rose to her feet. It was then that she heard the thunderous noise of a million voices crying out together.
Leaving her companions, she turned around and approached the edge of the great platform where the entrance to the Red Shrine stood. Beyond, the surface of the city of Magnagrad stretched onward and from its depths, the roar of a million voices rose up in mechanical unison. With the cacophonous ocean of sound ringing in her ears, Ziotea made her way down the steps of the Shrine to investigate.
When she was halfway down the massive stairwell, she finally saw the source of the sound. Looking upon the streets, she saw them choked with legions of people. All of them stood shoulder to shoulder, every child, man and woman in all the empire seemed to have gathered in every conceivable space-- every street, rooftop, plaza and alley was filled to capacity. She could see the dark azure eyes of native Varyans, the pale blue eyes of T'saraens, the deep emerald of Lanostrans, the cold indigo of Muraadans and the burning gold of Omestrians. Each of those eyes was fixated on her.
"Destroyer," the crowd of millions chanted. Over, and over, and over again. Suddenly, a great explosion of... something encompassed the city and the endless crowds of people disappeared as the maelstrom of golden light washed over them. She felt burning heat begin to cook her alive, it was pain unlike anything she'd felt before. The tempest of golden fire began to swallow her whole when suddenly, a blue circle of light manifested around her, and she felt the burning sensation begin to cease.
At that moment, she woke up.
Astraea found herself waking up in what appeared to be a ruined war hospital. She was lying on a filthy old hospital bed, and the ceiling above her was heavily damaged by what she assumed to be mortar fire. Beyond the crumbling stones, she could glimpse a pale sky-- stark in its emptiness-- the kind of sky that only exists above Varya. When she sat up, she ccaught sight of the rest of the hospital, and to her horror, discovered that the ward seemed to stretch onward to a distant point in the horizon. Thousands of hospital beds were lined up in front of her, unending as they disappeared into eternity, all of them empty but hers.
Suddenly, from somewhere deeper in that eternal corridors, she heard the howling of a wolf. Astraea tried to get up from her bed, but for some reason, her body was heavy like a stone. Something was wrong. It's as if she had woken up from a long period of sleep. Nevertheless, she hobbled to the where the sound was emanating from, and soon enough, she found him. A cyan wolf with golden eyes, lying bloody on the tiles before her.
She could still hear its feint whimpering after she awoke.
Ragnar didn't see anything. When he closed his eyes, the next time he opened them was when Hassan roused him awake. There was no vision, no sound, nothing at all. This lack of any sort of vision weighs on him heavily, and when asked about what he experienced, he makes up a lie about the Aspect transporting him back to Muraad and seeing his family again.
***
I'll get to describing Hassan, Stina and Ilya's visions tomorrow, along with info on I-XIX (Leviathan's guardian aspect), and what it showed the inquisitors from that group. I'll also have that that stuff I promised you today @shylarah. I would've finished it tonight but it's late and I have work tomorrow!
don forget Galahad? :D
@shylarah Ziotea: Galahad regards Ziotea with some amount of aloofness. They're not particularly close, nor do they particularly detest one another. As far as either of them are concerned, the other is just, there. She's standoffish and cynical, much like Galahad, and while he doesn't mind, or even occasionally appreciates these traits, it doesn't really do much to lead to interaction between the two of them. He recalls her fiery temperament and her relatively confrontational manner about receiving criticism, but doesn't necessarily hold it against her. His telekinetic spells- IE Thunderclap and TK projectile are most likely revised, refined and safer versions of her concussive attacks. Tactically, he views Ziotea as a wildcard, potentially dangerous to the group, but capable of wreaking major destruction- and most importantly nullifying other mages on the battlefield.
@Sisyphus Hmm... honestly, I thought that your 'word' acted more like hypnosis - implanting a thought in their mind, shaping it into a suggestion and then carrying it out. That's how hypnosis works in real life - a hypnotist cannot force you to do something you refuse to do. Which might also explain why many inquisitors refuse to listen to his 'suggestions'.
@vietmyke Sounds good. Tactically, she does listen to others if they're people with skill in that area. She's not exactly a loose cannon. But she does tend to be aggressive.
@CollectorOfMyst@Sisyphus probably is a limit on how far against their nature Hassan can push a person, before even the normies have the willpower to overcome it. But they're easier to influence by far.
I mean, as I conceived the character, there's basically no limit to how far he can push a normie - if he told someone to put a gun in their mouth and fire, they'd have to do it. The balancing factors are that it doesn't work on etherically talented people at all (who I'd imagine are going to be the real threats to the inquisitors in the RP anyway), that it's also probably possible to rig up some device/ether-powered headgear for normies to block it, and that it's really all he has going for him - just about any other PC could beat the everliving hell out of him, and his infiltration training is secondary.
It's also a pretty important part of his personality; he's a man-child with too much power and he knows it, and he has an enormous amount of difficulty seeing people as people rather than tools because... well, look at what he can do. Ultimately, it's @Lovejoy's call - if the GM says it's too much juice for one character to have, I'll tone it down.
Yeah I figured there are some non-Inquisitors out there who can manage to endure the Word. Sort of like how Poe Dameron was able to withstand Kylo Ren's mindreading powers for a bit in Episode 7, despite him not being a Jedi. :p
Sorry for the double post! Just read your last reply @Sisyphus, and yeah, I pretty much agree with everything. It largely works on non-magical people, but I feel like there should be a small percentage of just purely special regular people who aren't inquisitors who can endure it. Is that cool?
Antonin had a curious relationship with Mother Ziotea during her time in the Red Seminary. Though he wasn't an official instructor of hers, due to his healing specialty being in a different realm than her own etheric gift, the White Necromancer did take note of her rare ability to draw ether from other living things, a skill that he himself seemed fascinated by. Every time she would end up in his infirmary, Father Antonin would often ask about how she was progressing in the honing of this ability. He would then take exhaustive notes concerning what she told him. When questioned as to why he was so interested in this ability, Antonin revealed to her that he possessed a much less impressive version of this skill which allowed him to draw the white ether from animals directly into himself by making direct physical contact, but other types of ether acted as poison to him. He then told her that she was truly gifted, and wondered why she didn't focus all of her training on her ether drawing ability instead of the concussive blasts that she was so known for.
When asked as to why he would spend so long in the Seminary, he told her, "Why not? There is no better place in all the world for someone like me. To tell you the truth, my gifts are wasted on war. They bring me dead men, I bring them back, and still they die the next day. At least here, I am helping to fashion the future of this world. Is that answer satisfying enough for you?"
Sorry for the double post! Just read your last reply @Sisyphus, and yeah, I pretty much agree with everything. It largely works on non-magical people, but I feel like there should be a small percentage of just purely special regular people who aren't inquisitors who can endure it. Is that cool?
Sure. Would it be possible for Hassan to not know about that? I think him finding out that there's regular people who can ignore the world would be a cool scene to watch happen - probably shake up his whole world view.
