FujiwaraPhoenix

Chronicles of a Lost War

Byron Cauna

With the preliminary scouting done, Byron turned towards the (considerably younger) sage and nodded before starting down the cavern. There was no desire on part of the young man to watch what was essentially an old geezer in a young girl's body (implications be damned) figure out a change of clothing, and he had as much a desire as the others to see how the world had changed in the time he had been gone.

"If you want a light, I'd be happy to provide," he remarked in response to the automaton's request, spinning his left hand in the air as he created a glowing orb of light right above it. "We'll be going on ahead, then; I just hope there isn't an ambush waiting for us outside."

Leading the way forward, Byron turned his head towards Malachi and nodded in assent. If the spell had been a failure, then there would at least be a few guards standing by, or possibly some other sign that people had been there in the few hours' time that he felt like he had been asleep. But his nose did not lie, and the scent of life was definitely nonexistent all the way down here.

"I am fairly certain that the spell itself worked, but that only brings up further questions. For example, what became of those that remained in the Alliance after we were sealed away here? For the leaders, death is a certainty, but the people..."

There was a tinge of worry in the young man's voice as he trailed off, but Byron soon shook his head, as if to brush away the worries in his mind.

"No, there's no way they simply killed everyone inside. There would be no point in a conquest without people to rule over, after all. But... Thirty years, they said? My siblings must be older than I am by now," he remarked, a halfhearted smile on his face as the group neared the stairwell out of the cavern. The light filtering in through the exit made his own unnecessary, and the spell was thus dispelled as he began to climb out.

Exiting that long passage would reward them with the sight of a land that had long since been free of war, with their vantage point providing a clear view of the plains and a forest closer to the base of the mountain. The blue sky and bright sun caused the beastman to pause for a moment as his eyes adjusted, but the landscape that he had returned to was tranquil, if not mostly unfamiliar to him. That went double, of course, for the small village that could he could barely make out by the edge of the river that flowed down from the mountain and through the aforementioned plain. As much of a breath of fresh air that the view in front of him was, though, they still had a job to do.

"You know, I don't recall a forest being here when we went in..." Byron said, a hint of unease in his voice as he glanced behind him to make sure that the others were close behind. "And you'd think that there would be someone waiting here to get us up to date on what had happened in the last few years. Should we assume the worst-case scenario?"

@Rune_Alchemist@Raineh Daze@Lugubrious@Crimson Paladin@VitaVitaAR

Chronicles of a Lost War

Byron Cauna

Almost as if in response to his own remarks, one of the coffins (after a bit of 'encouragement' from the one inside) slid open to reveal the demigod lying inside. There was but a slight smirk on Byron's face as he watched her get up and look at him, as the young man was well aware that all of those present were many decades his senior, at minimum. If anything, though, this meant that his own awakening was both not a fluke and not the only success. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

One by one, the others woke up, and Byron gave each a passing nod—save Aerarius, whose own awakening was immediately proceeded by a flying plate of stone barely missing the beastman's body by a few inches. He had moved out of the way the second it had gone flying, of course, and the lid crashing into the wall opposite the coffin and shattering apart caused Byron to give a nervous laugh in return.

"Might want to dial the strength down a bit, buddy," he remarked, crossing his arms as he looked at the rest of the room. Though he had failed to process it at first, the distinct lack of one old man and the existence of a small girl in his place had finally caught up to him, and Byron could only hold back a snicker. It seemed that the others were handling the job of mocking the sage, which left him to walk up to the half-elf who was already getting ready to leave.

"One hell of a thing to wake up to, huh?" he asked, quietly placing his hand on the magic circle in front of the double doors blocking their exit. With a deep breath, Byron activated the magic therein, causing each of the coffins (opened as they now were) to light up. A few moments later, though, and that light had disappeared; in exchange, the doors slowly swung open, revealing the long cavern that they had walked down to get here in the first place. It seemed completely untouched, which was probably a good thing; given that they were tucked away in a mountain, there probably wasn't much else that they could hope for.

"Doesn't seem like there's even been any signs of life down here for the past few decades, at least; we should be in the clear."

@Rune_Alchemist@Raineh Daze@Lugubrious@Crimson Paladin@VitaVitaAR

Chronicles of a Lost War

@Raineh Daze: Good to go.

That should be everyone, then? Yeah.

Chronicles of a Lost War

Byron Cauna

"If we are to fall here, then you must live on. I have the utmost faith that you should carry on our legacy, should it all be destroyed by the time you awaken."

The last words of the leader of the Tiarden Alliance were still stuck in Byron's mind as he watched the doors to the chamber close. The humming of the room itself—a byproduct of the thousands of layered magical circles starting up—was somewhat unnerving, but at this point it was far too late to have second thoughts. All of the 'heroes'—himself included—had already been placed into their own stone coffin. The structure he found himself in, etched from top to bottom in complex markings both inside and out, soon began to glow with a dim white light as the lid slowly closed over him.

With one last sigh, the beastfolk closed his eyes and waited. At this point, there was nothing left to do but that, anyhow.

---

Waking up from being sealed away felt like waking up from a short nap to Byron, if anything. The beastfolk had expected something as dramatic as being 'sealed away for the future' to have had a more substantial impact on his body, but given how he felt exactly the same as he had when the lid to the coffin had been closed, well...

Needless to say, it was a tad underwhelming.

"Well, at least those old men didn't skimp on what it took to make this thing work, huh?" he asked himself, slowly shifting his arms as he pushed the stone block on top of him. It took a few moments for it to budge, but once it opened even the slightest bit, the rest of the work was done automatically. The smell of stale air was not the most enticing thing to return to, but given that he didn't look like a piece of jerky after getting out, the only thing that the beastfolk could assume was that the magic had, in fact, worked.

