Vec
kapuchu@Vec TBH I think Bethesda and the Jewish Temples should be more irritated then you. I'm willing to admit that the Realta are a wierd hybrid of Flame Daedra and the original Abrahamic Angels.
Still pretty sweet though.
Still pretty sweet though.
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@Double Capybara Um... the point from which two rays emerge? Otherwise I got nadda
@Queen Raidne I appreciate the sentiment. May I ask that I be kept in mind should anyone decide that they are incapable of playing further or making it? I have a few ideas I'd like to play with here.
Post is.... UP! THE WAR HAS BEGUN! SHOW ME YOUR WARFACES!!
Harbinger of the Natural Order, Guardian of Harmony, God of Kings and King of Gods, I AM THAT I AM
Level 7 God of Order
7 Might 5 Freepoint
On the mountain slope of Mount Altai, the city of Talos burned. Fires raged unchecked, their smoke darkening the sky and blotting out the full moon hanging high overhead. What few Angels dared take to the skies to escape the heat were quickly overwhelmed by the noxious fumes and plummeted back to the harsh embrace of the earth. The panicked cries of thousands echoed across the ruins of the once mighty stone walls towards the hastily farms that surrounded the city. The Human, Roavick, and Hain soldiers that called the city home did what they could to block out the horrible sounds, but most would carry them to their grave.
Standing far above the highest point of the city shone a terrible light. It made the great armies of the Amestrians tremble as gouts of white fire rained down upon them. Giant thunderclaps announced to the people that death was upon them each time spark was touched to air. Blinding flashes of light and clouds of acrid smoke were as trumpeters to their terrible inferno of volatile magics.
When they found their new homes in the crumbling husk of the once great Amestrian city, some fire would burn all in their path whether stone, wood, or flesh. Others would explode on contact, throwing shrapnel in all directions to deliver the unwary and the unlucky to the unyielding grasp of the Endless Beyond.
On the highest home of the city, the Reliquiem of Talos watched the carnage with empty, lifeless eyes. The wood beneath his feet each time the Realta unleashed her devastating fire. It was from her hands the fire lept, but it appeared she took little pleasure in it. She took no joy in anything, it seemed.
Every building from the highest point up the mountain to the coastal wall had been systematically targeted. While not every structure was completely destroyed, the star was certainly working their way down the list. The elderly Hain suspected the star wouldn’t be satisfied until no two stones sat upon each other in good order.
The casualties in the city were impossible to estimate, though it was certainly a matter of percentages now rather than a mere tally. Whether the significant statistic was the percentage of dead or that of those who still lived, he had no idea.
In the distant sky, the world seemed to be ending.
The stars seemed to ripple and detach themselves from the Firmament of the Heavens, and as the Requiem watched, they released themselves to the earth. Streaks of flame clawed grievous wounds through the atmosphere, their brilliance such that the late hour shone brightly as high noon. Fearsome banshee shrieks trumpeted their approach, and the ocean trembled in fear of the wrathful God’s might unleashed upon the world.
This star was but the first to come down, but was followed in such close succession that the order became meaningless. Every star, the comforting lights that had guided and guarded all living creatures on a world far beyond this one since time immemorial, brought with them death. Their lives were simply the sacrifice upon an altar to the will of of their Father..
The destruction this single star was absolute. Hours of plasma blasts had reduced structures to rubble, but the overlapping craters of charred rock left nothing to testify that there had ever been anything but a field of burning glass. The peoples in the homes around the city huddled in their burrows, the scythe passing a hair’s breadth from their faces at times not daring to reach out for more.
Eventually the parade of annihilation slowed and stopped. As seemingly endless as they appeared, the star’s fury were abundant, but finite. The time did finally come when the sky had no more fire left to give, no more stones to melt. It was no matter: her father’s will had been done.
All that remained of the once-great metropolis, a center for trade and wonder at its height, was ashes. Soot and crackling glass would be the city’s tombstone, the abandoned rings of fortification its pallbearers. The calamity would be spoken of in hushed whispers, told over firelight as a parable to the coming generation as they sat under a night sky and gazed fearfully at the stars above.
The Requiem would live to see none of these things. Little life remained in his body. His heart worked feverishly to pump what traces of blood remained, but its successes only served to push him closer to the end.
The death of his city, and its people, was the Requiem’s final sight before he was claimed by the endless darkness of the void.
Logos nearly glared down from his post, thousands of miles above Galbar as the scene replayed itself three thousand three hundred and thirty-two more times. A lesser God would have struggled to hold in his Temper.
