Aufklarung

Blood Reigns Over Westeros: A Song of Ice & Fire Story (Accepting Player Proposals)

<Snipped quote by Inkarnate>

Ashley Sapphire. Gods what a stupid name.

@Sloth

Solid reference lol

Blood Reigns Over Westeros: A Song of Ice & Fire Story (Accepting Player Proposals)

House Mudd of Harrenhal

House Mudd of Harrenhal

"The Riversblood Endures"

[ ♫ ]

House Information

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Synopsis

King's blood courses still through the veins of House Mudd, for theirs is an ancient line which once reigned over the Riverlands as kings. The Andal invasion saw them lose their crown and lands, and even threatened to wipe out their line entirely as their last descendants were reduced to exiles who roamed Essos for generations. It was only through the generosity of House Targaryen that this ancestral bloodline was saved from extinction and made into the Lords of Harrenhal. From their new seat of power, the humble and devoted Mudds grew once more into one of the most powerful and influential families in the region, as well as some of the few lords south of the Neck to still worship the Old Gods of the First Men. From within the blackened walls of Harrenhal, they now serve faithfully as their homeland's first line of defense from any southron threats.

Head of House

Lady Catelyn Mudd, Marshall of the Gods Eye, Guardian of the Rivers and the Hills

Seat

Harrenhal

Demesne

From the once ruined castle of Harrenhal, the largest in the Seven Kingdoms, the Mudds rule over the vast and fertile holdings that surround the Gods Eye. Though few of the houses that inhabited the region survived the War of the Five Kings, today their remnants flourish alongside many newcomers. A variety of minor lords and landed knights serve as House Mudd's loyal bannermen, capable of providing the Marshall of the Gods Eye with a few thousand fighting men when needed. Among them are the Lollistons, Vances, Strongs, Ghostrivers and Dreadflowers.

Recent History

Once on the verge of vanishing from history, the Mudds unexpectedly found their redemption through their brave service to Queen Daenerys during her conquest of the Seven Kingdoms. Yet this redemption came at a cost. Young John Mudd, by all accounts the closest thing the diminished Mudds had to a lordly figure, had proven his mettle during the fight for the Stepstones and the Stormlands, only to die fighting the army of the dead during the Long Night. With his loss, only the much younger Lorimas Mudd remained to further their ancestral bloodline.

Born and raised in exile, knowing nothing but the life of a soldier under the Golden Company, Lorimas hardly understood the true significance of his queen's decision to make him Lord of Harrenhal. Indeed, the first years of his rule over the Gods Eye were marked by his constant need for guidance, both from his meager household and from his fellow lords. Although his presence served to diffuse tensions between Edmure Tully, his liege, and Robert Arryn, it was not of much help to his broken bannermen and the common folk of the Gods Eye. The reconstruction of the castles and villages destroyed during the War of the Five Kings was undermined by his neglectful watch over the proceedings, and while the rest of the Riverlands recovered to some extent in the following years, Harrenhal itself continued to be a half-empty ruin.

But despite his lacklustre performance as a ruler, Lorimas did prove himself to be a reliable battle commander, and a man deeply respectful of traditions who understood what was expected of him. Although he had dabbled in the worship of the Lord of Light during his life in Essos, as a descendant of the First Men he quickly embraced the Old Gods. In line with that same sentiment, and to secure his house's position in the realm, he arranged an alliance with House Blackwood by marrying Lord Tytos' daughter, Bethany. Their union yielded four trueborn children, who he raised alongside his two natural children, born from a freed Lyseni slave he had fallen in love with and brought with him across the Narrow Sea.

Alongside his friendship with the Blackwoods, he also sought to create ties with his liege and other major houses of Westeros, with varying degrees of success. His military leadership in service of House Tully earned him the esteem of his Lord Paramount, the title of Marshall of the Gods Eye and the acknowledgement of other lords outside of the Riverlands. However, his devotion to both the Lord Paramount and the Old Gods soon earned him the scorn of other river lords as well. The Mallisters came to resent him for his role in suppressing their revolt against the crown, the Brackens derided him as an upstart and an accomplice of the Blackwoods, and many who prayed to the Seven denounced him as an unholy influence on the land.

Lorimas did eventually learn to be a decent ruler, one who his subjects could respect if not love, in no small part thanks to the wisdom of his lady wife and his talented bastard children. And so it was that, in 331 AC, with his holdings booming, and silver and gold finally entering his coffers on steady stream, he finally undertook the enormous task of rebuilding his long downtrodden seat of Harrenhal. With some additional gold and men from Riverrun, both as a personal favour and to ensure that House Tully would one day have a truly formidable fortress in its service, he led the first efforts to restore the ruined castle to its former glory. Fallen towers rose again, great halls were refurbished and given proper roofs, and the mews and rookeries were repopulated.

To the surprise of many, who still dreaded the Curse of Harrenhal, no great ill befell Lorimas or his family during this time. His children grew into healthy lords and ladies, all blessed with their mother's beauty and their father's skill in battle, and in turn they too fathered and mothered their own comely warriors who would carry his name. The great heart tree in Harrenhal's godswood stopped bleeding, as it notoriously used to, from its thirteen carvings, and its branches filled with rich red leaves. Some of House Mudd's foes saw it as proof of Lorimas' dabbling in some manner of ancient witchcraft, while many who prayed to the Old Gods claimed that the castle's curse had finally been broken.

Lorimas Mudd grew old surrounded by a numerous and loving family, his troubles reduced to the occasional feuds between his peers and the revolts against his liege and the crown. By the time of his death, in 355 AC, he was the head of a rejuvenated family line, the ruler of a mostly peaceful and modestly prosperous land, and lord of a great castle that was, by then, only half-ruined.

Lorimas was succeeded by Jonas, his eldest, an honest if unremarkable man who diligently carried on with his father's work until his weak heart forced him to abdicate in 361 AC. Thus began the regency and eventual lordship of his firstborn, the taciturn Lucas, a man who shared his forebearers' abilities in war but not their preference for it. Instead, Lucas was a patron of singers, poets, artists and scholars, and as the new Lord of Harrenhal he turned the castle into a haven for all manner of beauty and knowledge. As he continued his father's reconstruction efforts, the Hall of the Hundred Hearths was decorated to match the exuberance of many greater houses, and his personal library came to be known for its massive and ever growing collection of rare tomes from every corner of the known world. Outside the walls of Harrenhal, his uncles, siblings and cousins acted as his envoys, enforcing his rule in the Gods Eye and speaking to other lords on his behalf. Meanwhile, his preoccupation with history, combined with his family's predilection for tradition, led to him taking for himself, and his successors, the title of Guardian of the Rivers and the Hills, a tribute to his house's heritage as kings which also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting the Riverlands in House Tully's name.

In time, Lord Lucas began to take a special interest in people from far beyond the Narrow Sea, many of whom he brought into his court as his protegees and favourites. His exotic sensibilities led to ever more scandalous stories about his intimacy with the passing of the years, as talk spread among nobles and common folk of him bedding strange people and inviting red priests and shadowbinders into his court to train him in the higher mysteries. Yet many still acknowledged him as a wise and kind lord, whose cautious nature translated into a well-managed holding, content subjects and a few good friends among the nobility.

In 369 AC, however, the rumours were seemingly confirmed in the eyes of the realm when several members of the Most Devout, along with a handful of lords aligned with the Faith, formally accused Lord Lucas of witchcraft, adultery, incest and buggery, all involving his cousin Kyros the Silver, the son of his natural-born uncle and a known worshipper of R'hllor, who they had taken hostage. Lord Lucas refused to even respond to the accusations, on account of his disbelief in the Seven, and demanded his kinsman's liberation under threat of war. The incident reignited the tensions between his house and the rivals it had gained during his grandfather's rule, and the ensuing weeks saw House Mudd suffer many insults both in words and in action, including nighttime raids on his lands. The conflict culminated two months after Kyros' abduction, as Lord Lucas rode alone to King's Landing and demanded a trial by combat on Kyros' behalf, with himself as his cousin's champion. The ensuing duel was a long and vicious affair, as Lord Lucas continued to fight even after receiving a mortal injury from his opponent's blade, but in the end Lord Lucas prevailed, proving Kyros' innocence. Two days later, the Lord of Harrenhal died from his wounds on the journey back to Harrenhal, with a freed Kyros by his side.

Lucas Mudd's noble death left the rule of Harrenhal and the Gods Eye in the hands of his young daughter, Catelyn. The eldest of Lord Lucas' four children, she was not as quiet nor as gentle as her father, but instead boasted a dry wit and a relentless sense of justice. Although she did not forsake her predecessor's legacy of wisdom and sensitivity, Lady Catelyn's approach to ruling over the Gods Eye was rather different, now that the work of rebuilding Harrenhal was nearing its end and the surrounding lands had fully recovered from the wounds of the distant past. Her more aggressive nature made her ambitious and, with the support of her family, she pursued a further expansion of House Mudd's authority and prestige as heirs of the First Men, loyal bannermen of House Tully and keepers of the peace. An implacable commander and shrewd diplomat, her unforgiving attitude towards wrongdoing intimidated many of her rivals into abandoning their schemes against her family. In some cases, she even managed to force them into marrying her kin, ensuring that any action they took against House Mudd in the future would be seen as kinslaying by the realm.

