VitoftheVoid

(Dead) The Gifted World

There was blood everywhere. One the walls, the floor, the mouldering volumes left on the old shelves, everywhere.

Out at the doorway, a silhouette of a man slipped out of the door, spreading a dusty light across the room, and to the body on the floor, a young woman in a dark jacket. She lay on the dusty floor in an expanding pool of arterial blood, watching as the man who had just shot her stroll off into the wastes, with her duffel bag in hand.

The trade had not gone well.

He hadn't even had a very good aim. What she suspected had been intended to hit her head instead hit her in the side of the neck, nicking the carotid artery and causing far more mess than it needed to. Maybe being the one who got shot gave her a bit of personal bias, but some of the last thoughts that flickered though Magdalene Atwood's as she bled out in the ruins of a pre-war bookstore, was that the murder had been a very sloppy one.

---

It was around 48 hours that the corpse of Magdalene Atwood lay in the abandoned bookstore. The blood puddle had begun to become dry and sticky, though no flies or vermin had made any approach upon it.

About 48 hours after she had died, the body gave a sudden spasmodic twitch, the back arching up before pushing back down as she was flung up into a sitting position and let out a sudden gasp for air. Two more desperate intakes of breath before she threw herself onto her knees and violently threw up, splattering the already ruined floor with congealed blood and stomach acid.

However many times it happened, re-animation was still impossible to get used to. Like even the body rejected such a violation of natural laws. Everything had to die. Very few things had made it a two way street.

It took a while, but Magdalene was able to rise onto her feet. Her skull felt like it had been chipped out on the inside with a mason's chisel and her throat was burning with bile. All kind of par for the course, but she was pretty sure she was going to need to find something to drink pretty soon or this was going to get into a really unpleasant cycle.

Clumsily, Magdalene reached round the bookshelves.
She just hoped that bastard hadn't found the-

Her fingers closed round a book.

Got it.

With shaky hands the book opened, revealing the hollowed-out inside and a concealed ID card with its chesspiece symbol sat within.

The motheaten rug in the corner was pulled aside, and the white plastic crates bearing similar chesspiece insignia that had been set into replace the floor beneath were revealed, and the first opened with swipe of the card. LED strips on the inside flared and lit the packages inside.

The bag, with a couple of day's worth of rations stuffed inside, was a decoy. It served its purpose very well. Apparently her trader buddy had completely missed the real prize.

Three crates of Erubesco field unit supplies. Freeze-dried rations, water purifiers, heat packs, medical supplies...all the kinds of things you might miss living out in the ashlands. Also worth their weight in gold.

If anything gold was less important. You couldn't eat gold.

Mags reached round in the interior until her trembling hands seized upon an orange carton, which she cracked and downed near enough in one, but for what she lost when it spilled down her bloodstained shirt.

Electrolyte drink. Should probably at least render some of the negative side effects manageable whilst she moved onto shifting these things to a new hiding place. Now it was known some shifty fuck would eventually end up at the place. Wasn't usually a problem but...

Noise.

The reanimator, sat gracelessly propped up against her crate cache, paused and listened. She'd barely noticed over the crashing inside her own head up until then.

The explosion, following shortly after, shook the building, and the ceiling shed some dust and little bits of loose plaster.

Maybe worth a check before starting the move. Maybe.

Magdalene took a shemagh from the chair by the door, and wrapped it round the sticky neck wound that was still rather evident underneath her jawline, before making her way out into the daylight. The momentum by which she did so overtook her a little, and the woman found herself half stumbling out further than she'd really intended to venture. The sight to greet her when she summoned the wherewithal to look around was...unexpected.. to say the least.

A man, a man who appeared to be made of metal. In his arms appeared to be a badly injured woman. Trotting up alongside him was a winged horse that the metal man appeared to be trying to shoo away. Behind them a little distance, a build was on fire.

Of all the things Mags might have predicted to be out there on her emerging...this would not have ranked too highly on the list.

The natural response, at least perhaps for someone with any wish to thrive in the ashlands, would be to walk straight back in and let this bizarre parade keep going on its merry way. What the once-Liberty member found herself doing, perhaps in part down to years of collectivist mentoring, was call over and show concern.

"Uh..you alright over there?"

Maybe it was a stupid question. For most people it probably was a stupid question, though your perspective changed a little when you were standing half-drenched in your own dry blood with a fair-sized gash left in the side of your neck, but actually feeling relatively alright. It seemed kind of hypocritical not to ask.

----

Kora, still grasping her knife in one hand, was not really in the mood for casual conversation. Not when her target was rapidly getting away from her. As such she took the ashlander's response to her in not the most graceful manner.