Logos had none.
Brother, come! In the heart of Lantea, we sing the thousand-year death-song for a fading galaxy. We shall gather its embers and bank them in the black hole at its core.
Galbar had been beautiful, once. Had been being the key phrase of it all. It had once been barren, a seemingly endless plane of white sandstone. So very much like the tiny world he had found. This world, the world he had first laid eyes on, had seemed like a blessing. Empty, featureless, and devoid of everything. With it held endless potential, and endless perfection for a future. Their reward for a task well done by Fate.
The Lord of Order had spurned it at first sight. He had foreseen what was to come, for how could anything natural survive in endless chaos. Briefly, in his long treks across the featureless surface of his own world, back in the dark and emptiness a universe away, Logos had doubted, if for the briefest of nanoseconds, if he had made the right decision to abandon his brethren. Now, upon looking at their perversions, Logos’s resolve hardened.
Dark reds and greys and blacks obscured large swaths of land now. A vast desert ran against grey waste, and battered mountains framed the world. Poisoned swamps and alien jungles. Ice caps that seemed broken from reality itself. A few sparse forests lay within grasslands, and within those grasslands were found the many sentient races of this world.
Logos was not impressed. So many spur of the moment creations.
No purpose to any.
The Rovaick were crude. Mishappen monstrosities spurred to breed and destroy.
The Packmind were ripe with the stench of Vestec’s poisonous influence.
The Urtuleem were unnatural, as were the Djinni and the Pronobii. Creatures of artificial life, stone, ice and air. Within them was simply the trappings of a mind and a life, the ghosts of the necessary neurological processes. They had no place.
His eyes turned at last to the creatures of his own making, the stolen humans from his garden. They too had become flawed, stolen to sate the whims and fleeting fancies of his brothers and sisters.
If there was but one race that passed any modicum of approval in Logos’s all seeing eyes, it was the Hain. Strange design, and an even stranger maker, but within them he felt the pull of his Order. His brother Toun, had done well in their creation.
But they were not the design of Logos’s making. Therefor, they were flawed.
Every so often was the flare, the sign that another one of his children had either landed or found another of Jvan’s foul creation. In a few minutes, the area would swiftly become covered in black, or still smoldering reds. In many places, even the seas were poisoned; potential pristince waters deep, sickly greens.
Galbar itself, the home of the gods and goddesses that had created the universe itself, stood as a testament to their prides, their lusts, and their ignorance. Foul works of Jvan orbited the upper atmosphere, and even the natural satalites pulsed with the chaotic essence of Vestec. Toun had secluded himself within a fortress on the sea. And many of his brothers and sisters seemed quiet… almost as if…
We shall circle its fatal horizon and bathe in its death-glow. We will sing the song of making as we dive into its gravity well. We shall meet at its center and re-kindle its fires, and a new galaxy shall be born. Join us, Father!
Another flare of white light down below.
It mattered not.
City, forest, desert, mountain, plains: all were being slowly reduced to rubble and molten glass to purge the virus that was the Cancer the Grew from the world once and for all. And Logos was staring right at the cause of all of this destruction. Hidden beneath the waves, secreted away from all but his eyes, was that monster from beyond Reason.
Logos was not angry.
Within a single thought Logos was upon the surface of Galbar for the first time.
Whirlwinds of dust rose up and fell back to the ground as the wind surged erratically. The tiny bits of dirt and pebbles kicked up in the gale were harsh against any mortal’s flesh, for it was here in the Firewind Desert that he would correct all wrongs.
He was not alone. One of his children stood close, arms aflame as it prepared to strike down its intended; a woman wrapped in layers of rich red cloth. A tattered pack hung from her back, a gourd of water, and sandals that had perhaps never known better days. The Realta paused in its task to glance at its father, who merely raised a hand to stall its judgement.
The woman stopped to stare. Her patchy skin was stretched over her skeleton like thin rubber. Saliva and blood dripped from her crusted mouth, which opened into four wedges to reveal layer after layer of razor tooth.
Come, my lovely white dove. I remember when you danced the death of Eta Carinae, how your feathers whipped in the solar wind as you hands spread its heart across a hundred stars.
“Find another,” came Logos’s command. The Realta obeyed, leaving a trail of fire in its wake as it took to the skies, to find another of Jvan’s twisted worshippers.
For a second, the woman just stood there, as if trying to make her mind. Finally, she rummages through her stained, smelly saddlebag. A chunk of stinking, bloody meat plops out; the woman quickly tucks it back in and pulls out a crude knife chiseled from bone.