Lady Catelyn's rule over the Gods Eye has left no doubt as to House Mudd's position as a respectable addition to the nobility of the Seven Kingdoms. In her hands, Harrenhal is a force to be reckoned with, and not just on the field of battle. The halls of the once dilapidated castle are filled with life once more, and noble and common folk alike rediscover their old ways under the weirwood trees and through the voices of the singers that live among them. The Gods Eye is slowly becoming a favoured trade hub for those who sail up and down the Blackwater. Ever loyal to House Tully, and to the Dragon Queen who gave them a home, Lady Catelyn and her kin care for two things above all others: preserving their past and protecting the realm from its enemies, both within and without.

Realm Relations

House Targaryen
Gratitude easily turns into loyalty, and such has been the case for House Mudd during Queen Daenerys Targaryen's long rule. Any member of their family would be proud to fight for the Queen and lay down their lives in her name, and it is unlikely that they would willingly follow any king or queen who was not of the Targaryen name. Lady Catelyn herself has been one of the Queen's most ardent supporters, a vocal opponent of her incapacitation, and one of the earliest proponents of Serenei Targaryen's coronation, should Daenerys die.

House Tully
Upon becoming Lord of Harrenhal, one of the first things Lorimas Mudd did was publicly relinquish all ancestral claims to the Trident as a show of good faith to his new liege. Since then, every successive Lord and Lady of Harrenhal has done the same. Such is the commitment of House Mudd to serving their Lord Paramount faithfully, regardless of their heritage. Mudds and Tullys have called each other friends in childhood and brothers in arms in battle, and although they share no bonds of blood or marriage, it is an almost tacit agreement among Mudds that to go against the Tullys would be as shameful as going against their own kin.

House Stark
The Starks and Mudds share their faith in the Old Gods and their descendance from the First Men. Despite the vast distances and differences in rank that separate them, the Mudds of Harrenhal see the Starks as companions in spirit, fellow keepers of an ancient heritage that most great houses have long forgotten.

House Blackwood
It was sometimes jested in inns and lordly feasts that Lorimas Mudd's children had more black than brown in them. Indeed, the past two generations of House Mudd have tended to inherit the looks of their Blackwood ancestors above all others. To the Mudds, the Blackwoods are family, plain and simple. The only house which kept to the old ways after the Andal invasion, the only house that resisted the Lannister usurpers after the Red Wedding, and the first house to welcome the Mudds back to the Riverlands with open arms, the Blackwoods are loved by the Mudds, not just as brothers in blood, but as exemplars of true honour. Mudds and Blackwoods have stood and fought side by side against their mutual foes over the years, as well as against the enemies of their Lord Paramount and the Queen. Should anyone threaten her Blackwood kin, Catelyn would be the first lady in the Riverlands to march in their defense.

Storyline Premise

Heritage and duty are essential to the Mudds of Harrenhal, but these ideas do not always align. There is an inherent contradiction in their position, for more king's blood courses through their veins than those of some great houses, yet Lord Lorimas' legacy of unwavering loyalty to the crown has made many of his descendants modest, unimaginative, even in the face of the looming conflicts as the life of their beloved Queen Daenerys nears its end.

Lady Catelyn's rule and ambitions are reflective of this: she seeks closer ties to the increasingly isolationist houses of the North, yet she remains one of the Queen's most stalwart defenders and serves House Tully with no complaint. House Mudd grows larger under her watch, its power stretching beyond the Gods Eye, and she openly yearns for the day when weirwoods grow once more south of the Neck and lord and common folk alike remember the long forgotten customs of their ancestors. But this puts her family at odds with more forward thinking people, those who dream of a much different world.

It is within her household, however, that this inner conflict takes its most significant form. Following the death of her daughter in childbirth, it is now Lady Catelyn's oldest son, the melancholy Mychel, that stands to succeed her as Lord of Harrenhal, Marshall of the Gods Eye and Guardian of the Rivers and the Hills. And young Mychel is not at all like his mother.

Character Information

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Mychel Sapphire

Mychel Sapphire

[ ♫ ]

Identity

Mychel Mudd, dubbed 'Mychel Sapphire'

Age

Fifteen.

Role

Heir to Harrenhal
Squire under Lady Tarth

Characterization

Tall and fair Mychel is more sapphire than mud, a truth most uncomfortable to his mother, but proudly acknowledged by his Tarth cousins. He and his twin brother, Jacelyn, were born from Lady Catelyn's matrilineal union to her second husband, Endrew Tarth, and the influence of the sapphire in their blood was quite apparent even then. The blue eyed boys of the Lady of Harrenhal quickly outgrew their older sister, Lyra, born from her previous marriage to Mors Tallhart, and proved to have a character most unlike those of their fellow Mudds.

Where most Mudds were incurious, set in their ways and concerned with keeping the traditions of the ancient river lords, Mychel and Jacelyn were fascinated by tales of their Tarth ancestors' chivalry and yearned to visit their father's legendary homeland. Mychel in particular, being the more sensitive and imaginative of the two, developed a fondness for poetry and theatre. He would spend entire days in the woods and fields of the Gods Eye reciting and reenacting his favourites with his twin or with their Rivers cousins, the descendants of Lorimas' natural born children.

Mere months before their eleventh nameday, however, tragedy struck the Mudd household. During one of their trips into the woods, a storm broke out. Mychel and Jacelyn got lost as the downpour changed the shape of the land around them, and wandered blindly in search for a way back to Harrenhal. While trying to cross a raging stream, Jacelyn slipped and his leg was impaled on the branch of a fallen tree. Unable to stop the bleeding, Mychel desperately dragged his dying twin towards what he thought would be the edge of the forest, only to find that he had led them even further astray. In his guilt and despair over dooming his brother, he lay down by Jacelyn's side and kept him company as he passed away, wishing that the storm would kill him as well.

A searching party under his uncles' command found him the afternoon after, once the storm had finally subsided, alive but weak, still clinging to his twin's corpse. It took Harrenhal's maester weeks to get Mychel back in good health, but the boy that came out of his chambers once he was deemed fit to walk again was a pale reflection of the cheerful child he had once been. After months of mourning, realizing that Harrenhal had soured in her son's heart, his mother decided to send him away, to serve as his aunt's squire in Tarth.

In Tarth, in the company of his sapphire kin, Mychel regained some of his lost spark, but remained prone to melancholy. Under his aunt's tutelage, he demonstrated great skill with the sword and a precocious talent for command, and he found plenty of loving friendship and comradery in his Tarth cousins. Although his passion for poetry and theatre remained, he became more and more enamored with the more tragic tales and songs, and took to writing and singing his own. Talk spread over time of how he would dress in House Tarth's colors and how his cousins had given him the name 'Mychel Sapphire', to signify their close kinship. His good character and comely looks attracted the attention of a dozen suitors, all of which he kindly rejected, preferring the company of his male friends instead. Much like his grandfather Lucas, he also took an interest to gods and customs beyond those of his ancestors.

If courtly rumours are to be believed, it was his lady mother's intent to keep him in Tarth until he came of age, both for his sake and to focus on raising Lyra as her successor, and let him spend the rest of his life wherever he pleased. Unfortunately, whatever plans Lady Catelyn may have had were unexpectedly demolished by Lyra's death as she was giving birth. With her heir dead, and the resulting child stillborn, the Lady of Harrenhal summoned her wistful son back to the Gods Eye to assume his place as her successor.

Mychel is defined by his experiences with love and loss, and that makes him value compassion far more than coldhearted duty. His sensitivity makes him a remarkable judge of character and a good ally, even if it also makes him wont to strike swiftly against those who wrong him. He rejects cruelty whenever possible, and is not one to abuse his power or scheme from the shadows. His sense of honour is more defined by his ideals than by the traditions of the First Men, and his devotion to the Old Gods has waned with the passing of the years. As for his imagination, it has made him perhaps the only Mudd in many years to think about the future of their house and the realm beyond their decades-old commitment to the Targaryens and Tullys.

Attributes & Talents

The Marshall and the Maid
The blood of many great soldiers courses through Mychel's veins. From Lorimas Mudd to Brienne of Tarth, their famous legacies converged on the day of his birth, and have only been reaffirmed throughout his life. The heir to Harrenhal is strong, fast and precise with his sword, and has performed exceptionally well in his first few melees and jousts. Should he pursue knighthood, his lady aunt suspects that he would become one of the finest knights in the Seven Kingdoms.

The Art of War
A vivid imagination, if well-cultivated, can be just as deadly in the field of battle as a robust body and a good sword arm. Mychel's innate creativity, fostered by a childhood spent memorizing intricate war poems and years of rigorous tutelage under the Lady of Tarth, has made him into a very promising tactician. What he may lack for in cold calculation, he more than makes up for in inventiveness, an aptitude which he has constantly demonstrated to his friends and family through games of cyvasse.

Sapphires are prettier than mud
Mychel's delicate beauty has been spoken of, and sung about, in more than a few courts and inns, and it is the first of many things that lords, ladies and common folk alike find bewitching about him. His allure is only heightened by his character, as people lose themselves in the soft sound of his voice while he sings or recites, or they witness his tenderness and rectitude. This comes at a cost, however, for many see in his pretty face and compassionate nature as signs of unmanly vulnerability.

Wisdom of the Heart
It is a popular notion among some lords, those bountiful in ambition but lacking in scruples, that a man who lets himself be guided by sentiment is a gullible fool, easily manipulated and betrayed. Yet it could be just as easily argued that the right kind of sensitivity can be a weapon against treachery, a way of knowing what lies hidden in people's hearts. Mychel may not be able to know if someone is lying to him by way of a mere glance, but he can often tell the true nature of the people he meets, beyond their words and courtesies.

