Humans (Thirteenth Assemblage)

Humans are the sole known intelligent species in the universe. While simple alien life has been found throughout the Assemblages, no such evidence of past or present alien civilizations exists. At least on the scale of the local stellar neighborhood, it would seem that the galaxy is for the taking of Sol's estranged children.

Variants

As evolutionary pressures and genetic science advance and vary through the Assemblages, some humans have ceased to exist in what could be called "baseline" physiology. While not divergent enough to be called their own species—and ignoring the immense political problems such a taxonomic change would cause—these variant humans give a glimpse into what the far future of interstellar civilization could look like.

Aseirion

Aseirion humans, not to be confused with humans in Sirius as a whole, are a genetically altered variety of the species, made in an attempt to allow humans to live comfortably on worlds around Al Shira.

Hölman

Not genetically altered, but an artifact of Rán's unique gravitational pressures, the "hölman" is a lanky and structurally fragile type of human, with average heights being well over two meters. Without a strong gravitational pull to fight against, the developing human body elongates and acclimates to its new environment.

The general gravitational archetype is known by many names throughout the Assemblages, but is listed here with the Ránnite name for its ubiquity through the system.

Heruer

"May God's great eyes burn us, for the hunger man knows is one without end. May the seas swallow us with teary salt, may the sky rage with the unsung praises we owe. To this land we owe eternity, to these heavens we owe our strength."
—Unknown, Case against the fourth terraformation initiative on Heruer

Heruer (هيروير) is the inner of Rashaya's two moons, the second most populated celestial body within the Sirius system, and one of the most valuable prospects of a future habitable world for the Aseirion peoples.

Cernunnos

Cernunnos /cɛɾʲ.ˈnˠu.nˠosˠ/ is a medium star in Zalanthium home to the Driocht Einn and a small population of emigrated Auleiali species.

Gold Dwarf

The star itself is a somewhat strange yellow dwarf. While other coronal phenomena contribute to peculiar star classes like Aurora Stars, Cernunnos' odd coloration is not the result of extra spikes in its spectrum; rather, the star's spectrum in unusually narrow, giving it a vivid gold hue for species that can see 560-600 nm wavelength light, and making it appear anomalously dark for species that cannot.

Worlds

Mug Ruith

Mug Ruith (फउन टउह in Driochtig)

Delbáeth

Delbáeth (ळएधगआएह in Driochtig)

Úaithne

Úaithne (ऊअहठए in Driochtig)

Luchtaine

Luchtaine (थउजीङअठए in Driochtig) is Cernunnos' most massive terrestrial world.

Étaínne

Étaínne (ऐङईठठए in Driochtig) is the inner moon of Luchtaine, and it remains one of the few remaining ecosystems with Larean-imported biology in the universe. Étaínne is the homeworld of the Driocht Einn, a hexapedal sophont species descended from directly imported animals into the Étaíth biosphere.

Despite its small size, Étaínne maintains a sizeable atmosphere and liquid oceans on its surface.

Midhir

Midhir (वइळीघ in Driochtig) is Luchtaine's outer moon

Nemhain

Nemhain (ठएवीअठ in Driochtig)

History

Larean Settlement

Étaínne is theorized to have held a primitive extremophilic biosphere by the time Lareas entered the Cernunnos system

The Dark Age

Civilization Dawns Once More

Raiders From Beyond the Black

Decryption Shatters Faith

Chainsaw's Big Book of Recipes

As Flame sears flesh, as Blade severs it, as Stone and Metal pound it, as Water thins its blood, so too are the principles of War applied to meals.
—The late Grandmaster of the Burning Blade, Knife Sawtooth

Good wanderings under the moons to you, reader! This book is my masterwork,

Axocora Hatnote Update Workshop

Ye who yet fear the light, who wait in Deepened Silence, I mourn for thee.