With that, the Lord of Order methodically climbed down the ash dunes, letting the foreign sun soak its light upon him. The Sculptor chased after the God like a timberwolf chasing a rabbit, slashing wildly with her ivory knife.
He did not even exert the effort to even think of dodging her. The blade chipped and fractured with every thrust on his ebony skin as Logos walked tirelessly through the dunes. Eventually, he came to a wide running river flowing southward. He splashed into the ash-choked river, sending up sprays of slate-grey water. The woman apparently didn’t care about getting wet, following him into into the river, her glazed eyes filled with ravenous hunger.
Logos turned to her when he reached the opposite bank and shook his head at her her, almost in disappointment. “You know not who I am,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
The Sculptor gave an intelligible hiss, her mind clearly shredded beyond knowing by that thing’s foulness.
Then his eyes flash like the flashbulb of a mountain-sized camera. Clouds of superheated dust and ash were lifted skyward. When the light cleared, all that was left of the woman was a charred skeleton and the smell of burning pork.
No man’s laughter ever made the stars twinkle so brightly as yours did then!
They were so delicate, his humans. Speed up the frequency of their individual atoms, boil the water within them, and they reverted to the soil from which they came.
Across the silent desert, a breeze began to pick up. The skeleton slowly started to disintegrate into grey, flour-like ash.
Logos paid no heed to it, and knelt down and begin digging into the dunes with his hands, shifting soil until an adequate hole had been formed. From within a pocket of carefully concealed space was his flower of beautiful crystal brought out, its roots buried deep within the unforgiving desert soil.
The Acalya flower’s petals did not so much as twitch from from the fiery gale. It stood rigid, self-contained, flawless. Logos reached down, his finger lightly caressing the base of the flower.
This was simple. It had already been designed. All that was required now was to set the machine into motion.
“Grow.”
Something solid, a seed, formed from his magic. He lowered it into the ground, burying it deep beneath the earth, into the roots of the flower. The sand glowed with white magic, and then a small winding stalk pokes out of the soil, raising the flower. Its growth enhanced its Lord’s behest, the stalk continued to grow as its crystal skin roughened, formed ridges and grooves along its length as it grew past his shoulder height, the stalk continuing to grow wider and rougher.
The stalk split and branched into all different directions, and those split split again, and again, and they grow wide and flat pieces of shining glass that hang from the branches on short stems.
The tree grew to five times his height by the time Logos cut off his magic. Logos approached it slowly and lifted a hand to touch its skin.
Hold in your brilliance no longer. Let me see your skin glow like the furnace at the heart of Mu Cephei. Let me gaze into your eyes, lit with the light of a hundred suns, while I breathe upon the neck, and hold you tight while a thousand novas burst within us.
Logos stood there for a moment. His eyes traced the leaves and branches, and the grain of the flawless crystal down to the base of the tree. The leaves rustle in the wind from the dunes, their music a thousand chimes, but hold fast to their branches.
He sensed the roots spreading beneath beneath the sand and soil, changing the land beneath his feet. It no longer required any further input from him, its biological programming would see to its completion. Wherever its roots touched, the soil fused into crystal quartz and rose from the earth in hexagonal columns, the prospective saplings upwards as the tree spread its influence. All around the desert, stalks began to grow out of the ground, winding their way up out of the earth, and stretching high into the sky. The ground glows white with Acalyian magic, and the clearing becomes surrounded by trees.
The trees’ trunks grow thick, and their skin roughen. Leaves sprout along their branches, and soon the Logos could could no longer see past the trees to the land surrounding. Blades of razor grass brush against his feet, bending away from their creation.
It was like a garden of sparkling, shimmering glass growing out of the ground, with the vines and flowers upon the trunks, and a lush canopy overhead. Everywhere he looked, light shimmered and sparkled right back at him.
Logos sat on one of the raised platform, legs dangling off the side and rested his head against the diamond bark of the center tree, bathing in a soft glow of pale blue from all around.
The trees had even now begun released their terrible gift to the world, which would follow upon the arid wind to the furthest corners of this world. Wherever they landed, the Acalya would crystallize and spread, purify and convert.
Come drift with us. Remember all, then forget it, forget yourself, forget the borders between minds and drift, feel, see, be!
His Realta would purify this planet’s people, and the Acalya its flora.
He would rectify the mistakes of his siblings. The first move in the Divine Game had been made.
Logos, King of the Gods, the only one to remember, waited for the next.