Riversblood no more
Few would dare say it aloud, but there is little doubt in some that Mychel is no longer considered a 'proper' Mudd by some of his kin. His long stay in the Stormlands, and news of his fondness for his Tarth relatives, have driven some of his Mudd cousins to embrace his new name of Mychel Sapphire as a peyorative. To them, Mychel becoming Lord of Harrenhal would be tantamount to a betrayal of their bloodline, specially when Stormlanders like the Tarths used to invade the Riverlands in ancient times. In a family as closely knit as the Mudds, such a rejection could spell disaster for their family and the Gods Eye.

The meaning of a peach
It is not uncommon for young lords and squires to be curious about the pleasures of the flesh before they are bewedded. It is not uncommon for them to seek out those pleasures in the company of serving girls or whores. It is quite uncommon, however, for a young lord such as Mychel to befriend the serving girls instead of bedding them, and to only visit one specific brothel once, without ever mentioning to anyone but his closest friends who he bedded. It is also uncommon for the heir of a prestigious house to openly refuse several suitors, many of them from very prestigious houses of their own, without even consulting with his guardians or parents on the matter. The lords and ladies who have heard of this mystery have devised a few scandalous answers to it, but only one has been deemed believable. It's an answer which has reminded many storm lords of one of their former lieges.

Immediate Family

His mother, Catelyn Mudd. Forty-two years old.
His father, Endrew Tarth. Forty years old.
His sister, {Lyra Mudd}. Died in childbirth in 379 AC at the age of twenty, along with her child.
His twin brother, {Jacelyn Mudd}. Died in 375 AC at the age of ten.
His brother, Sylvester Mudd. Eleven years old.
His maternal aunt and uncles, Alyssa Mudd, Leslyn Mudd and Brynden Mudd. Forty, thirty-seven and thirty years old, respectively.
His maternal cousins by Alyssa, Jon Mudd, Celia Mudd and Tristan Mudd. Twenty, seventeen and thirteen years old, respectively.
His maternal cousins by Leslyn, Lucias Mudd, Emphyria Mudd and Melantha Mudd. Sixteen, fourteen and eleven years old, respectively.
His maternal cousin by Brynden, Garrett Mudd. Eighteen years old.
His maternal grandmother, Barbara Vance. Sixty-four years old.
His maternal third cousin, Eros Rivers. Fifteen years old.
His paternal aunt, the Lady of Evenfall.
His paternal cousins.

Personal Relations

Catelyn Mudd - Mychel loved and admired his mother once, but with the souring of his love for Harrenhal after Jacelyn's death, so did his love for her sour when he was sent away. The years apart and their growing differences in character have made the chasm between them grow larger, although her diligence and his caring nature have ensured that they at least share a mutual respect.
Endrew Tarth - It is not only the colour of their eyes that father and son share, but also a lifelong yearning for the world outside of the Gods Eye. During his years in Tarth, Mychel kept a close correspondence with his father and eagerly awaited his every visit. Endrew, for his part, always encouraged his son's curiosity and imagination, and found joy in training him for battle before the boy was sent off to his sister.
Sylvester Mudd - The youngest of Lady Catelyn's chilren was still very young when Mychel was sent away, and their memories together are few. Sylvester does not disdain his brother, but the two have rarely spoken to each other in all these years.
His maternal aunts and uncles - Time and distance did much to distance Lady Catelyn's siblings from her sweet Mychel, although Brynden has kept a sturdy interest in the boy's martial training, having been the one to teach him his first swings as a child, and Mychel has always looked up to him.
His maternal cousins - The one common thread among Mychel's Mudd cousins is their stalwart dedication to the old ways and the Old Gods. To them, Mychel's long stay in Tarth, and the stories of his behavior among the storm lords, speak of someone who has abandoned proper tradition and may well be on his way to abandoning the family entirely. Such being their attitude, their behavior towards him has become more and more hostile in recent years.
Eros Rivers - The grandson of Kyros the Silver is as handsome as he is blunt. As a boy, he always treated Mychel as his favourite cousin, and would gladly insult and fight anyone who hurt him. Now a confident young man on his way to becoming a proper soldier of House Mudd, not much has changed. During his visits, he is fiercely protective of Mychel, bordering on jealous even, and Mychel always reciprocates.
Barbara Vance - His grandmother has always played the part of the all-loving matriarch, balancing her daughter's less forgiving nature. She still dotes on Mychel as much as possible, as she does for all her grandchildren, while she tries to find him a suitable match through her network of noble widows.
His Tarth aunt and cousins - Tarth became his home in the years he spent as a squire under his aunt, and the ruling family of the beautiful island became his family at heart. To his aunt, Mychel is like a son. To his cousins, he is like a brother.

Brus Baratheon - Over the course of his years as Lady Tarth's squire, the heir to Harrenhal came to see his visits to Storm's End as a common but much anticipated occurrence, mainly because of one of Lord Lyonel's children. Of all the people Mychel has met in the Stormlands, Ser Brus Strongstag is a clear favourite of his, given how much he openly enjoys the young Baratheon's company despite their markedly different temperaments. Some of his fondest memories are those from the days he has spent with Brus and his squire, Aemon Velaryon, drinking, fighting, singing or riding. Though Brus has a penchant for teasing him, it is clear that Mychel admires and appreciates him, and that Brus cares for him in turn.
Loreon Lannister - It would be difficult for any squire not to feel some admiration for a knight as skilled and gallant as the heir to Casterly Rock. Though they are no more than acquaintances, Mychel sees in Loreon a good man and an exemplary fighter, someone he could aspire to be like someday. On the few occasions where they have met, Loreon has reciprocated Mychel's admiration and shown interest in his potential to become a fine knight in his own right.

Blood Reigns Over Westeros: A Song of Ice & Fire Story (Accepting Player Proposals)

I'm interested :3

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

In

Space Oddity

Episode 03

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THIS EPISODE'S THEME
"It Ain't Easy" by David Bowie

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There was a modestly sized, modestly secret alien spaceport in the outskirts of Davenport, Illinois. Much like with the Milwaukee bazaar, its secrecy was maintained through a combination of arrogance, laziness and lots of blind luck. Only two barriers separated the humans of Davenport from their alien neighbors, and one of those barriers was just a young unarmed Vetrefzklan who would politely ask you if you were there for the spaceport. And he was only playing gatekeeper out of the kindness of his reptilian heart.

Within the port, a diverse array of alien ships, each one more colorful than the last, awaited their turn to take off. The Milwaukee merchants were halfway through their collective abandonment of the planet, although many had had no choice but to leave their wares behind. Most ships were not big enough to carry big loads on top of several different sentient species, each with its own unique life support needs.

"I can't believe this has all been happening right under our noses", said Jake, clearly thinking aloud. Gabriel had to smile at the amazement in his voice, and affectionately held the other man's hand a little tighter. "I mean... an entire alien community in the Midwest. With how much stuff gets leaked about everything, you'd think someone would have noticed it."

"Another cosmomancer told me once that it's actually very common", said Gabriel. "She said that most worlds aren't really normal enough that their inhabitants would immediately notice something like this. You know… kinda like how you sometimes don’t see some of the crazy and over the top stuff that happens in a drag show because everyone in there is being at least a bit sickening."

“Dude, you’ve literally been to one drag show in your entire life.”

“One Earth drag show.”

Jake gave him a puzzled look, and for a second seemed to seriously consider asking him more, but ultimately gave up and just went along with it.

Kurrenj Toh, the Graurra merchant, was saying her goodbyes to her fellow merchants and giving her visibly nervous animals some reassuring headpats before they were loaded onto the bloated-looking violet and green freighter that would take her to her home system. The little Thorian Thrasher was not among them.

In fact, the little Thorian Thrasher was being held in Jake's free arm, and appeared quite happy about it. Which really put a damper on Gabriel’s stubborn commitment to refuse to think of the alien creature as ‘cute’ and ‘cuddly’.

The last of the animals gone, Kurrenj Toh turned back to the two humans, her antennae twitching. “We must truly live in a strange cosmic moment. It has been long since I last saw so many of us move in unison in peacetime.”

She paused, pensive.

“Or perhaps it is just your planet. Some toxin in its atmosphere. You should look into that.”

“Well, climate change…” Gabriel started and immediately trailed off.

"You must know something about my buyer, Andromedan", said Kurrenj Toh. "The buyer was human.”

“‘Human’ human or ‘Vobruuf disguised as human’ human?”

“Most Vobruufs are rather unsociable…”

“True.”

“So definitely the former”, said the Graurra. “He came to me, was very friendly, and described what I knew to be a Thorian Thrasher. He then asked if I knew what it was and where he could acquire one."

"If he didn't know what a Thorian Thrasher was, how did he know what it looked like?" Asked Gabriel. "Did he tell you?"

"He showed me some footage", answered the Graurra. "Apparently, during one of your planet's many meta-human incidents, someone saw and recorded one. I easily recognized that beautiful..."

The creature in Jake's arm gurgled rather loud and disgustingly, and the Graurra aborted her effort to compliment the species. She just stared at it for a moment, her eyes looking a bit haunted, then returned her attention to the young cosmomancer.

"Anyway, he promised to pay with genetic samples of some near-extinct Earth species", said Kurrenj Toh. “Which was an extremely generous offer. You would not believe how enthusiastic some buyers in Athaloc and Myllej are about cloning snow leopards and pandas. And good genetic samples of Earth species are a lot more rare in the Milky Way than Thorian Thrashers.”