"Ignorant hick. You don't know a thing about me, or about my line if you think we're nothing but a bunch of savages."
She was about to speak when ORIN interjected.

"Contemporary accounts that portray the norse people as unusually savage or chaotic can be attributed to a saxon christian perspective, shaped by the adversarial relationship between the two cultures, and the christian disdain for pagan religions. The treaty of Alfred and Guthrum in 876 was-"

"ORIN shut it! We're not here to give a scrub a history lesson."

"I am not here at all. You however are here to pursue the targets, not knife fight with the locals. Disengage."

"You want me to just let her get away with it."

"Yes. Disengage."

Kora cursed under her breath, but complied. She flung her hands downwards and another blast burst out of her hands. It was smaller than before, or possibly reduced by its open area, but in this case it was not meant for offence. Instead what it succeeded in doing was kicking up a great amount of debris into the air. Dust, mud, bits of wood and stone, mixing with steam and ash in order to render the area a cloud of beige and grey.

It was, for both involved, most likely difficult to see.

But only one of them had a computerized system of guidance.

"Turn left, move."

Wilde Jagd

Wilde Jagd

The apocalypse. The end of the world. That was the only way people who witnessed the days of the Old One, as it cut a swathe of destruction across the world. A hideous incarnation of primal destruction that rose from the depth of the earth to bring about the end of the world.

There had always been vague stories of the apocalypse, the coming of some ancient avatar of destruction that was prophesied to one day set upon the earth. For the religious men it had always been just a little way away. Each generation was the end times. And each generation passed without incident. Technology grew and people lost interest in much of that old fear and mysticism.

That was until the day the earth split and the great cities of man burned.

When the moon shone red in the smoke-choked sky and humanity faced the summation of its most old and primal fears.

It had no name. They called it many things. After the dust had settled, generations after the burning times, people would refer to it in hushed voices as The Old One.

A god of destruction and death and infinite malice, charged with taking apart the world and returning it to the days before light and life.

And it very nearly succeeded. So many died in those times. And so much progress was lost forever. Armies set loose their greatest and most advanced weapons in hopes of destroying this horrifying thing, and in doing so they would seem to blast it apart, only to watch in dismay as it reformed, unharmed.

Humanity stood on the verge of extinction when a man stepped forward with nothing but an ancient book in one hand.

The man's name was Gabriel Herne, and he would be responsible for saving the world.
A man of mystic knowledge and power, Gabriel knew that The Old One could not be killed. It was a force of nature, a constant that the world could never be rid of once awoken. Something like that could not simply cease to exist. The man had pored through every source, every old text he could find until the solution had present itself before him.

The Old One could not be killed.

But it could be split.

He faced the horrific thing, looked into the face of madness and death, spoke the words he'd spent years of his life searching for, and tore the Old One apart.

---

That is the story told to near any child when they are young. The story of Gabriel the magician and how he saved the world from this walking death. Of course decades have passed since then. Few live who remember the burning times, and even fewer who could say they knew anything about what transpired in the epic battle that took place.

That said, it was true enough that Gabriel Herne did manage to save the world.

What was left of it anyway.

The world is far from what it could have been.

They say that once mankind had all sorta of wonderful technology that every man, woman and child could make use of.
These days tech is a luxury. Unless you are a Lord or Lady, have cosied up to the latter, or are obscenely wealthy, the level of advancement would be little better than medieval times.

The land it split up into provinces that the Lords and Ladies rule over. For all the regal titles, these people are essentially warlords. Either they were vicious enough to hold the lands their mothers or father took after the burning times, or they were vicious enough to take it from someone else. They range from the fair but unspeakably tough, to the out and out psychopathic.

People aren't just more medieval in their technological level...but medieval in their attitudes. People are highly adherent to new gods and cults. They're wary of strangers. They hate and fear things that are strange or unnatural.

Which makes the occurrence of the Witch Gene even more tragic.

The influence of the old one, the dark energy it left in its wake, had a lingering influence, not just on the land itself, but the people.

A few years after the burning times children began being born with horrifying deformities. Claws, sharp teeth, single wings protruding from their shoulderblades. Progressively these things also manifested as strange, dark abilities.

People were disgusted by these tainted creatures, and shunned them. Most 'witch children' will not live past infancy, and those that do can anticipate a dangerous world.

And then, you have the Fragments. The pieces left behind from the Old One. The stories of them are sparse...well..the true ones are. Any drunk bastard in a roadside inn would tell the story of some red-eyed fiend that they fought off in the night, one of the monsters that formed a piece of the shattered Old One itself.
Much of it are only tall tales.

