Tenish the Mighty

The Spirits Within

Ok, now I'm not sure if Thael's going to die, or just be sexually confused, but either way, I either win our bingo game or I win the pool we've got going on in the ops department.

Point is, Remi's going to make out like a bandit and someone probably will get laid.

The Spirits Within

I knew it! Thael's going to get himself killed! Just two more and I'll be able to win dead friends bingo!

...you know, in hindsight, that was a terrible criteria to use for our bingo game. Why the hell did we pick that again?

The Spirits Within

Eh, Galaxy Chasers was never really my bag. The whole thing always seemed a bit contrived to me, with its slavish devotion to Joseph Progresso's Unimyth and old foreign films.

Galaxy Wander, now there's a franchise, especially the second series, The Subsequent Era, with Captain John-Luke Pickart, played by the indomitable Stewart Patrick. Now there was a show with depth and breadth. Delving into the nature of life, love, sentience. The whole spectrum of human art and culture, really. I especially love the episodes with G in them.

On a related note, the actor who played G was brought on to voice a character based on G in that recent, popular cartoon, My Tiny Equine: Camaraderie is Sorcery...not, of course, that Remi watches that program or anything...or has written a 700,000 word, POV fanfic crossing over CiS with the popular, post-apocalyptic, video game series Black Rain...because...you know...he doesn't...and he hasn't...

Anyway, someone said they needed a place to stay after their parents moved or bought it or something? The Morgensterns would have been happy to take someone in, especially since their only child turned into such a lovable ball of joy. I can't find the post so I don't remember who said it, one of the ladyfolk if I remember, but I think it would be neat to throw in something like a brother-sister dynamic between Remi and one of the others. I need to edit my bio a bit anyway to better fit the timeline.

The Spirits Within

Adorabadass said
I'm thinking about how Freddy's gonna interact with some of these characters. For one I think he'd hypocritically rage about Aaron's rage, and basically butt heads with him all the time due to their ideological differences on the subject of violence. He would probably love the hell out of Kat because he could always rely on her to tell him when he's being a giant douche bag, and I imagine she would at least appreciate his honesty as well. He'd feel sad for Remi due to how he's changed since his youth. I can imagine Freddy shaking Remi by the shoulders and yelling, "DO SOMETHING STUPID LIKE YOU USED TO!" I imagine Freddy would basically partner up with Thael, since, despite their size difference and attitudes, they have a shit load in common. Also, I imagine Freddy being extremely protective of Fuzzy, and having like a persecution complex for him. Like, if anyone looks at Fuzzy weird, he'd just be like, "HE'S A NICE GOD DAMN GUY. STOP JUDGING HIM ON HIS APPEARANCE YOU PAINT HUFFING DICKMUNCHERS!"

I've been thinking the same thing, actually. Though Remi is somewhat reticent in character so I doubt most of the others would know just what he thinks of them. Might as well tell you out of character, who knows, maybe you might even find it interesting. Or maybe not, here goes in order of which I'm scrolling through your profiles now.

He would like Kat's forthright manner. He thinks the world would be a much better place if people said what they meant just a bit more. He does think you could do to learn a lot more about foresight though...and planning. He's fairly certain you are going to get yourself killed.

Thael, Remi thinks you are a good and decent man, firm in your convictions. Remi likes that, but your rash and impulsive actions are even worse than Kat. He thinks your going to get yourself killed.

Olivia he likes, again, her conscience and personal integrity, they are admirable qualities in the highest. He's also perspicacious enough to be able to tell that you consider your thoughts and actions carefully, an even more admirable quality as far as Remi is concerned. But your willingness to deviate from the plan in order to adhere to your personal sense of morality is going to get yourself killed.

I can only imagine that when Fuzzy and Remi find themselves in a room together there is nothing but silence. Not an uncomfortable silence, at least, not for Remi. The fact that they probably haven't said more than two words to each other in the last week makes Remi consider Fuzzy one of his closer friends. He's still convinced you've got some hidden, inner demons that are going to get you killed though.

Freddy...just...Freddy, you are going to get everyone killed. Also he is also even more jealous of your perceived surety of purpose than he is with just about anyone else.

Magdelana, you, probably doesn't think that most know of just how much turmoil broils beneath the veneer of your behavior. Remi does. To be split at the seams between two extremes. It saddens him. He thinks it is going to get you killed.

Jyn, you strive to better yourself in many ways. Remiel can admire that. He can respect that. He can empathize. But that bridled passion you occasionally display...well...it's going to get you killed.