Gabriel looked at the Thorian Thrasher, and it looked back at him with eyes that were remarkably expressive, although he had a hard time understanding what exactly they were trying to express. Hopefully a puppy-like tenderness, although they were more likely pondering how edible cosmomancers were.

"Do you have that footage?"

“No, I do not.”

“And your buyer’s name?”

"I would argue that his name is irrelevant, since he is dead", said Kurrenj Toh. “I do know the name of his employer, however."

Dead silence, except for the hesitant lift off of a smaller, rounder freighter nearby. One big problem with setting up a semi-clandestine bazaar in a world without a sizeable space flight industry was that you had to settle for subpar, second-hand freighters with no decent maintenance or spare parts within a light year.

“I’m sorry, but are you trying to build suspense?”

The Graurra struggled with the buttons on her speaking device, antennae twitching with annoyance. A crackling that was way too loud preceded the return of her voice.

“Apologies. A malfunction.”

“Oh.”

“I was trying to say ‘Poseidon Energy’.”

"I don't know what that is."

Jake spoke up, to Gabriel's surprise. "I know what that is. I've heard of them."

"It sounds like a corporation", said Gabriel.

"It is", said Jake. “They offered me an unpaid internship once. I turned them down because… you know… working without pay is… bad.”

Kurrenj Toh made something like a chuckling sound. “I like this fellow human of yours, cosmomancer.”

Beside them, another freighter tried to lift off, hovered uncertainly a few feet over the ground for a couple seconds, then crashed as its engines failed rather noisily, colorful sparks filling the air around it. They paid no mind to it. It was the fifth crash so far.

"So, Poseidon Energy."

"They were fairly active buyers in many of our bazaars on Earth", said Kurrenj Toh. "Mostly interested in scanners and laboratory equipment. We all found it a bit odd that they did not jump straight to weaponry or artificial intelligence, but maybe we were just being prejudiced."

"Well, yes, that was very prejudiced of you", said Gabriel without really frowning.

He offered a hug, which the Graurra accepted, because most Graurra loved hugs, and the two parted ways.

Then the Andromedan stood, with Jake by his side, watching as the last few ships of the Milwaukee merchants left Earth’s atmosphere in a slow, mostly discrete, slightly accidented procession. The spaceport was left almost completely barren, a vast cave barely concealed under the grassy field, illuminated only by the stars and the moon.

“So… is this a normal day for you?” Asked Jake.

Gabriel smiled. “I honestly don’t know.”

---

In the following weeks, Gabriel found that he still did not know what, if anything in his life, was ‘normal’. The aftermath of the Hounds’ attacks had exacerbated that uncertain sensation, the world around him still reeling in ways both great and small, even as the meta-humans and heroes resumed their struggles. The Andromedan found himself strangely isolated in the relative peace, having no contact with his fellow vigilantes or with his fellow cosmomancers. Neither Takol nor the Delphinian showed up, and it seemed as if the rest had taken the recommendation to lay low quite seriously. All he had left to do was deal with whatever strange and potentially dangerous cosmic phenomena turned up within the Earth’s atmosphere, of which there were very few.

His Google searches on Poseidon Energy yielded little information, and most of it disappointing. The only noteworthy thing about them was their tendency to hoard prodigious scientists from top American universities, like a nerdy kind of dragon, producing a lot of research available to the public, but not enough to justify that much investment. They spent very little on lobbying politicians and whatever competition they had was suspiciously uninterested in even acknowledging their existence. In short, they screamed inconspicuous and were, therefor, a bit conspicuous.

By the second week, he realized that he had procrastinated on sending the little Thorian Thrasher back to its homeworld. It remained with him and Jake, constantly demanding cuddles from Jake and occasionally allowing Gabriel to pat it on its gooey head. It was the world’s most grotesque yet well-behaved pet, even if neither of them ever addressed it.

It was a month of long swims, quiet romantic nights in the dorm rooms, visits to his family in Vermont, newly discovered Prince albums, and a couple skirmishes with sapient being traffickers from Cagolon Bia. And every day of that month, the Andromedan was keenly aware of the fact that his world had suddenly gotten smaller, more intimate, and he did not feel entirely at home in it.

Maybe Claudia was right.

---

“Well, that was certainly an unexpected resolution”, said a distractingly half-nude Takol, leaning his wet, crimson-skinned, broad-shouldered body on the porcelain-like railing of the balcony over the artificial ponds. “Not the part where you were able to end the whole mess without any casualties on either side, of course. Cosmomancers are usually very good at that. But the fact that a pandimensional being was willing to speak to you in particular...”

“You also thought that was strange, then?” Asked Gabriel, floating on his back in the pond directly below, just letting the alien minerals in the purple-tinted water soothe his strained muscles.

“I mean… everyone knows that the motivations and thinking processes of such beings are incomprehensible, but still.”

“Maybe I was the first human they ever met?” Gabriel speculated out loud, swaying his arms a bit to avoid drifting away.

“Sounds plausible.”

“Yeah.”

“Still… you did good. Very good, in fact. You were compassionate, level-headed, but firm. And it worked out.”

“Thanks, dude.”

“‘Dude’, he calls me”, chuckled the alien man, showing off his very sharp teeth.

It had taken the Andromedan and his fellow cosmomancers a few days to find their way back from dark space, back to the Dream Unchained. The fleet that greeted them was not too different from the one they had left behind many weeks before. It was a vast, colorful collection of mismatched space ships, more colorful than any other in the known universe, sailing through the cosmic oceans in no particular direction.

It had the looks of a haphazardly formed armada made from leftover or repurposed ships from every corner of the Milky Way and Andromeda, without a singular, unifying design to its whole. And it was, as far as the Andromedan was concerned, one of the most beautiful, comforting sights he had ever seen outside of Earth.

Around him, Gabriel heard other cosmomancers swimming and chatting, enjoying the calm between storms. Outside, a myriad adventures and perils awaited them. There were wars to fight, disasters to avert, stranded ships to save and many, many more things. Gabriel had quickly discovered that these moments, where they could all just mingle and relax and almost pretend that there were just space wizards having a bit of harmless fun in the comfort of their fleet, would always be short.

He heard a splashing sound, felt ripples in the water, and then Takol was walking beside him, knee-deep in the water, a crown of Micafian flowers on his tentacled head. He really liked wearing those. They smiled at each other, although there was an understanding in Takol’s eyes that said a bit more.

“What is it?” Asked the alien man.

“What do you mean?”

“Humans are very expressive. You are thinking about something. It's bothering you.”

“Well, maybe not bothering me, but…”

"Do you want to go home?"

Gabriel said nothing, even as the other lied down beside him.

“Maybe stay on Earth for a while, spend time with other humans, get accustomed to the normal human lifestyle again?”

“That’s the thing”, said Gabriel, closing his eyes for a moment, taking a few breaths. “I kind of don’t want to, and that worries me.”

“Well, it’s not that uncommon…”

“But Claudia doesn’t feel the same way”, Gabriel interrupted his friend. “She’s still one of us, yes, but she's also fighting for Earth, first and foremost. She’s always there when they need her. And I wonder if maybe the difference is that I’m not completely… human anymore. Mentally, I mean.”

He sighed.

“Now and then I look at myself and feel this question in the back of my head, like a headache”, he said, getting a handful of water to drip on his face and untied hair and rub it in, fingers running through his soaked locks. “What part of me is going to define what sort of Andromedan I am? Because a part of me feels at home here, and another part of me doesn’t want that. That other part of me wants his daily life to be swimming in an olympic pool on Earth and going to church on Sundays and eating human food and just… I don’t know… catching common, human criminals...”

“You dork.”

Gabriel scoffed and sat up, mouth gaping slightly with bafflement.

“Seriously?”

“You’re overthinking it. Hence, ‘dork’.”

“What about you, then? How did you figure out your place in all this?”

“Oh, it was easy for me”, responded the former Andromedan. “I mean, my home planet was destroyed shortly after I hatched, so there’s really no dilemma for me there. The entire cosmos is my home now.”

“What if it hadn’t been destroyed?”

“I’d have probably chosen this life anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe my life has an essential meaning, and that meaning is what I have right here”, said Takol. “I like helping people. Always have. And I have the power to do it in ways few others can. I don’t think any external factor could have changed that.”

Gabriel said nothing, but looked down, expressionless, until a chuckle escaped his lips. And then he grinned at the other, eyebrow arched playfully.

“Aren’t you the same guy who tried to teach me how to pick up a Toblunc girl, knowing that I had a girlfriend back on Earth?”

Takol threw his hands up in the air.

“Not my fault that you squandered the most valuable life advice I’ve ever delivered by being stubbornly monogamous.”

---

The video was barely an hour old, but it had already gone viral. Even after everything that had transpired the month before, and in the years before that, people did not, could not, treat these things as normal, as just another part of their human lives.

At first the sound was subtle, as was the sight that accompanied it. An inhuman humming, followed by a constellation of weak lights in the darkness. It was not large or bombastic. But in a way, the smallness of it made it all the more disturbing, because it was everywhere. Wherever the phone’s camera turned, there it was: a thick, writhing combination of darkness and light that distorted the space around it, and its distortions resonated in every direction. Its form stretched high into the night sky, from where it had come. And it was alive.