Scope hatnote for Axocora

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Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Add category	`add_category`	If the scope category should be added to the page Default true	Boolean	optional
Use scope styling	`use_scope_styling`	If the scope's styling should be used Default true	Boolean	optional

Tale:My Reflections

A warning to all Institute members: these files were recovered using illicit methods by a now-terminated operative. Due to their sloppy plan of actions, the subject of this suspected Weird locus has been lost to our networks. We do not know how she evaded our informants, but this may be evidence of further Weird activity. Consult these decrypted documents with the assumption that they will be the only recorded information about this particular phenomenon.

Ad insolita propter futurum, C***** H****, Your Supervisor

August 1, 1999

Dear diary,

I hope to God nobody can read this. I haven't studied cryptography, so this section at least is the most vulnerable. Might burn later, idk. But I feel like I can't keep completely holding this in for much longer. I have to go to my Aunt Mallory's wedding in a couple weeks, and I really don't want to wear the dress that mum's making me wear, but I can't explain why at all.

Ok, here goes, nobody: I can't see my own reflection, or my image in photos. I have no idea what I look like besides looking more like my mum than my dad. I see something there, but it's not what I "really" look like. At all. It's... I look like a monster to myself. A big hairy horned monster, and I like it! I've always been like this but I never tell anyone.

Strionv

Chromagaia's time moves forward with ours! Today's date is:
Lysisday, Avonslau 31, 1134 LE

Strionv was a language spoken only by two individuals throughout history, the Legendary Beast Moveriath and his student, successor, and Ennean Törrhyatz. Strionv is known as the night-tongue, and very few inscriptions of it exist.

Phonetic Inventory

The phonetic inventory of Strionv is as follows:

Consonants
	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Uvular	Glottal
Plosive	p/p/ b/b/		t/t/ d/d/		q/q/ g/ɢ/
Fricative	f/f/ v/v/	th/θ/ dh/ð/	s/s/ z/z/	sh/ʃ/	x/χ/	h/h/
Affricate				ch/ʧ/
Trill			r/r/
Approximant	hw/ʍ/ w/w/		l/l/	j/j/
Nasal	m/m/		n/n/	(/ɴ/)

/ɴ/ only appears as a mutation of n/n/ before x/χ/, g/ɢ/ and q/q/ h/h/ is written as h but pronounced /χ/ word-finally

Vowels
	Front	Mid	Back
High	i/i/ ii/iː/		u/u/ uu/uː/
Mid	e/e/ ee/eː/		o/o/ oo/oː/
Low		a/a/ aa/aː/

Phonotactics

Strionv has a basic syllable structure of CVC, though large consonant clusters are common.

WIP

The basic word order of Strionv is SVO.

This means when translating a sentence from english like “an animal drinks water” it would be “qlan meihrov gurdh” literally “Animal drinks water”.

WIP

Antepenultimate End

Lullaby is created as an anti-Vyster measure
Vyster DOES go through the apotheosis crisis after landing on Amarent
Aaron is just barely able to hold him off with Blumei's help, but really wants to avoid putting Lullaby into action
- Flashback to Finality maybe?
Vyster starts seeing the threads of fate, understanding the planned betrayal
- NONE OF YOU TRUSTED ME FROM THE START! YOU WANTED TO CONTROL ME BECAUSE YOU COULDN'T KILL ME!
- WHATS THE DAMN POINT IN A WORLD WHERE NOBODY SEES ME AS ANYTHING BUT POWER?!
Vyster starts bending reality and shit, Primordials return and Amarent actually breaks open
Despite best attempts, Lullaby does rush into combat to do what they were made for
- goes horribly wrong because they haven't been TRAINED in the basics
Brimstata is obliterated, white fire sweeps across the realm
Vyster holds it off to 1v1 Aaron no powers edition
- don't touch the fire directly, just grab the ontological breadth it inhabits and make it smaller
Aaron is unsurprisingly better at single combat but is really fucked up about it
- Lullaby could only destroy, we can only change what is there and not destroy or create. Is there no one who can create? Are we all just fated to regurgitate or slander that which we were born into?
Amaranth Blast, Aaron gets a vision of Amaranth-Azurade and grabs Her
- Vyster grabs Her at the same time, they both start trying to subsume Her

"Nothing will ever be as it was, even changing it back now would have changed you. You cannot undo your own process of action. Retracing steps will not take them back."