Probably.

As far as he knew, the mechanism to open the double doors leading outside had to be operated by all of those present within. Hopefully, none of the other coffins had suffered a malfunction in the years that they had spent... Sleeping? Was that the right word for it?

"Hey, if anyone else is up, now's the time to get out of bed. Pretty sure sleeping on stone isn't very good for your backs," Byron called out, stretching his limbs as he waited for a response. A lack of responses would be worrisome, but ideally there wouldn't be any corpses in here to have to discover.

@VitaVitaAR@Rune_Alchemist@Crimson Paladin@Lugubrious

Chronicles of a Lost War

Alright, then. One slot left on hold; finish that ASAP, then.

First post about to go up, so I'm closing other signups now.

Fate/Eternum

@Mystic Writer: Alright, char's accepted. Move the form over whenever.

We'll... Well, we'll figure something out about Helena eventually. I hope?

Fate/Eternum

@Mystic Writer: Alright, let's look at the edited forms here...

Okay, let's go.

1. Let's look over this last paragraph from the Master form, for starters, shall we?

From that point in the family lineage his line developed traces in the Americas and Europe, more specifically England. It took hundreds of years, but they never gave up. They took their time to gather resources while remaining somewhat skeptical of the Mage Association. And while they were not on the same level as the highest tier of mage families, they retained some degree of influence in the world of mages.

This feels both contradictory and vague to me. I'm not entirely sure how a family that remains 'skeptical' of the MA garners any level of influence, if any; you can't be influential if you don't have strings to pull, and the MA actually has a large enough sway in most issues regarding magecraft (given that it consists of the Wandering Sea, Atlas, and the Clock Tower) that they can essentially send Enforcers out as fixers regardless of standing if you look too 'dangerous'.

Or, y'know, the usual Sealing Designation problem.

2. I think we should loop back around to the oddity of giving someone a form to work with and asking for a 'trade'. While the matter of asking someone else to use a character or using one that has a direct correlation/chosen with another character in mind has been a core thing among the characters present, I don't know if it's entirely normal to write that form yourself. Normally, I'd delegate the process to the person to be using the character, for the dual purpose of seeing if they understand the character and also to be piloting someone who they have, in essence, had the time to do some research/thought on.

I think this issue becomes nonexistent if you decided to pilot both halves of the pair (we have someone using both Altera and her Master here, for example), but otherwise... It feels a bit odd to be giving a character for someone else to use, rather than proposing one. Does that make sense?

Chronicles of a Lost War

Alright, quick bump before I start getting resources ready.

The RP will kick off sometime Thursday, at which point I'll close the RP's signups. From there, well... We'll see how things pan out.

Fate/Eternum

@Mystic Writer: Okay, let's start, I guess.

1. The first thing I'm noticing here is that the supplied form has not been used for either character, which, uh... I mean, I understand when people want to reorganize things to make their forms look prettier, but here there's a bunch of extra information that could be condensed elsewhere or that we don't necessarily need? I'd very much like it if you could repurpose what you have into what was given to some degree, for the sake of uniformity and clarity.

2. In regards to the Helena form, there's a lot of stuff that's... Basically just ripped off of the translation of her FGO Material III profile. What I'd like at minimum, in addition to the truncating and re-purposing of both forms, is for some manner of description to be written in regards to both her skills and NP.

And I mean actual rewriting here; her first and third skills are vague in description, such that we really don't have any idea what they can actually do. It's fine if you need to make stuff up, but the results need to be tangible.

Ideally, I'd like if you could write it all from scratch using the profile as a basis, just to make sure that you'd understand how the character functions from a personal point of view, but your plan was to push this onto someone else (and I'm not sure if ANYONE else has open slots), so... Things are weird here.

3. The Bathory bloodline. While it is plausible that a branch family could become magi, there are two (more pressing) problems here.

One: Why keep the family name if you're trying to distance yourself from the actual Bathory bloodline? It doesn't make much sense to keep it in trying to do something like that.

Two: I'd bet money that Liz is in the city already; if not, she's still very likely to pop out and, I would assume, have a higher precedence than the catalyst due to blood ties. That brings up a whole slew of problems on its own, and if you're trying to stay under the radar, sharing Liz's family name is a good way to get yourself marked regardless.
Also, like, Carmilla. The secondary problem in that regard lies here; even if she isn't summoned, both Servants are high profile such that there would be a great deal of explaining to do regardless.

4. The Clock Tower is not a tourist destination. Even in this presumed timeline where the MA is more centrist/liberal than they were in the past due to Waver's efforts, they're still not open for the general public. It's usually students, faculty, and people with business there that actually get inside, and a kid with his family on summer vacation usually won't cut it. On top of that, a magus family would generally have the resources to teach their child on their own, even if they aren't necessarily technologically incompetent. If they have expectations for the child, they would tutor in private (and given magus families, that's pretty common) or send them straight to the Clock Tower from the start, I would think.

5. It just feels weird writing up a form for someone else to use and expecting that to gain any traction. I don't think people are all that inclined to use a character that they don't necessarily have inspiration for, and that goes double when there's a limited number of character slots per player. I'm not sure how inclined people would be to give one of their choice slots for that sake, y'know?

That... Should be everything of note, really.

Fate/Eternum

@Mystic Writer: All right. Let's see here...

Hm. Well, for starters, the context for the character is making me think that things will fall apart without the Servant.

So, well, I'd like to see that before we continue here. You said you already have it written up, and this isn't an HGW scenario, so... Yeah, let's start with that.

Also, one thing to note on a surface level: Servant IDs are common knowledge in the city. Just, like, in general. People are registered with their Servants (unless they're odd cases or are technically illegal). Because... Well, yeah.