Lake Champlain was unrecognizable under the being’s form, its gravitational power distorting everything around it. Water had crystallized and formed a ring around the being’s most solid and cohesive part, joined by rings of dust, rocks and trees. The very city of Burlington was straining under the force of the cosmic being’s pull, its structures refusing to yield and abandon the laws of nature, the physics that had always been a part of it. The people of Burlington were outside their homes, most of them trying to get as far away as possible from the lake, while others dared to get closer. The being had hurt no one yet.

The military’s drones arrived at the scene fast and, when they struck, they were destroyed even quicker. Manned reinforcements would take longer to get there. If any meta-humans were planning to help, they were still far away.

The Andromedan appeared soundlessly, his purple and black armor exuding a cosmic iridescence as he came through a spherical rift in space, his body floating in the low gravity surrounding the being. And the reaction from the being was immediate.

"Hey!" He shouted at it. "Whoever you are, don't move any further. You're endangering innocent people."

The black and golden mass of tentacles, rock and swirling dust acted defensively, its matter collapsing on itself in a display of cosmic power that could only be described as a tantrum. A tantrum that further distorted the space several miles around, and which involved no small amount of bursts of dark energy, dark matter and some mysterious stuff that omnipotent beings from dark space seemed to always carry with them wherever they went. The sound was a deafening humming and droning, and it felt almost melodious, but not in a way that reminded the human of any song from his homeworld.

“Wait, do you know me?” Asked the Andromedan, a puzzled look on his face. His voice was drowned out, yet it was not unheard. “Why are you here?”

The response was a trail of light that was not luminous in a way that any human could comprehend, coursing through space like tendrils of ink or dust in the clear waters of a cosmic ocean. That trail disintegrated all it touched. It was an act of hostility, one that was both fearful and intimidating, which confirmed the human cosmomancer’s suspicions.

The Andromedan said nothing more for a while. Instead, he gave himself over to impulse, and his body moved through the darkness, coming closer to the being. And when he was finally close enough, he touched it. It felt like touching sand or a thick liquid or a metal, changing states and compositions so constantly and so rapidly that it was almost impossible to distinguish them. Little specks of light, like fireflies, embraced his hand, coursed through his fingers, and they were strangely cold.

The gesture seemed to calm it. Its strange motions slowed. He thought of the people of Burlington, of his family there, and hoped that he could deescalate whatever this situation was.

He made a little cooing noise, almost involuntarily, and that seemed to help even more.

“Hey, it’s alright”, he whispered tenderly, the sound rather muffled by the peculiar composition of the air, if one could still call it that, around him. “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

The creature spoke, but without using any words. Gabriel was not entirely certain that it even had the capacity to verbalize. And yet it spoke. Ideas seeped into his mind, simple and clearer than any combination of sounds. The creature had a name, although not one that Gabriel could pronounce (and he had gotten very good at pronouncing non-human names), and preferred ‘they’ pronouns, or at least their species’ equivalent of them.

They also found the Andromedan’s hair color rather quaint.

“Thanks”, said Gabriel, his gentle ministrations of the being’s mysterious matter uninterrupted. Gabriel had never read the works of Lovecraft, but he knew an eldritch-like alien when he saw one. Or rather, he knew one when he noticed that their appearance was incomprehensible, outside of the reach of his human imagination or his human senses. Being a cosmomancer meant meeting the occasional one. It also meant that he got to learn unexpected things about them, like the fact that most of them were mostly benevolent, if a bit lacking in empathy, but also very temperamental and easy to provoke. This one, it seemed, was not too different.

They showed him a corner of dark space, beyond the reach of most space-faring species, where it had dwelled for millions of years. They showed him the peace of that solitary void, where they nourished themself on cosmic energies and stray matter. And they showed him a long-dead cosmomancer, the second Andromedan, and the beacon she had left behind. A beacon, made from a fragment of the Andromedan’s armor, which led to…

“Me”, said Gabriel. “My armor.”

They had come for him. He had been visiting his family, and the being had merely followed the connection between that beacon and his armor.

“Okay… but why?”

The being showed him nothing in response. He felt its emotions, however, and saw how those emotions became further distortions in the space around them. Burlington was still in danger.

“I need to know”, he said as he gazed into what he assumed was the being’s equivalent of an eye: a huge, miles-deep hole in its mass that was filled with liquid, iridescent light.

After a breathless wait, a clear answer finally came.

The Andromedan’s bordeaux eyes widened, and he ripped his hand away from the being’s hold. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words remained buried inside him. He struggled, shook his head, and took a hold of the anchor in one of his pockets, using it to help him stabilize the space around them.

“You’re... scared?”

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

@Liseran Thistle Damn, that sounds like a good arc :3

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

@Hound55Thank you so much ^^

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

@Tenma Tendo Damn, that is a cool power =3

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

In

Space Oddity

Episode 02

---

THIS EPISODE'S THEME
"Under Pressure" by Queen & David Bowie

---

Interplanetary wars were not always grim and bloody affairs. Sometimes, they were rather quaint and even downright fun. More than a few space-faring civilizations had taken the logical step that, if they had been able to make both unmanned drones and spaceships, then surely they would be able to make unmanned space drones to fight their space wars. And thus, for some of the sapient species in the galaxy, war had transformed into something far less gruesome and tragic, and more akin to a clean, safe spectacle with mostly abstract political consequences.

The Third Vektrunixt War of Socio-Communal Restoration had so far been a fine example of this. It was a war fought between the inhabitants of the dozen moons that orbited this beautiful gas giant in the middle of the planetarily crowded Karrte Noxugru star system, in the center of the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way. The peoples of the moons had split themselves into four factions, with the inciting one aiming to finally restore the semi-legendary Socio-Commune of Vektrunixt, which had once united the moons under one rather nice banner and some good ideas. This was, as the war's most widely accepted name indicated, their third attempt. The other three factions ran the gamut from pearl-clutching xenophobic tyrants who really didn't like the idea of interlunar miscegenation becoming a thing again to socio-communards who mildly disagreed with a couple policy positions of the first faction.

The Cosmomancers had not initially planned to involve themselves in this war, even though they largely sympathized with the socio-communards in particular and freedom fighting in general. Historically speaking, third times were never the charm and they had not been too keen on picking a side in a war in which, at first, nobody appared to be suffering more than minor inconveniences.

Unfortunately, after the fourth week of fighting, things had taken an unexpected turn for the worse, courtesy of a series of attacks targeted at population centers. Casualties had not been enormous, but they had left many refugees, destabilized three moons, and things had started to escalate. And that had led to the Cosmomancers semi-reluctantly intervening.

Now, three weeks after the arrival of the Cosmomancers, the bulk of the fighting was concentrated in Memim, the fourth moon, on the rather picturesque steppes near its southern pole. Thousands of robots and umanned drones clashed in messy explosions of color, made almost oneiric when mingled with the distortions to reality itself and energy bursts from the dozens of cosmomancers fighting alongside them. Beings of all manner of species, dressed in mostly similar gaudy armors, jumped and floated and ran around the field, smashing and slicing and blasting and disintegrating everything in their path. A few of them now and then fell back to help with getting the refugees to safety, but all in all they were all having fun, even if the numbers were not in their favor and it was beginning to look like the anti-socio-communards would win the day.

"Well, this sucks!" Shouted Takol, the annoyance remarkably obvious in the expression on his red face. His black eyes had an annoyed spark in them too, and his white tentacles did not appear to be in a good mood either. More importantly, however, his powers were definitely not expressing any sort of relaxation, given how all the space surrounding him within a couple dozen feet had become heavily warped.

He was not entirely wrong. It did suck somewhat, and the Ophiuchian obviously shared the former Andromedan's sentiment, as the other cosmomancer made a frigate-sized drone shrink until it disappeared. The Ophiuchian was very good at reducing the space between particles until objects were basically not even real anymore. Specially when she was angry.

"Where is Gabriel?" She shouted back. Luckily, she was not too distracted to turn a nearby pebble into a gigantic boulder, which shielded another cosmomancer from a frankly unwarranted missile strike.

"I did not want to ask him to come!" Said Takol, rushing past the Ophiuchian and jumping several feet in the air to pounce on another large drone. He had always enjoyed fighting the big ones. "He's never fought in a war before! I don't want him to get hurt!"

He was barely audible over the sound of the drone itself as he stood on top of it and tore the space between its particles wide open, cutting the very expensive weapon in half.

"Look, I know he's still just a kid, but he's clearly passionate about helping people and making a difference like we do and we could use a bit of that right now!" Said the Ophiuchian over the noise of the boulder she had grown being hurled at a squad of robots by another, gravity-manipulating cosmomancer. Purple smoke and green sparks filled the air as they were all smashed to bits.

Takol landed back on the ground, rump-first, with an audible thud. He had lost some practice in his landings since giving up the Andromedan's title and armor. It took him a couple seconds to catch his breath, and he would have killed for one of those barely legal energy drinks that they sold on the fifth moon.

"Alright, I know we're both a bit rusty but..."

A mechanical roaring in the sky interrupted him, and he looked upwards with much concern.

"Actually, nevermind."

It was a dreadnought. An unmanned dreadnought. And he had just finished expending his anchor with the previous drone. And the dreadnought was pointing its very, very heavy weaponry in the cosmomancers' general direction. And the weapons were charging up very, very, very fast.

And then there was a new sound, higher above. A very unique sound. It was hard to describe it, except perhaps by making a dozen strained analogies and desperately trying to connect them with hyphens and unusual verbs, so why even bother?

It was the sound of a spatial rift. A small but powerful rift, the sort that one should definitely not make without a beacon. And Takol knew at once that a beacon had not been used.