Sweet. Someone throw me an updated Map of this ugly world so I can plot my conquest give the writing some justice.
Question t the class; anyone know if a full infection event of a city for Jvan's fleshiness is possible?
Question.... still room for a crazy cat to join the fray? I notice we have one stargate fanatic here; let's see if we can make that two.
@Kho I demand Links good sir. Let me embrace the madness of Vestec with you
Fan Zhong
WEAPONS INSTRUCTOR
” If you will not die for us, you cannot ask us to die for you.”
________________________________________
Full Name
Fan Zhong
Nicknames
One-Hand Fan
Age
26
Gender
Male
Sexuality
Heterosexual
Abilities
“The first weapon you wield is vigilance. The second is the knife in your sleeve.”
Fan is a master of the Qing Dao (Shortsword), the Shéng biāo (Rope Dart), the Sleeve Arrow, and an array of flying blades, and has some moderate hand-to-hand skills. His agileness and limberness also granted him impressive parkour and free-running skills, allowing him to scale almost any surface or terrain quickly and squeeze through most barriers and small spaces with noticeable ease, and was once considered a master of stealth.
However, due to his injury, the most valuable asset the once-assassin now possess is his extensive knowledge. While the other Bending Masters may focus on their particular bending style, or martial arts, or philosophies, it is the duty of Fan is teach the Avatar both personal defense and the ways of the world. The most recent avatars had endured many trials and tribulations during their journeys, most often due to ignorance and Fan would see this Avatar suffer a little less.
His sharp eye are on constant lookout for any attempt on the Avatar’s life and is attempting to teach her what so knows so that she might thrive once she has completed her education and he is no longer around. His personal experience has given a veritable treasure trove and knowledge to impart on her: diplomacy, history, courtly intrigue, the identities foreign officials and their stations, laws and politics, customs and traditions, camouflage and survival, strategy and warfare, counter espionage, herbs and their uses both medicinal and poison, in addition to his knowledge of the human body, his own assassination techniques, and most importantly… Pai Sho.
Fighting Style
“You know who was honorable? A lot of people who died, that’s who.”
Fan wholeheartedly believe that one should do whatever they can to ensure survival in a fight, and demonstrates this philosophy in his own combat style, which centers around speed and agility, dodging enemy attacks instead of blocking them. For this reason, he does not wear heavy armor or capes or use loose robes, but instead relies on just his sword and knives. Fan typically opens with his more ranged attacks before closing the gap to engage the opponent with melee as swiftly as possible before they’ve had the chance to recover mentally and physically. Fan actively employs an entire arsenal of dirty fighting, looking for any weakness in an opponent and exploiting it as brutally as possible, seeking to win by any means necessary. Using an extensive knowledge of chi and artery points of the human body, the Avatar’s Martial Instructor seeks to end combat as swiftly as possible.
This is all, assuming of course, that Fan hasn’t already poisoned everyone’s tea.
________________________________________
Physical Appearance
Fan is a tall man of about six feet,with his face framed by length of black hair pulled back. He wear the traditional dark greens of his homeland, the Earth Kingdom, his outfit design to keep his movement as unimpeded as possible. His only visible weapon is his Qing Dao, the others carefully hidden up his only sleeve or elsewhere on his body. Wooden sandals adorn his feet, and his body is taut with lean but firm muscles. A sense of tired weariness hangs about his amber eyes.
Most peculiar is his left arm, or rather, the lack of it. His empty sleeve is carefully pinned to his clothing, and underneath, a patch of scar tissue that clearly showed where his arm was.
Equipment and Personal Belongings
“And I will place my Chrysanthemum… here…”
His weapons, a pair of steel shin and forearms guards, caltrops, a set of worn climbing spikes, and an extremely battered Pai Sho set that he insists on bringing everywhere.
Goal
“The recluses’ dream / coming true vividly / the peach blossoms”
Fan had actually been contemplating starting a peach orchard before being chosen as the Avatar’s instructor. Right now, keeping the Avatar alive long enough to realize the orchard seems like a worthy goal, if a little selfish.
Secret
"The quest for truth above all else."
Due to the events of the Avatar Korra’s life, the White Lotus have a greater understanding of the Avatar Cycle and Spirit, as well as the potential for destruction an Avatar could truly cause. In the event of the Avatar going rogue, or utilized against their will as a weapon, Fan has orders to neutralize her without hesitation. As bad as President San’s Republic might be, the thought of another Unalaq was reason enough to make this a viable option.
Habits
"Yes! High Fi-.... other hand."