Oh that Aaron Nyles is definitely going to get himself killed.

Not only is Puck going to get himself killed, Remi might even have to be the one to do it. Pity.

Emily Whitehall, Remi does not like you, nothing personal. It is not the individual you are that he does not like, rather, what you represent. In a world of shattered glass and sundries, you are a mirror. Remi does not like mirrors. If there is any malice in him at all, it is expressed in the fact that he thinks you will die like all the rest, but perhaps a little latter.

And Remi...Remi doesn't know what to think about Remi. Remiel Morgenstern is a soldier. Remiel Morgenstern is a survivor. What Remi does think, with more terror and certainty than anything else in this world, is that he will live a long life, or at least, long enough to watch everyone else he ever cared about to vanish one by one from the stage until only he, and the Spectators of course, remain.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed that little dip into his conscious mind, or at least found it mildly amusing. I'm not even going to attempt at parsing the insipid morass of his subconscious mind.

I am going to go make some Kahlua now.

The Spirits Within

I concur wholeheartedly with Ozie. The strongest thing about a text rp is that it is not beholden to mechanical systems.

On the subject of Sam. Get over it people. Everybody dies. This is war. There will always be casualties. Life is pain. Stiff upper lip. Suck it up. Be professional. I am not repressing anything!

The Spirits Within

Are spirits visible? To everyone? To those they've attached themselves to only? To anyone with an affinity for spirits?

I suppose my question is, when Remi walks into a room does anyone else feel as crowded as he always does?

The Spirits Within

Okie dokey artichokie, Remi is more or less done if you want to take a gander. Like to know what you think.

Very nearly completely reworked it into a completely different character but decided against it, seems like we've got a good mix of archetypes out there already and I wouldn't want to jinx it..

The Spirits Within

Bit of a work in progress, I wanted to get something up, but I plan on editing it a bit when I see some of the other characters to develop more of a dynamic and sense of relationship between them. As well as actually finishing the rest, of course. Should probably catch some z's first, though, and then get some sleep, character conception and the capture of abstract alpha-numerics is tiring.

Name: Remiel "Remi" Morgenstern
Birthday: 31st of March
Height: 181cm

Appearance: Here's a photo taken with a semiotic-quartz lens, as you can see, his spirits are somewhat clingy.

Remi tends to dress professionally, even in purely social settings, with a preference for business casual attire in subdued, earthy tones. He has a fondness for vertical lines that accentuate his already lean frame, and when he's feeling particularly expressive, a tastefully accented tie.

Personality: Much like the appearance he keeps, Remi conducts himself with a measure of poise and decorum at very nearly every moment. Even when among intimate friends he carefully chooses each word and action he takes. While far from cold, he does maintain a certain level of distance, even from those closest to him. His WARG profile suggests that these characteristics would make him an excellent operations coordinator, but not a particularly good field leader.

While it is not particularly difficult to connect with Remi, or get him to loosen up, what makes his behavior troubling is how markedly different it is than when he was younger. Once a particularly energetic and rambunctious child, while he had little of Samuel's charisma, if anything Remi was even more creative and outgoing. The shift in Remiel's behavior after his friends death was gradual, but it is hard not to sense the jarring difference between the Remiel that is and the Remi that was.

Biography: Remiel's life leading up to the calamity was not one of particular import. It was the carefree, everyday, ordinary sort of life of all children living in relative peace and comfort. His parents were loving; ordinary. He always had a roof over his head and a meal in his belly; ordinary. He had his friends. Ordinary. He met his lifelong compatriots one day exploring an abandoned construction site near his home. There were other kids there, playing where they weren't supposed to, relishing the thrill of breaking the rules, ordinary childhood antics. The accident, when it happened, was the ordinary sort of tragedy that always occurs in youth. Someone fell. Someone bled. All Remi can really remember was all the sound suddenly falling away as everyone stared at all the blood. Remi had never seen so much blood. The next thing he remembers was Samuel taking charge, shaking everyone from their reverie, sending someone to get help and starting first-aid on the stricken and shaken child. Eventually kids ran home, so did Remi, parents called parents, everyone got scolded. Samuel came around the next day, going door to door to get people to come visit the injured kid, maybe sign their cast, maybe pool their allowances to get them a present. Remi said they should get them a hard hat. Sam smiled.