"Kid can sing the entire soundtrack of Rocky Horror by heart," he whispered to himself, simultaneously astonished and depressed. "But he can't remember to use his beacons."

A young human body in the black and violet armor of the Andromedan came through the rift. Or rather, it fell through it. It fell very fast. It fell very fast towards the dreadnought, and then it passed right through the dreadnought and landed on its feel on the ground, just close enough that Takol could see its youthful features and dorky smile. The dreadnought above found itself suddenly suffering from a sudden, very unexpected hole that ran vertically through its supposedly impregnable fuselage, and a rainbow of sparks and fire came from each end of the hole as it began to fall.

"Hey, everyone!" Shouted Gabriel, waving enthusiastically at the surrounding cosmomancers as the show of light behind him hit its deafening crescendo, then died down. Some ghastly human music was coming from one of the armor's hidden pockets, mostly drowned out by the ambience. "I came as soon as I heard. Ready to help."

"Well... At least his heart is in the right place," said Takol, surrendering to the temptation to smile as the massive unmanned spaceship crashed behind his protégé in an absurd show of light, smoke and smouldering material. He stood up, walked to his protégé and, pressed to choose between smacking him on the back of the head and hugging him, opted to hug the adorable human.

"We could use a hand," said the Ophiuchian. "Mind doing a bit more of... that while we finish evacuating the people? Or you could do the evacuation yourself while we...?"

Gabriel did not hesitate. "I'm gonna help evacuate."

"Your choice," said the Ophiuchian, before she walked away and towards a new wave of attackers that was approaching their position. It was a very big wave. Supported by another dreadnought. A very angry-looking dreadnought, assuming dreadnoughts could look angry. "But before you do that..."

"The big one?" Asked Gabriel, eyebrow raised and finger pointed at the colossal weapon of mass destruction in the sky.

"The big one," said the Ophiuchian with a nod, her mandibles clicking in what might have been an attempt at making an expression akin to pursed lips. The Ophiuchian's species did not have lips.

"...okay."

The human cosmomancer reached into the hidden pocket the music was coming from and pulled out a rather cheap smartphone with a cracked screen. Without taking his eyes off the incoming threat for too long, he put the album that had been playing from it on repeat, stuffed it back in the pocket, and stepped forward.

Humming happily along with Queen and David Bowie, he raised his hand as he began to trot towards the enemy, the Ophiuchian following. From a chain wrapped around his hand hanged his anchor, a young and powerful one, smeared with barbecue sauce. He had accidentally dropped it while having lunch back on Earth and had forgotten to clean it up.

The trot became a sprint and space began to shift around him. The drones and robots opened fire, but their bullets, lasers and missiles were diverted by the spatial distortions. He did not feel like running for a whole mile, though, so Gabriel decided to take a shortcut, and contracted the space between their attackers and them. Once they were upon the attackers, he let go of everything else and focused on the dreadnought. A rift, he just needed a small rift. And a small rift he got, and right where his hand was pointing at in front of him. He and the Ophiuchian jumped through the rift and, after a brief instant in the space between spaces, they were inside the dreadnought.

Alarms blared around them, which made no sense since there were no organic beings to hear it, but Gabriel was not going to file a complaint when he was supposed to be helping his friends and the people of Memim. They quickly made their way through the dreadnought's tight, definitely not organic-friendly corridors, the Ophiuchian and him making short work of the guard drones that came to oppose them. By the time they reached the dreadnought's core, they were coated in the drones' colorful fuel, which made Gabriel feel like he was back in the fun raves of his freshman days, even if the music was not entirely fitting.

The Ophiuchian hacked the core instead of just destroying it, which surprised Gabriel but definitely made him feel like their stunt was a bit less heartless towards this huge machine than he had initially feared. They made the dreadnought crash-land right on top of two of the columns of robots, which was a bit brutal, even if the robots did not have any actual intelligence, and came out from the dreadnought powers ablazing.

"Thanks, kid!" Shouted the Ophiuchian as she took on the robots by the dozens. "Now go help the people!"

Gabriel quickly opened himself a new rift while dodging a few shots from their foes.

"Thanks for letting me choose!" He shouted back as he formed a spatial shield just in time to deflect a very heavy laser. "I don't think I was born to be a soldier!"

"Well, we gotta do what our heart tells us to do!" Said the Ophiuchian just as she stole one of the robots' energy rifles and turned it on its owner. "And you've got a good heart! It'd be a waste having you just smash things or make them explode like I do!"

"Thanks! And good luck!" Said Gabriel, and jumped into the rift. A handful of robots tried to follow him, and their controllers immediately regretted it as the rift closed around them.

On the other side he found the people who needed his help. Hundreds of them, trapped right in the middle of the battlefield, huddled together among the ruins of what used to be their homes. They were visibly scared when they saw him, and he tried to reassure them with a warm smile as he created a spatial shield around them and lent one of them a hand to stand up.

"Hi," he said with his customary warmth, hand raised in greeting, a very nice gesture which was slightly undercut by a loud blast which sounded a bit too close for comfort. Many of the people around him yelped in fear, but he was unwavering.

"Is anyone hurt?"

Fortunately, he got many shaking heads in response. He sighed with relief.

"Okay. It shouldn't be long now, but I imagine none of you feels like waiting a minute more."

A massive bang. Something big and filled with volatile fuel had definitely blown up close by.

"So... I'm here to escort you all to safety, if that's fine with you."

There was a palpable bewilderment in their reactions, yet in an instant they were all in agreement. There were too many of them to open up a rift into a safer place, so they were going to have to walk together while Gabriel tried to protect them. He was fine with that.

"If anyone needs to be carried, I'll be happy to lend you a hand, alright? Don't be afraid to ask. We're all getting through this if we work together," he told the column of refugees that followed him, facing them as he walked backwards, keeping an eye at all times on the enemy fire directed at them. His spatial shield was holding up despite its size and the intensity of the attacks. So far, so good.

The march was not too long, and Gabriel was energetic and eager enough that he managed to keep them all safe and sound against the onslaught. Whenever a drone got too close, he was able to focus just enough, without losing sight of the shield, to apply a bit of spatial manipulation and split it in half by expanding the space between its right down the middle particles. An elderly woman did end up needing to be carried, and once again he managed, the piggybacking barely affecting him as he lured one large drone into a rift that probably led to the moon's north pole. And all the while, Queen and David Bowie kept playing from the hidden pocket in his armor.

The battle was won without a single person losing their lives. As they arrived at the Cosmomancers' safehaven, he could hear the last of the large enemy drones fall in the distance, and one of the other cosmomancers immediately confirmed it: they had, in fact, won. And not just the battle. The war too. The anti-socio-communards, having finally ran out of drones and robots, had sued for peace as soon as that drone had crashed into the steppe.

The third time had finally been the charm, and it had all been thanks to them.

---

The hours after the Hounds' attack on Berkeley were almost exactly like the moments that had followed that battle on Memim, close to the end of Gabriel's first year as the Andromedan. Almost but not quite because, in Memim, he had had his fellow cosmomancers with him, giving him guidance.

The students who had not been taken to the hospital just sat around campus, openly happy that the battle had been won but clearly struggling to move past the terrible fact that a battle had occurred in the first place. Gabriel had not bothered to take his costume off as he sat with the group he felt most comfortable with, in a corner of a cozy coffee shop just outside of the campus. Jake was beside him, cradling a cup of hot cocoa, cute eyes lost in the distance. Gabriel kept his arm around him, now and then giving his temples a little kiss. He was having an orange and strawberry smoothie, because he felt he needed and deserved it, and a chocolate muffin, because his stomach was weird and, instead of feeling sick when he was stressed or nervous, he felt ravenous.

In front of them, another student was holding up a tablet, showing him footage of the Hounds' attacks on other American cities. He was more distraught than angry, more concerned with the suffering of the victims than with the villainy of the culprits. Compared to those tragedies, Berkeley almost seemed like a minor skirmish, not worth his concern.

But Berkeley was his home. Or at least his home away from home. The people here mattered to him personally. They were an active part of his life. And the Hounds had targeted them. Had they taken advantage of his long abscense? Did they even know he existed?

He bit on his muffin with perhaps a bit too much purpose, and needed a long sip of his smoothie to wash it down.

"That's enough, Kat," said Jake to the student with the tablet.

"It's fine," said Gabriel. "I needed to see that."

"You're just torturing yourself," said Jake. "It's already happened, so watching it over and over isn't going to change anything. And other heroes have already taken care of things. They're saying on Twitter that Icon and others are on their way to disable the Hounds' satellite."

This time, it was Jake who gave him a kiss.

"And you were here when we needed you most."

That made Gabriel smile, if with a bit of effort.

"So... what are you going to do next?"

"Help," said Gabriel simply.

Jake chuckled. "Well, that's not vague at all."

"I'm basically making it up as I go along, being a late-comer and all," Gabriel said sheepishly. "Where are these Hounds concentrating their attacks?"

"Lost Haven, of course."

"I feel terrible for the people of that city," said Kat. "They never seem to catch a break. I know some people blame it on the disproportionately large population of meta-humans there, but at this point it's just plain bad luck."

"I've... never been to Lost Haven," said Gabriel.

"I have," said Jake. "It's not a terrible city. The people are nice, at least. A bit crowded, though, specially if you want to get inside their world of meta-humans."

"I'm already part of a very big team," said Gabriel, a bit of laughter in his voice. "Two if we count the swimming team."

"You're still coming to the next Queer Student Union meeting though, right?" Asked Jake, half-joking from the sound of it and the disarmingly cute expression on his face.