Vyster lets go of both the flames and Amaranth-Azurade, Aaron subsumes Her entirely and through the Crown of Mars connects to every living being past and present
Amaranth-Aaron cannot allow events to progress, but sees the entirety of all that has come before.
Vyster asks again what the damn point is if the universe is ruined and doomed.
- lean in for the big hug, "There is no point in preserving this now. Not here, not alone."
Perfect fire closes in around them
- "But there is a point to the struggle regardless. To Creation. A question that was once answered in earnest and then disregarded, now asked again. The answer was always here, and not here. Why build again when the curtains have closed?" The words fall out of his being as Truth, experienced only by the experience of all Answers, of success and closing, of failure, of now at the mockery that Creation had become. They fell out of His self as emanations of purest and pristine Amaranth: "Legacy, yours and mine and ours. Everyone's. There's a point so long as anyone is there to feel it aeons later. Anything we want, nothing at all, a carbon-copy of what came before down to the axiom. As long as anyone experiences it, that becomes worth more than anything standing alone."

"What happens now?"

"Anything and everything. Together."

Mergy awesome hug and universe ends, leaving them in A'th and A'th alone. Their new self, Maran, takes A'th and forces it to go BEYOND itself, being the ontospace of not just one Creator and Creation, but of infinite infinities, uncountably immeasurable. This Scope of Scopes is now where innumerable Legacies can be forged.
Maran, through A'th, expounds every individual from the Succession into an interwoven beam, a spectrum of infinity made up of literally everyone who had ever existed. THEIR Legacy, of A'Maran-th. This new Scope, the first of many, becomes Axocora.

strio: 1. Night.

meihrov: 1. To drink.; 2. To consume starlight specifically.

anqooxwa: 1. Worthy.

Ailell

Chromagaia's time moves forward with ours! Today's date is:
Lysisday, Avonslau 31, 1134 LE

"Never before has there been so concentrated a gilded soul of a people. A true testament to failure, to inglorious decadence. The desperate clawing of those unable to throw away their self-acclaimed nobility, the incompetence of the backwards worship of false ideals, the deluded pride in that ancient utter humiliation that founded their legacies. The recreation of their so-called enemy in total ignorance. This... warped land, these warped people, are nothing without their precious blaspheming, without the consensus they pretend they have over all things. The longer I am away, the deeper my rage for their gilded facade grows."
—Seren Afon-Tan

Meta Info

Article Creator

Article Author

Scope

Setting

National Info

Organization Type

Absolute monarchy

Status

Active

Colonies/Territories

The floating island Ailell

Greatest Territorial Extent

The floating island Ailell
All Keppel (claimed)

Geographical Info

Location

Floating island Ailell

Capital Info

Capital(s)

Cerrum-Tsann

Capital Type

City

Demographic Info

Demonym

Ailelli

Population

~60,000

Dominant Species

Infernal Dragons

Minority Groups

Disallowed under the law

National Language

Ailiaith

Commonly Spoken Languages

Eudraconic
Ailiaith
Pseudodraconic (aberrant)

National Faith

Tsanafaedd

Minor Religions/Faiths

Disallowed under the law

Foundational History

Date Created

Death of Titan Nebuir, Unknown

Founder(s)

Black-Sun Dymuniras Cyntaf-Haul
Remnants of the Red Army

Founding Date

Yahataidh 29, 1 LE

Founding Species/Race(s)