But not all. From time to time the reports filter through of death and destruction. Entire towns levelled and dozens of soldiers torn to pieces in the most horrific ways.

And if those stories are true then those who tell them might have run into something else. The people with guns and armour, and the silver badges that resemble a hunting hound.

Much like the Fragments, many people talk about them, but few have actually met the people. The hunters and jailers on whom the fate of the shattered world now rests. For it's known enough that the pieces of the Old One will seek to re-unite one day, and when they do, everything will be consumed with fire and darkness.

The Wilde Jagd. The last hope we've got, and the newest class of cadets is about to begin their training to earn the title of Hound.

But are all the cadets really human? Or did something else sneak in?

Fragments

Fragment is the term given to the pieces of the Old One, the ancient god of death. Upon its split it was turn apart into a large number of individual entities which, left stunned by being forced suddenly into existence, were easily collected up and locked away from the world. Kept in isolation from each other, and from the outside, studied relentlessly, it's unclear if that was made some of them into killers, or whether they had always been that way.

Regardless, one day The Rock, the fortress once used to contain all of the Fragments, experienced the chaos of a mass break-out. People were killed, the places burned, and these pieces scattered across the world.

For ten years they've been free and walking amongst the human population.

A few have been recovered by Hounds in that time, and a great number of Hounds have died in pursuit of them. Whilst not all Fragments are inherently evil or malicious, some far from it, their destructive capacity alone has made them hugely dangerous.

And there are plenty of Fragments who more than live up to their name as Monsters.

A Fragment:

• Appears human at first glance, but this form contains small flaws. Pointed teeth, or slitted eyes, or some other subtly monstrous trait.
• Have a secondary, horrifying appearance that they will often revert to in order to fight.
• Will not naturally age, however can die of near any other cause that a mortal can (albeit a fragment tends to be considerably more durable than the average man).
• Retains one unnatural ability, even as a 'human'. This is near exclusively something frightening and destructive.
• Can kill and consume other Fragments in order to gain their power. This is what Wilde Jagd fears the most, as it not only makes them far harder to fight, but also brings the Old One one step closer to returning.
• If a Fragment is killed, their power will dissipate and spread out between all remaining living Fragments. This is similarly unwanted for Wile Jagd.

Wilde Jagd

Wilde Jagd (lit 'Wild Hunt) was founded by the family of Gabriel Herne in the time following the escape of the fragments of the Old One as a means of retrieving them and returning them to indefinite confinement. With the burden proving too great to keep within the family, Wilde Jagd was a creation partially funded by the wealthy Lord Rodin, one of the more powerful, and relatively more benevolent, feudal lords.

Wilde Jagd operates out of one of Rodin's fortresses in the hills north of the province's main city, and, as a result of its funding, has access to old technology most would give their right arm in order to see. Computing devices, communication, advanced medical facilities, and working firearms.

A field agent of the Wilde Jagd is known as a Hound.

Hounds come from all walks of life and sometimes from far provinces, with Wilde Jagd proving a surprisingly unbiased employer, to the point that they are one of the few people who will take on Witches in their ranks. A Witch is treated with no less respect that his or her peers, and as such for the often reviled class of people, it is a very attractive prospect, to the point that many young Witches that would not see adulthood otherwise and up as trainees under Wilde Jagd.

Their kind treatment of their Hounds inspires a fierce loyalty as a result. Most Hounds have no problem putting themselves in danger in pursuit of the greater good, and that greater good is capturing the Fragments and returning them to imprisonment. This job is, of course, an extremely hazardous one. Death or severe injury on the job is a know and accepted risk.

Training of new cadets begins on a regular basis, with experienced hounds acting as instructors.

OOC Stuff

Hi there! Vit here. Outlined the basis of a plot I've had knocking round for a while that I've elected to try and rework and revamp, focusing on the arrival of new recruits and their development as hounds, but also the Fragments opposing them and, possibly, Fragments who've managed to infiltrate the latest cadet class.

It'll need to be a fairly diverse mix, as, say, a bunch of Fragments, or a bunch of humans, or a bunch of witches aren't going to make things anywhere near as interesting as a good assortment. Instructors would also be fab. The whole thing is mid-rework and sorta in flux a bit, probably won't start it formally for a little while, so any ideas or potential subplots are welcome! :D

(Dead) The Gifted World

Full Name: Magdalene Atwood

Nicknames/Aliases: Mags

Age: 21

Gender: Female

Gift: Resurrection - Mags is extremely hard to kill. When she sustains a normally fatal injury her circulatory system seems to shut down, however her cells are able to function without oxygen for far longer than those of the average individual. Her body's healing process is considerably accelerated and as a result she can recover from what would be fatal injuries within a few hours. She may still suffer from some effects for several days afterwards, however she is remarkable in that she suffers no long term effects. If her body is placed somewhere incompatible with life (such as underwater, or buried) then she will not re-animate until her body is moved from there.