Gabriel laughed despite himself. "With or without the armor?"

---

The Hounds had never had much of a foothold in California. Their attempted pogrom in Berkeley had been one of a small handful of simultaneous attacks across the state, and all of them had been failures. The meta-human killers did not lack for ruthlessness or resources, but they had evidently underestimated the solidarity of Californians towards their meta-human peers, as well as the willingness of Californians to use firearms in defense of their neighbors. And so the Hounds had found themselves outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed in every city they attacked.

The point was that not many groups of Hounds had been left rampaging through the state, or at least none that Gabriel could find as he gave much of the state a quick, rift-aided glance. If they had any sort of organization still in place in the region, it was deeply underground and not too eager to try genociding meta-humans again.

So the Andromedan mostly dedicated his time to smaller problems for a bit, problems which involved neither the Hounds or anything from outside of the Earth's atmosphere. He helped firefighters save some people and their adorable pets from a burning building in San Francisco, then thwarted a ridiculously elaborate assassination plot on the mayor of Los Angeles, and then he assisted in finding and recovering several animals stolen from the San Diego Zoo. It took his mind off things, grounded him, and left him with plenty of time to go back to Berkeley and hang out with his friends as they all tried to deal with all that had happened.

In short, after realizing that trouble was no longer coming to him, or at least to his general vicinity, Gabriel refrained from looking for trouble elsewhere. As Jake had said, meta-humans were doing some good work against the Hounds. And besides, there was what Takol had said. He had to stay on Earth if possible and, as the principled young man that he was, he was committed to abiding by Takol's advice.

Then, just as he thought his hectic day was coming to a calm, mellow end, he got a tip. No, the Andromedan was not exactly the detective sort, but sometimes he got tips and he felt the obligation to pursue them, even if he was not much of a deductive person. Although the Earth was still a fairly marginal player in the galaxy's vast political, economic and cultural landscape, the aftermath of the Pax Metahumana incident had caught enough attention outside of the star system to attract a small number of traders and smugglers. What they had created, while technically legal, given that there were no human laws on interplanetary trade, was definitely an ethical black market. Dangerous alien artifacts and 'exotic pets' were sold in the barely hidden marketplaces scattered around the world. Thanks to Takol, Gabriel had come to know the location of every single one of them, and had the phone numbers (yes, they used phones) of a few alien merchants who knew better than to be on the wrong side of the Cosmomancers.

The tip consisted of two words: Thorian Threshers. On its own, it did not mean much to Gabriel, other than the still fresh and still scary memory of being chased by one on the desert planet of Tlievot. So he texted a lot of question marks until his source finally gave him a third word.

Milwaukee.

And that sent a shiver down Gabriel's spine. Not because of the obvious ominous implication in combining all three words and knowing that the source was an alien merchant, but because Milwaukee meant Wisconsin.

---

One thing that even Wisconsinites ignored was that their largest city was home to the largest alien marketplace on planet Earth. Which was remarkable, given how little effort the merchants put into keeping it secret. All you had to do to find it was ask the totally human employees at a little travel agency in the busiest part of the Bayshore Town Center if they knew how to get a business visa for Nepal. Confident that it was extremely unlikely anyone would ever ask that sort of thing seriously, and not worrying much about the repercussions of their laziness backfiring, they would then direct you to a room in the back. There you would find a comically deep hole in the middle of the floor, which would lead you down to a big, well-lit and well-kept tunnel. At the end of this tunnel was a big fancy door with a little friendly sign that welcomed you while reminding you that the alien merchants did not accept any human credit cards except, for some obscure reason, Argencard.

The marketplace itself was... actually quite wonderful. Despite the dubiously ethical practices, it had a warmth and an energy to it that felt very reminiscent of that of the greater bazaars in Andromeda. There was a rustic, old-fashioned quality to it that mingled remarkably well with the advanced technology and alien peoples that packed the narrow corridors and balconies. And the food being sold in the carts smelled weird but tempting, just how he remembered it.

"It tastes like ice cream," said Jake as he stabbed his spoon back in his bowl, his lips and tongue tinged blue by the concoction. He had insisted on coming with him the moment Gabriel had slipped up and mentioned that it was an alien marketplace. And Gabriel, having a soft spot for people in general, but specially cute people like Jake, had given up on his attempt to deter him.

"It kinda is ice cream," he said, taking a big spoonful from his own bowl and consuming it with relish. He had tried to look serious at first, since he was supposed to be following a lead, but it was hard not to look happy in his current circumstances. "It's just that the ingredients are not from Earth."

"And it's lactose free, you said?"

"Yeah," said Gabriel before he stuck his tongue out to see if it had been tinged blue too. It had. "Turns out most sapient species don't get the appeal of drinking another species' milk, specially as adults, so they just make do without any dairy products."

"So you're saying humans are the culinary weirdos in the galaxy?"

"Umm... yeah, pretty much."

The merchant he was looking for was in one of the most popular corners of the marketplace: the pet stores. Or at least the interplanetary black market equivalent of pet stores, which included a lot of heavy weaponry and really fancy accessories.

"Kurrenj Toh, hi!" he said to the rather placid-looking old alien who sat in the middle of a very cozy wood-and-steel cabin, surrounding by his very cuddly alien animals. Kurrenj Toh Feafejtla was a Graurra, a semi-lepidopteran species that resembled the Earth's moths, but without any wings and just four limbs. "How is your family?"

The Graurra's colorful, fuzzy face was quite expressive as she looked at him with what was most likely surprise and a bit of concern. She petted one of her animals with increased intensity, earning a very loud purring in response.

"Andromedan, it's been so long..." She said with a mechanical voice. Graurra could not speak English, or most human languages for that matter, without some technological help. "What has brought you back to me?"

"Thorian Thrashers," said Gabriel as he gave an approaching six-legged reptile a gentle pat on the head. It licked his gloved hand with an orange tongue. "Have you or any other sellers here been trying to smuggle them into the planet?"

She said nothing at first, but her antennae twitched.

"Who told you that?"

"Mlebla, the ice cream seller," said Gabriel. "He keeps an eye on everything while he's here... and he sends me cute cat videos in his free time. Anyway... did you?"

Kurrenj Toh still said nothing, but her antennae twiched harder, and she looked sideways.

"Kurrenj Toh, no," he said, and sounded genuinely, heartbreakingly disappointed. "Why would you do that? I know that they're not evil monsters or anything, but there's a reason why we banned Thrashers in the Cosmomancers' sanctuary. You can't do anything with them other than pray they don't eat someone."

"What's a Thorian Thrasher?" Asked Jake, and glanced at the alien. "By the way he talked about them, they sounded like space dragons or something."

"Thorian Thrashers are a very special gift from the Cosmos, human," said Kurrenj Toh, pointing at a poster on a wall to her left, which depicted one very big and mean Thorian Thrasher devouring a Tlievot sand worm. "With a beautiful... soul, like all other blessed creatures of this Universe. Really."

"It looks like a dragon sculpture made out of runny cream cheese," said Jake, looking understandably repulsed and a bit intimidated. "Do they really eat people?"

"Only sometimes," said Kurrenj Toh nonchalantly. Or maybe that was just the language device doing a bad job of putting emotion into her voice. She turned to Gabriel. "I had a committed buyer, Andromedan, and they offered good pay for a newborn one."

"But you're friends with Takol," said Gabriel. "How do you think he'll feel when I tell him that you've been doing the one thing he trusted you all to never ever do? Earth already goes through enough trouble without throwing Thorian Thrashers into the mix."

"I just needed a good last trade so I didn't have to leave empty-handed," said Kurrenj Toh.

That gave Gabriel pause.

"Leave?" He asked, taking a step forward. One of the animals growled at him, but Kurrenj Toh shut it up with a bit of extra petting. "You're leaving the marketplace?"

"I'm leaving Earth, Andromedan," she said slowly, perhaps trying to make her words sound meaningful. "And I'm returning to my homeworld and my family. My time among your kind, wonderful though you are, is coming to its end."

"But what...?"

A rift opened behind them, covering the corridor outside and the store's interior in its multicolored, shimmering glow. The animals shuddered and huddled closer to the Graurra.

Then she appeared, in her heavy, bright red cosmomancer's armor.

The Delphinian, and the only other human cosmomancer.

"Claudia?"

"Oh..." Said Claudia Southern, looking at Gabriel with absolute apathy. "It's you."

"Hey, yeah, hi," he said with an uneasy smile. "And this amazing person beside me is Jake. Are you here about the Thorian Thrashers too?"

"Hi, Jake," she said with just a little bit of warmth, not moving one inch from where she was standing. "And what Thorian fucking Thrashers? I just heard that alien merchants were leaving the planet en masse and thought I might as well ask the moth lady about it."

"She has a name, Claudia," said Gabriel, and directed his eyes at Kurrenj Toh again. "Also... what does she mean 'en masse'? It's not just you?"

"We may be mere salespeople, humans," said Kurrenj Toh, "but we can perceive the subtle changes in the cosmic climate. We can tell when a new force begins to influence the way things are. There's an invisible hand at work and we, sensible investors that we are, are going to take our gains and go home while you nice cosmomancers deal with it."

The humans stared in silence. Her antennae twitched again.

"Also, there might be a galaxy-wide recession coming soon and I can't risk making more investments in a marginal planet like this one," she spoke again, faster, almost like she was embarrassed. "Turns out there was a space station construction bubble in Perseus and it's about to burst."