In the occasional excitement of things, Fan sometimes forgets that he’s missing a particular limb much to his annoyance and the amusement of others.
________________________________________
Likes
“Come on… just one more round!”
o Pai Sho
O Peach anything.
o A well organized plan that survives contact!
Dislikes
“Here we go- Again.”
o When the Avatar doesn’t heed his advice or chooses to skip her lessons.
o The “Fight First, Think Later,” mentality he views most Benders to have
o His four year losing streak to Kariya Amaris.
Strengths
- “I'm paid to kill and protect people. Friends get a discount."
o Stealth and Acrobatics
o Worldly Knowledge and Experience
o Complete Mastery over his few chosen weapons
o A mind for tactics, strategy, and counter espionage.
Weaknesses
“If I was five years younger..."
o The loss of his left arm has considerably lessened his fighting ability and action economy. Simple things, such as holding heavy objects, tasks that require the use of more than one hand (holding a sword AND opening a door for example), are extremely difficult, if not outright impossible. Further more, while he is quite adept at hiding in the shadows and maintaining silence, personal disguises have become all but useless with his most identifying lack of a feature.
o Unlike a bender whose body is a weapon at all times, Fan has a limited number of weapons, especially flying daggers and arrows. These must be either recollected or replaced when used. In addition, if he is utterly disarmed or loses his sword, his handicap has made it so that his own martial arts is not enough to engage a skilled bender and win.
o Was trained for mores for agility instead of endurance, and while is fully capable of dodging blasts from a Bender, he has no method to defend himself from them, and probably could not survive more lethal blows.
Personality
“If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.”
Fan is sarcastic, with a black sense of humor, and a pragmatic, amoral philosophy for life. He will often be the first to offer the most direct, albeit cold solution to problems, regardless of how it may affect the emotions of others, stemming from years of mission triage: achieving the greatest return on investment for his actions. He is rather apathetic to the idea of killing someone with his methods, arguing that what he does is no different than any Bender in existence.
However, he is not completely heartless, nor is he sadistic. He takes his duty of mentoring and guarding the Avatar very seriously, and views the success of this mission as not just simply protecting an innocent girl, but rather, the safety of the entire world. He is utterly loyal with the Avatar and while he may not always agree with her actions or ideals, he will do his best to ensure that she is safe in her endeavors of them.
As a tutor, he is a firm but gentle teacher, seeking to guide his charge rather than beating the lesson into her brain. Most lessons will involve a practical or physical aspect for the Avatar to utilize, showing through demonstration and careful explanation rather than a lecture or countless repetitions.
He is someone who will go to lengths to ensure that his own survival and the survival of his charge is paramount, but fully knows that he is not the sole teacher of the Avatar, and that his fellow instructors are vital for her training. Therefor, while he may not be as merry of lighthearted as his compatriots, he will gladly consort with them to develop their charge into the Avatar she is meant to be. Fan is actually rather shy about talking about himself, seeing this as an uncomfortable broach of his work-relationship.
Brief History
“Kill one, save ten. Kill ten, save a hundred. Kill a hundred…”
To tell the story of Fan, one must first tell the tale of the White Lotus, for the two are inexplicably entwined together. In the years following the Red Lotus Cell lead by the Airbender Zaheer, the Grand Masters of the Order met together to restructure the Order. The most recent debacle showed the desperate need for some drastic changes; once barely two dozen masters had stood against an occupied Ba Sing Sei held by thousands of Fire Nation soldiers and had achieved victory in almost an hour. Shortly after the Hundred Year War's conclusion, the society stopped concealing itself from the public eye and began to serve the world and the Avatar more openly, expanding their operations and recruiting more openly, swelling their numbers.
But it was only after the incident with the Red that the White begin to reflect that quantity did not always equal quality. Where before they had masters, now they had many, arguably skilled, but lackluster sentries. They had been reduced to glorified bodyguards, while the Red Lotus had focused on skills and resources, working in secret to produce the highest quality of Masters. Every instance before, from Unalaq to Amon, the White Lotus could do little but slow down attempts on their charge. Even now, they knew not of the whereabouts of the Red Lotus remnants, their numbers, or their powers.
A change was necessary. The few decades would find a rise of more off the books practices in lieu of their public face as the White Lotus saught to consolidate its power once more.
Their enemies had fallen into the shadows.
The White Lotus would follow.