Infernal Dragons

Preceded By

Red Army of Tsanafaedd

Dissolution History

Rulers/Leaders

Sun Dynasty

Notable Events

Atrocities

Inherited from the Red Army

Diplomacy

Enemies

All Keppel

International Influence

None

Structure/Civics

Governmental Structure

Absolute monarchy

Current Ruler/Leader

White-Sun Thannan Cyntaf-Haul, Fourth Sun King

Foundational Documents and Values

Values

Purity of Draconic Flame

Recognized Calendar

Tsinderic Calendar

Development Info

Life Expectancy

~290 years

Equality

Caste system

Economy

National Currency

Rarefied Gold

Accepted International Currencies

None; Ailell recognizes no other state

Magic

Magic Recognition

Extension of Draconic Sunsteps only

Legality of Magic

All "human-derived" magic punishable by death, if possible

Ailell is the nation that rose from the ashes of the Vermillion Wars' perpetrators. Or, as one might say, simply smoldered as remnants from that initial inferno, diminished into the entirely unknown isolate culture they are in the modern day. Their departure from the surface world shortly after a truly visceral loss of a great majority of the Red Armada's forces was commonly interpreted as a total slaughter. Divergent by over eleven hundred years from the vast majority of Keppel's cultures and diametrically opposed to the existence of most of them, Ailell is at once disconnected from the wars that founded it and obsessed with that allegedly glorious past.

Since its founding at the beginning of Lumin's Era, the nation has remained isolate from the surface world, only breaking this on rare occasions when their island drifts close enough to another to initiate draconic contact. This isolation is intentional, but mostly results from the natural strain life at such high altitudes must contend with. On the other end, most of the world does not even know Ailell exists. Its presence is only told of in rumors passed on from the few residents who opted to leave.

Governance

Sun Dynasty Cyntaf-Haul

A legacy left by war-time exalted into a proper monarchy, the Cyntaf-Haul dynasty is at the absolute top of Ailelli society. The Cyntaf-Haul line was intended to succeed both the Tsannaf Flame-Keepers, a consolidation of power and skill into an ultimate all-wise strategist and priest. This strategist would oversee the vision of the future and society, focused on ultra-long-term sustainability for the world as a whole.

Of course, the first of the Cyntaf-Haul line did not achieve Ascendancy before needing to take the mantle of Flameguard General. His own son, Dymuniras Cyntaf-Haul, received a mere fraction of that same strategic training, and subsequent generations lost all note of it, declaring their minds innately wise instead. As per the laws of honor and hierarchy, none are permitted to question this.

The Sun Dynasty has final say on all legal and religious doctrine, unrestricted by much of any limit but the soft reputation their reign may have. The royal palace at the peak of Cerrum-Tsann has wings for announcements, for leisure, for debate and policy, and for the residences of the family's retainers, who are sworn in for lifetime servitude to the crown.

The current Sun King, White-Sun Thannan Cyntaf-Haul, rules with a nervous temperament. Concerned mostly with the politics of his own image and publicity, he shows little concern for managing the beliefs and dissents of the people, which, although admittedly few, have devastating potential for the future of the aristocracy.

Tai Haul

Below the Sun Dynasty is the assortment of noble Solar Houses known as the Tai Haul. Forty-five individual houses, made up entirely of families of sun dragons, form this aristocracy, collectively serving as a network of retainers for both the royal family and for key industries and practices within Ailell's culture.

The Tai Haul often have expansive crews of retainers and servants, though they are not sworn in for life or held to as high a standard of honor as the royal retainers.

Clan-Caste

In an extreme and twisted version of many draconic societies' reverence of the Prismatic Clans and the unique qualities of many clans' magics, Ailell operates on a calcified social hierarchy determined by clan. Unlike these other societies, however, the most exalted clan is sun dragons, with a roundabout explanation of the founding of Ailell itself and the exertion of will to start their predecessors' purging of Keppel.

Still exalted are the scarlet dragons, though less so than the sun clan. They have no special roles in governance, but are given high priority in religious positions and special exclusive boroughs within the towns atop the island.

Most of the other clans are equal as the majority and peasantry, undifferentiated but for the usefulness of their power. Although "peasantry" covers economic ground from extreme poverty to near-constant comfort, these clans are generally regarded as disposable and interchangeable.