Loyalty: n/a

Description: Mags is a scruffy-looking young woman with a light build and of a pretty middling height, around 5'5. She has dark, curly hair and a heart-shaped face with a short nose and deep-set eyes. Magdalene has added to her wardrobe after her departure from her old faction. She now dresses in numerous layers to try and guard against the elements. An overcoat over a leather jacket over a top, all in moderately different sizes that don't really match the size of the wearer. On her feet are a pair of military issue boots (original owner was considerably past caring about the loss). She had a facemask hung around her neck, partially to guard from dust and ash, partially as a means of disguise, and partially as a way to make post-resurrection a little more presentable.

Personality: All that Magdalene does is driven by a certain anarchistic undercurrent to her personality. She loves to take on authority, something that never really gelled well with her Liberty upbringing. All her life the young woman seems to have taken delight in chaos, and it reflects in many aspects of her life. She's untidy, disorganised, easily distracted and hesitant to commit to anything.

Interpersonally, Magdalene seems quite a friendly type. She's chatty and sociable and seems happy enough to help others. However since her arrival in the wasteland Mags has avoided falling in with any groups for any extended amount of time. She doesn't like forming attachments to people so tends to keep her distance.

Skills: - Survival skills - Despite her rather antagonistic relationship with Liberty, Mags is still a child of the Liberty education system, took several survival trips during her teenage years with youth groups, and learned a lot of the skills she needs. How to make a fire, how to purify water, how to navigate with no discernible landmarks, first aid, and how to find food in a difficult environment.

- Resilient - Mag's powers enhance her healing factor, and also serve to let her keep moving when most people could not. This can alarm people a bit.

Weaknesses:

-No offensive abilities. - Whilst she's not likely to remain dead, Mags' abilities do very little to stop her getting dead in thr first place.

- Loner - Mags' tendency to travel alone in combination with the latter weakness mean she's often a target.

Brief History:

Magdalene Atwood was born into the Liberty faction, and never knew her parents. Her surname, she suspects, was just an arbitrary one, but she's not certain. Without a settled family, Mags grew up raised by the state and hadn't a great deal in the way of role models. From an early age she was rather difficult, seeming to have a problem with authority and following instructions.

In many ways she was the antithesis of Liberty ideal, someone more invested in pursuing her own interests than working for the benefit of the whole.

She had something Liberty needed though. Magdalene's powers put her in some of the top rungs of genetics ranking, and the faction was very keen to take advantage of that once she was old enough. Magadalene herself didn't too much appreciate the idea of being valuable for her genes rather than anything she could do, and also became aware of the rather grim selection of jobs available for someone with her powerset.

It was only a matter of time until something gave, and when, in her late teens, she fell into some legal trouble, Mags took the time to escape the faction. Since then it's been a mixed bag. She'd died a number of times in the interim years...but she was starting to feel like she was getting the hang of it.

(Dead) The Gifted World

The bullet shot through Kora's knee a split second before she detonated her ability. The impact and the sudden disruption of the integrity of the bones threw the knight off balance and she hit she floor, landing in a sprawled sitting-position a little way from where she'd been stood.

It took a few moments for the pain to fully register itself apart from the impact of the fall, and when it did hit, it was pretty brutal. Kora looked to see the rather quickly-expanding puddle of red round her leg. Bright red. If she was a betting woman she'd probably say a ruptured femoral artery, which would probably give her about five minutes before things became very serious.

For most people that would be the end of that as far as the fight went.

Knight Norrevinter was definitely not most people.

The red-haired woman gritted her teeth and reached her hands, now wrapped in the tattered remains of her gloves, over to tightly grasp the wound at both sides.

This was most certainly going to hurt.

Her hands gave a flash like welding torch. Kora snarled out a curse and the air was filled with the stench of scorched flesh. When she removed her hands the skin was burned and the heavy bleed fused shut, cauterized by her over superheated hands.

There weren't many things aside from fighting her ability was useful for, but that aspect did come in handy from time to time. Particularly when you found yourself always getting shot.

With some effort the Knight rose to her feet, weighing her options. Putting any weight on her leg would hurt like crazy. Unless she turned the red-eye on. But if she did that she was pretty sure none of these people would walk out alive.. and ORIN has definitely specified minimal force.

As it turned out, Kora's options would soon become even less extensive, as she caught a shadow overhead.