The rest of Remi's childhood, brief as it was, passed with a similarly lackadaisical air. Ordinary joys and ordinary sorrows bled together in the maelstrom of memory. But the slow ripples of time and tide quiver with the oncoming storm, and one day, Remi's world became extraordinary. Remi doesn't remember much of the invasion, of the war. It was a time of strife and chaos, and even those white-hot memories of fear and pain and woe cool until only recollection remains. Remi got his first tastes of combat during the last half-decade of the invasion, becoming one of many child-soldiers pressed into service to stem the vicious otherworldly tide. Like the rest of the war, Remi's years on the field are a haze of hardships and intermittent violence. Only a few sharp points stick out in his mind. The first was the first time he saw someone die up close, to see life ooze out of them agonizingly slow, and yet, at the same time, siphon from them with a speed he could hardly comprehend. He didn't know he was capable of feeling such pain as when he saw that stranger die. The next the the first time he killed. As the beast died on his blade what he remembered most was how it died just like a man, for all its fangs and fury, it died just the same. The next was when he heard of Samuel's death. He wasn't there when it happened, he only got word through a field report. What he remembers most of that day was how he barely felt anything at all.

After that initial partisan tour, Remi found himself enrolled with many of his old childhood friends at the academy, their spiritual magnetism discovered, they were to be groomed into the next generation of soldiers for 'the cause'. Excelling in his studies, Remi's years at the Academy passed like all the others, a series of moments, some ordinary, some extraordinary, all flickering past as time ground on. Now they graduate, and while the past may be unfocused, Remi has kept the future in sharp clarity. While the past may be full of joys and sorrows ordinary and otherwise, the future would be Brobdingnagian in scope. The future would be painful. The future would be wonderful. The future would be extraordinary.

Weapon: Remiel wields a single, standard, academy issue shortblade.

Limit Break:
Spectral Spec-Op - Reaching out to his audience, he leverages the weight of his spiritual entourage to compress the spiritual and physical worlds closer together, creating a bounded space in which he and his spirits are detached from the greater world. In this timeless, formless space the rest of the world seems to stand still as Remi flickers in and out of existence, weaving between his allies and enemies, aiding the former as he can while often gifting the latter with a single choice blow, which flickers and phases through their defenses as they remain frozen and powerless to stop him.

Mechanically this would behave as having a positive effect on allies one way or another, moving them out of harms way, et cetera, whilst harming all opposition in the field with damage that, while not extreme, bypasses all of their defensive characteristics.

Spirits
The Spectators - Remi's spirits are numerous, frighteningly so. When first analyzed by the academy, the sheer volume of spirits that inhabit Remiel overwhelmed the test equipments ability to quantify. This trait caused Remi to initially be slated for either immediate execution or being placed on the elite guardian track, as his incredible spiritual affinity was speculated to lead to Remi becoming one of, if not the most, powerful guardian to ever exist.

It is of indeterminate fortune then that Remi's spirits proved to be much less of a game changer than his monitors initially thought. While Remiel possesses more spirits than almost any other guardian, several times over, most of those spirits are of no great puissance, and furthermore, the vast majority seem to have no desire to intercede on any of his affairs. They simply follow and watch Remi, wherever he goes, whatever he does. Remi has come to call them the Spectators for this trait, countless beings all around him, constantly watching, constantly waiting, but for what he cannot say.

In terms of practical application as a guardian Remi's unique disposition of spirits give him a great deal of flexibility in the abilities they grant, though they are not usually of particular potency, leading Remi to rely upon his talents for speed and strategy to take full advantage. Furthermore, the effects he does effect are decidedly impermanent, as even those few spirits in his audience that do deign to help him, which he refers to as the Stage Hands, will not do so for long.

In more concise form, Remi's powers are diverse, and disparate in form and function, but are almost always of limited substance. If there is an elemental pattern to his spirits at all it is that they trend towards the ephemeral and abstract, spirits of space and time, air and aether.

There is no Innocence, Only degrees of Guilt

They thought it was about pain. They thought it was all about pain. It was not. It was never about pain. Of course, there was no point in trying to explain it to them. Pain was all they knew so pain was all they saw. Pain was all they smelt. Pain was all they felt. Pain was their entire universe and still they knew nothing of it.

What they knew of pain was the loss of a limb. To have one's fingers carefully, exquisitely sheared off, on knuckle at a time. The feeling of having their bodies turned alight with the white-hot agony of neural excruciation. They thought pain of the body was all there was. Some, the clever ones, understood pain of the mind. They knew the pain of loss, of helplessness, of the fear that writhes in your belly, the phantom sensations that burned into the psyche after each session on the slab. They knew the agony of anticipation, they soul-searing suffering of compromising one's mind to preserve one's body, the pain of hearing the screams of a loved one that would not or could not be helped.