Fan Zhong was born the only child to two Sentinels of the White Lotus who had stood guard during the reign of Avatar Korra, and had been inducted into the Order at a rather young age, and had since considered the Order almost as his birthplace and home rather than any city or nation. The son of two benders, it was considered mild disappointment when he inherited neither of his parents talents, though his place in the Order was still assured.
Fan grew up against the backdrop of the civil unrest in the Earth Kingdom, as territories slowly splintered from the unrest caused by President San. His family became accustomed to living in occupied territory, moving from base to base with other cells of the White Lotus to stay ahead of the encroaching forces. It was during one these particular moves that Fan first came into contact with Zhen, an old bounty hunter with a cordial affiliation to the Order of the White Lotus. Zhen was a grizzled mercenary, a true money-grubber willing to do anything to make a quick buck who constantly acted like a wild hedonist unable to save a dollar ahead in his life. He made his living by selling them information, taking operatives from the Red and selling them back to the White for an inflated price. But the Order could only acknowledge his skills, and the coins changed hands frequently enough for him to become a reliable source.
Realizing that the tragedies he saw in his childhood were common occurrences in the world, the teenage Fan stole away from home to became a freelancer like Zhen to hunt down Red remnants around the world, acting as the man’s assistant…
…after Zhen knocked him down a mountain in protest of becoming the boy’s morally questionable guardian.
The mercenary trained him not only in bounty hunting, but in tracking, assassination, and all types of weaponry. At first, he only got in Zhen's way, but he eventually became his partner and equal. The Masters of the White Lotus saw the budding skill in Fan, especially those of discreet missions, and began to rely more and more on the two for such things. Year after year, Fan and Zhen traveled the globe from the icebergs of the two Tribes to the great pyramids of Omashu and everything in-between, hunting their quarry through ruined Sun Temples and the darkest slums of Ba Sing Sei. Many Red Lotus operatives were either caught or killed by the two, who were inducted deeper into the Order to allow Fan more training, especially against various bending styles, and by extension, Zhen. Sabotage, murder, blackmail, espionage: each act a move on the Pai Sho board of Red and White flowers. With the less than innocent actions of President San and his Task Force assassins to claim the Avatar, the battle in the shadows was erupting into full scale war.
About four years ago, word reached the White Lotus of a Red Lava-Bending master named Mao Lifu, who was unifying various bandits in an attempt to destabilize the already fragile Earth Kingdom countryside. Once again, Zhen and Fan were tasked with his capture or disposal and a cadre of Order sentinels were tasked to accompany them. It was as they were readying their bags the night before their journey that Zhen spoke the first affectionate words to his young apprentice.
It was to be their final mission together. He explained that he had been troubled over Fan following the same path as him due to the fact that he has too much potential in killing, displayed by emotionlessly their targets in a manner that took others many years to accomplish. He explained that even with such talent, doing what is necessary should not come before doing what the person wished to accomplish, likening such people to machines.
Those words set the stage for whappened next.
Somehow, the Red Lotus knew that they were coming and were ready for them. They were ambushed enroute to location of their target, on the downward slope of a rocky hill. Ultimately, the events of what followed are unknown to the White Lotus, save that the mission ended in a pyrrhic success. Fan Zhang returned alone, bloodied and with a ruined, blackened left arm, carrying the head of Mao Lifu. When asked what had occurred to the rest of his squad, including his mentor, Fan would only reply that there weren’t enough ashes left to warrant their retrieval.
It was after this mission that Fan became disillusioned with his ideal of any real change in the world, as it was impossible to save one person without losing another. Nothing could be done to save the man’s charred arm, resulting in its amputation, and Fan took the long road of recovery with nothing but silent determination, trying to adjust to his new life. While his recovery was all but assured, given the talent of the Order’s healers, it slowly became an issue of what to do with him.
His bladework was still sharp, and his mind even moreso, but their was still a hesitancy to give him any new tasks given his disability. The game the two Orders played was one where every failure meant perhaps hundreds of innocent deaths, yet to waste the man’s knowledge would have been a sin in of itself.
A solution was offered. Fan was still capable of serving the Order of the White Lotus, but he would be removed from active field-work, forced into a quasi-retirement as he worked as a mentor, and bodyguard, to the new Avatar. It was a task that would assuredly be a soft-job given the presence of the other masters and White Lotus sentinels. A “reward” for his years of faithful service and for his accomplishment of slaying one of the Red Lotus Masters.
After nearly years of recovery and training, the job was finally accepted with the same silent nod Fan had always given. He would protect and train the Avatar, to ready her for all the battles to come.
For this time, by saving one, he could save millions.
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