Combat training was pretty much muscle memory by that point in Kora's life and within moments she'd pressed her fingers against a pocket on her belt and released a combat knife from its sheath and into her right hand, which she swung up at speed and collided with the blade of her attacker.

Her weight fell back onto her injured leg and Kora snarled in pain and anger.
"Why don't you ashrats ever mind your own damn business?! You have five seconds to get out of here or I'm going to unleash the fury of Odin on your unwashed ass!"

She threw her weight forward in order to force her opponent back and put some distance between them.
Whilst she was attempting to work out her next move, she heard ORIN speak up in her ear.

"Switch to speaker."

"Kind of busy here!"

"And you're about to lose the targets, activate the speaker."

Kora growled irritably but snapped a switch next to her hip with her free hand, activating a speaker hidden somewhere within her combat gear to broadcast the metallic voice of the Erubesco defence system over to the retreating for of Orion.

"Lazos. I'm sure on some level you are aware that Ingram has, at least, and open fracture and that without medical attention she will definitely die. Ultimately the choice is yours. Voluntarily submitting to arrest is likely to win you some leniency at trial. The Wasteland climate and distinct lack of sterile supplies is far less flexible in that regard."

ORIN spoke about the subject dispassionately; even though it was physically impossible for her to do otherwise of course, she felt very little investment on the eventual fate of the programmer.

Back in the control room the woman took a sip of her cup of coffee and scrolled over the surveillance system momentarily whilst she awaited the response.

She was, after all, only returning the favour of indifference.

"Surrender now and I'll dispatch a medic team immediately. Please give the offer proper consideration, in case you regret your choices later."

@ScoundrelQueen
@Framing A Moose

(Dead) The Gifted World

@Framing A Moose Orion just crashed through the outside wall, and probably made a sizeable hole in it, so both are more or less outside, but Kora's boomsplosion was aimed through the gap so it bounced around the inside of the building.

(Dead) The Gifted World

@Framing A Moose Go for it. Kora was probably stood in her sights for a good few seconds whilst she was positioning.

(Dead) The Gifted World

Kora pressed her back against the weather-beaten brickwork and listened intently to the sounds of her assailants.

Now this was just getting unsporting.

And even if she hadn't been doing he best to follow any conversation, she'd still not be too keen to go rushing into an area where two enemies had guns. Even though, if the one behind the counter was Ingram, one couldn't see her.
"ORIN. Think I've located both targets. Can you get me a confirm and some data on the third hostile?"

"Get me visual and I can tell you whatever you need to know. Just try not to get shot." was the response.

Kora had no intention of getting shot.

Unfortunately her options became a lot more limited when the wall behind her was suddenly hit by a wrecking ball.

Or at the very least it felt like one when she was pitched forward into the dirt by the force.

Kora rolled with the hit and was able to scramble herself up to face the attacker. A few bruises and a bleeding lip, nothing major. In hindsight, probably should have seen that coming.

"Confirmed. It's Lazos. Ingram won't be far."

As ORIN spoke to affirm her claim, Kora scanned the surroundings. One close range. Two long range. It was far from a fair fight.

"Three on one? See it didn't take you two long to get into the ashland mentality." Kora growled through gritted teeth as she planted her feet firmly into the dusty ground, placing one against a sizeable crack in the old sidewalk so it could not slide back.

What she was about to do had one hell of a kickback.
"Guess I'm going to have to get serious."

For a moment the woman splayed her fingers, and around her hands red, glowing particles began to swirl and crowd together.

Then:

BOOM

She threw her arms up before her and a wave of heat and force burst out of her like a bomb had exploded from the knight's outstretched hands. A wave of superheated air rocketed across the ruined building, tearing up the floor coating, flinging the remains of furniture and tearing fixtures from the walls. The water from the sprinklers was no match for the heat at close range, evaporating into steam as the wave it, filling the air with a thick, hot fog.

The force hit the walls, cracking the brickwork and tearing off the paint. What little glass was left in the windows burst out forcefully in all directions.

Kora stood at the epicentre of this chaos, the ground around her scorched black, and bits of her glove's heat-resistant fabric smouldering faintly in the dusty air.

Well, back to the drawing board on the gloves.

(Dead) The Gifted World

@Framing A Moose Right side.

(Dead) The Gifted World

@Framing A Moose She moved across the doorway setting the floor of the doorframe on fire as she passed across it, and ended up net to the door with her back to the wall.

(Dead) The Gifted World

Yeah got to say if I only osted things I was happy with I'd probably never post at all. I've now put myself in the mindset of 'Don't second guess it just post' in order to speed things along.