The most perspicacious knew pain of the spirit. They knew the loss of faith and morality that came from pain, the abandonment of sanctity that comes with true suffering. It was one thing to cower in fear from pain, another to fall into desperation to secure its relief. But worse still was the pain that was self-inflicted, with no coercion, no collusion. The pain of being striped of all pretense and be made to recognize one's own perversity. To lose one's very identity to the pain.

That was real pain, that was true suffering. To make mothers feast on their children, to make fathers beg not for an end to pain but for its continuation. That was the real art. That was the real purpose. And that was what he always remembered as he went about his work.

Slender, bladed fingers cradled the thing's head. No, it was not about the pain. He looked into the things's unblinking eyes. The think looked back. There was fear in those eyes, and miscomprehension. There was pain too. Mostly though, there was ignorance. The thing did not know yet the purpose for it's pain. It could not fathom the exquisite zenith of art and knowledge that it's suffering ineffable lead to. It did not understand, as he peeled its flesh off of it's face, that he wanted more than the base sadism of his kith and kin. It did not understand and he knew no way of communicating to the creature the deep designs for which it bled. He tried, he had spoken with it as he carved into it's gums, removing them from it's skull with a wet pop, but by then it had no words with which to convey its understanding. When he bored into it's ear canal and scooped out all the extraneous flesh from it's skull it lost the ability to hear his gentle explanations at all. But still, even now, bereft of most of it's base flesh it was aware. As he carved his foul runes into the inside of it's jaw and carefully etched the sigil of the Mon-Keigh Inquisition into the bloody bone of it's forehead he hoped it took solace in knowing that it's existence would still have means, greater know than it ever had before his loving caress. If nothing else it might take solace in the belief that it's labors would be in nominal service to it's primitive, heathen god-king.

Vix made a strange alien sound, almost a purr, almost almost a caw, almost a yawn. Rising from his place amidst the minutia of the things former life, he carefully stepped around the neatly stacked piles of bone and skin and sinew. Lifting the skull-thing, he placed it on the shelf with all the others. All those eyes, unblinking with no eyelids to blink, staring out with pain and fear the likes of which no mortal man could suffer to imagine. Vix bared his teeth back at his arrayed creations, their skeletal grins belaying none of their lack of appreciation for his ministrations. He would have to show the Inquisitor his latest work. Perhaps it was immodest of him, but Vix was certain it was his finest attempt yet. These 'servo-skulls' would be wonderful additions to the menagerie, held aloft by the wisdom of the Eldar, and moved by the very much still living brains of their original occupants, he could not help but feel a small amount of pride in his work, more nuanced and sophisticated than anything the mon-keigh had managed to create.

Thinking on the Inquisitor, Vix's smile turned sharper still. He was no fool. He knew when the masters used treats to placate their beasts. His latest materials were little more than an effort to distract and sate the Eldar in exile. To prevent him from making his particular presence known to the Inquisitors new pet. If Vix was given the have regard for the opinions of base creatures, he might find the notion insulting. Instead, it almost brought amusement. Mores the pity that the Inquisitor was not more comfortable with Vix's assistance, his interrogations were always more...informative with Vix around.

Still, Vix was sure he'd get his chance to drink of the new pet soon enough. More than he ever got with any of the others in any case. Vix still chaffed slightly from the Inquisitor's insulting refusal to allow Vix to have the Inquisitor's pet IllMureead creature, a beast with which Vix was especially interested in.

A small, involuntary whimper drew Vix from his spiteful reverie. He turned his face back towards the darkest corner of his domain. Ah, of course, he had almost forgotten. He still had one more collection of material as yet unused. It sobbed and soiled itself in the corner. No sense letting it spoil. Besides he had a particular use for this one.

The creature of cruelty and vision known as Vix stalked towards the fear-frozen heretic to the God-Emperor, his movements languid and predatory. Painfully thin and sharp limbs extending to claim it's flesh. He smiled in what he knew was by no means a reassuring manner and wrapped his bladed gauntlets delicately around it's throat. He wondered if it would understand, if during it's transformation, this one would know that there was about so much more than the pain.

There is no Innocence, Only degrees of Guilt

So is this going to happen or not?

I'm starting to get awfully antsy.