"What did you mean by an 'invisible hand'?" Asked Claudia with her customary sneer, voice laiced with a dangerous lack of patience.

"A few weeks ago, in the galactic Outer Arm, some of our competitors came into contact with a mysterious trio of ships. Their designs were unlike anything they had ever seen, they carried no known insignias, and their crews insisted on communicating exclusively through audio. There was no way to identify them."

The Graurra stood up and walked to a dark corner of her store, her animals whining behind her in various tones at the loss of her fuzzy warmth. In that corner, there was a lot of advanced technology, mostly computers that tracked the economic trends for her particular sort of products, but also a very sophisticated-looking safe. From inside it she produced something... odd.

"You ever heard of the concept of predatory pricing, humans? Nasty strategy. I used it all the time in my youth."

In her fuzzy hand, she held an oval-shaped object that seemed to be somewhere between metallic, ceramic and crystalline in nature. More noteworthy, however, was that it appeared to pulse with colorful lights from within.

"But you know what's even worse than predatory pricing? Just plain buying many of our Outer Arm competitors out, probably to set up a monopoly. And then give them new products, weapons. And then, in exchange for all that, only make two requests of them..."

She set the object down on a nearby table, cluttered with various accessories and tools of the Graurra's trade.

"First, that they used their new resources to start a trade war in the busiest markets in the galaxy," she explained. "I trust that you are all smart enough to know what a galactic trade war would entail."

Gabriel held his breath without realizing it. He did know. Claudia did too, from her grimace. Jake... still seemed absolutely fascinated by this new universe he was discovering, so Gabriel had to assume he could not quite understand the meaning of Kurrenj Toh's words yet.

"And second," continued the Graurra, "that they distributed gifts to every cosmomancer in the Milky Way."

"So that's one of the gifts?" Asked Gabriel.

"Surreptitiously bought from a really stupid competitor of ours, yes."

"And what is it?" Asked Jake.

"Could be a bomb," said Claudia.

Gabriel gave her a concerned look. "Why does your mind always go straight to terrorism?"

"Because I live in the real world, fuckhead?"

"Now you're just being antagonistic for the sake of it and I won't engage you," he said before he turned his back on her altogether. "What else can you tell us, Kurrenj Toh?

The Graurran hesistated. When she finally spoke, it was in a lowered voice.

"I imagine that your peers know more about such mysteries of the stars than we do," she said, taking the object in her hand again and giving it to a still puzzled Gabriel.

"We should try to open it," said Claudia, suddenly standing beside him. "But not here. Do you have a beacon?"

Gabriel nodded, not taking his eyes off the 'gift', trying and failing to maybe get some information just by staring at it like an idiot. He eventually gave up.

"Jake," he said at last looking at his... boyfriend? Maybe in the next couple weeks he would know for sure. "Could you wait for me with Kurrenj Toh?"

Jake expressed his agreement with a very short, very sweet kiss, and a playful pat on his shoulder. Which must have looked absolutely adorable, because Jake was a lot shorter than him.

"Kurrenj Toh, I'm sure you and Jake will get along great," he told the Graurran as he made a gesture with his fingers in the direction of an empty space in the room. A rift appeared. "Jake studies anthropology at UC Berkeley."

And with that said, the two cosmomancers jumped into the rift together. The mesmerizing anomaly in space collapsed on itself a few seconds later, leaving the young human, the Graurran and a lot of animals alone in relative silence.

"So..." Began Kurrenj Toh. "Just human anthropology?"

Jake nodded, absentmindedly caressing some animal's fur without looking.

"I have a daughter," said the Graurran. "She's specializing in Perseus Arm anthropology. Lots of very diverse civilizations to study."

"You must be proud," said Jake, smiling.

"I am," she said. "And besides, she's better off studying sapients than non-sapients like her mother."

"Is it as expensive as it is here?"

"Expensive?"

"Her education?"

Kurrenj Toh watched him in what appeared to be a stunned muteness, at least for a few moments.

"I don't understand your question, human," Kurrenj Toh finally spoke. "What sort of monstrous civilization would force their children to pay for studying anthropology?"

Jake said nothing for a while. He stuck to quietly petting the animals with the fuzzy, moth-like alien, and tried not to sob.

---

An uninhabited ice planet. It was perfect for opening a mysterious and probably dangerous object, and it had the added benefit of not reminding Gabriel of Thorian Thrashers. And besides, he really liked watching the auroras.

The two cosmomancers stood there for a bit, contemplating the sky and paying little attention to the thing in Gabriel's hand. Their breath turned into steam in front of them.

"So... Claudia..."

"Hmm?"

"I wanted to apologize for stranding you for three days on an asteroid in the outer rim of Andromeda."

"You think I'm still salty over that? It's been a couple months now."

"Yes, I think you're still angry."

"Well, I am."

"I didn't know you didn't have a beacon with you," said Gabriel. "Otherwise I would have left you in Mongolia or Australia."

One of the corners of Claudia's mouth rose to form a half-smirk on her face, but there was not much humor in her eyes.

"I suppose I kind of deserved it when you pushed me into that rift. I had almost killed innocent people."

"I don't think you're a bad person, Claudia..." Said Gabriel. "But you think, say and do terrible things a bit too often."

"Maybe you should consider the possibility that we're looking at things through different lenses?" She said, grabbing the 'gift' from Gabriel's hand. "You spend your time either doing the smallest things or protecting the galaxies alongside the others in far away worlds. I'm the only one of the two who actually picks the big battles taking place right on Earth."

"The moment you pick a side in those battles, though, you're making a political decision."

"Of course I'm making a political decision," she said. "But so are you, you dumbfuck. The only difference is that your political decisions when it comes to Earth boil down to doing the bare minimum because you're scared of your own convictions."

"Claudia, I'm a bisexual Christian socialist who joined a libertarian commune of space wizards. If I start making major decisions on Earth, I'm definitely going to alienate a lot of people."

He sighed.

"You don't have that problem, because you're always on the 'right' side. You're on the side of the people who just want things to be 'normal' and comfortable. But what if what's 'normal' is actually awful in its own right?"

She said nothing.

He said nothing.

They let a couple minutes pass, gazed at the auroras some more, then simultaneously decided that it was time to do what they had come here to do.

"That thing is not from the Milky Way or Andromeda," said Gabriel. "Or at least not from any part I'm familiar with."

Claudia nodded in agreement.

"Maybe we should do this from a distance?"

"Oh, absolutely."

She placed the 'gift' on the snow, and the two of them walked in opposite directions, until they were far enough that the 'gift' was barely visible. And then Gabriel did the honors, expanding the space between the particles until he saw the 'gift' split in half.

Claudia was the first to reach the remains, and let out a relieved sigh as she kneeled on the snow.

"It wasn't a bomb, at least."

"But what was it?"

When Claudia stood up, she did so with something held tightly in her hand. Something that was producing a lot of pulsing light. For the first time in a long while, Gabriel saw some excitement show on her face, only for it to disappear all too quickly.

"It's... a beacon," she whispered to herself, then raised her face to Gabriel's. "I can feel it."

Gabriel touched the object, its surface somehow both crystalline and metallic at once, and he knew.

"And we know where it leads."

"Triangulum."

"There are no cosmomancers in Triangulum," he said, progressively feeling more concerned than captivated. "So who would know to send us a beacon?"

"It's so strange, though," said Claudia. "It doesn't feel as... natural as other beacons. The texture is all wrong, the energy is too condensed, like it's somehow been depurated... or synthesized."

"We should take it to the sanctuary."

"If what the moth lady..."

"She has a name."

"If what she said is right... then other cosmomancers may have gotten their own 'gifts' there already."

She gave him a meaningful look, and he frowned at her as he understood her meaning.

"We're not using it."

"You are not using it, shithead," she declared, taking a step back. "I'm going alone. I'll tell you later what I've found."

She raised her hand with the beacon in the cold air. A rift opened behind her, and she went through it without saying another word. Gabriel did not get the chance to try to dissuade her or say goodbye.

---

"Please tell me you didn't already sell the Thrasher," said Gabriel as soon as he came through a new rift into Kurrenj Toh's store.

"Fortunately for you, Andromedan, I did not," answered Kurrenj Toh. "I think my buyer died. Something about satellites striking American cities?"

"Sorry to hear it," said Gabriel, a bit confused about his own words for a bit, but finally determining that, yes, the buyer dying in the Hounds' attacks was sad, despite their unethical purchasing habits. "Does this mean that you will send the Thrasher back to its home planet?"

"I'm not doing that. I lost people trying to get it here. You send it back, human."

"I am not coming within a mile of any Thorian Thrashers, Kurrenj Toh. Even babies."

"You are within fifteen feet of a baby Thrasher right now."

Gabriel immediately took a look around, bourdeaux eyes searching the place for something pale, ugly and dragon-like. And then he noticed it.

"You kept it in your herbs garden in the back?"

"It likes my herbs."

"That's... actually very sweet," he said without an iota of irony. "So what planet did you get it from? Where to should I open a rift?"

"Takol told me he rescued you from an adult Thrasher back on..."

"Tlievot," Gabriel groaned, half frustrated and half incredulous, falling onto a couch beside a very cheerful Jake. "Because of course you got it from Tlievot. Because the Cosmos loves coincidences."

"That it does, Andromedan," said Kurrenj Toh, and for the first time he heard her laugh through her language device. It was not a bad laugh.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

[deleted]

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

the art is good!

@Liseran Thistle

It is. A gem I found on DeviantArt :3