Forge dragons, who bear the aspect brought into the world by humanity, the ultimate enemy of the old Red Army, have the lowest informal social rank. Made to "purge the ancient sin" from themselves, they are silent reminders of the alleged impurities in the Draconic Flame. Purgatory dragons are often given opportunities to climb the little social mobility they have by acting to "purify" forge dragons, themselves seen as Ailell's mark on the Flame and a dim holy source.

Faith

In Ailell, faith reigns supreme as the binding force of society. Burning on with a hatred several generations and fourteen hundred years old, the people trust in histories and old, old war tales to tell them how the rest of the world is positioned relative to them. Religion and politics are heavily intertwined, centralized, and fed through a machine of rhetoric into nationwide doctrine that becomes treasonous and blasphemous to contest.

Tsanafaedd

Revised History

Millenarias Ignis

History

Death of the Author

Ailell as a perversion of the Red Armada's ultimate goal could be said to begin with the death of Seichmallt Chwalu-Haul, the inciter of the Vermillion Wars and de facto leader of Tsanafaedd as a faith at the time. His brilliance in strategy and politics allowed the clear vision of a post-mortal draconic paradise on Keppel to thrive, the eventual goal being reintegration with the enemy forces once their non-draconic populations had been wiped out.

Seichmallt was slain by Asarba the Rain-Bringer in 188 AT at the Battle of Taquix, taken off-guard by her uncharacteristic strategy and subtlety. The succession by the first of the Cyntaf-Haul line, Talwel Cyntaf-Haul, is where the impurities began. Rather than the stateless primitivist society Chwalu-Haul envisioned, the Red Army began to shift towards ideas of rulership and dominance. Talwel's training under Seichmallt was considered incomplete, continued by the unqualified Scarlet Flame-Keeper and retainer of Seichmallt's will, Rhanyd Cyntaf-Llosgi.

Forged in Failure

A Millennium of Nothing

Succession Crisis

Modern Day

"Glass Echoes" refers to a colloquial term for a rare spiritual encounter of the Rrataradh variety. It is an incredibly dangerous thing, to be caught up in an instance of that, and incredibly dangerous. The completion of the echo, by its very nature, requires the death of the recognizant. A half-formed thing that must yet appear whole; whence does the difference emerge?
As a child, I once thought that ghosts were whole things. Blue like Galaxios' fastest raging around Pereptia, and themselves caught in that enraged whirling, but whole nonetheless. I thought all spirits must have stories to tell. I thought, on some level, that they were people too.
Their hearts are filled with the tar of the dark core of the sun. What else is used for substrate is known, or more precisely is no longer known. Hidden, concealed, forgotten, lost, eroded. What so is swept under the sands becomes used for them. Each and every life snuffed out and buried and headstone turned to rubble... all substrate. All internalized. The alchemists say the first step to any great transmutative work is to boil and putrefy the reagents. Does one not see how, in the tar-mind of Haerox, this false imagination contains only reality? The whole of the black seventh world is us, what is lost, what cannot be found. All echoes boiled together.
Glass is typically transparent, open. But no glassblower would be undefeated by the challenge of producing a hundred panes that could be seen through all together. Each time, there are impurities... information is warped, lost. The echoes of what was are drunk by the liquid void, distilled into its onyx-nacre potential. Archaeologists, historians, records always exist. The marks ripple out. There is always something missing, something that cannot be truly hidden or weathered away.
Or some would say.
What is constituted as forgotten? Certainly the slumbering gods of dead faiths would be around the Gateways if allowed to disappear. Why not? Why is it not so? Why is a person's mind not preserved?
Were you to sift art made of three colors of sand through a sieve, the result would be fuzzy, no? The time it takes for it all to pass distorts it, allows patterns to be made incomplete and filled with whatever other particulates have precipitated by that point. Glass Echoes are these things, these incompletes. Enough to be recognized by those whose memories have not faded―those who keep the remaining part of the spirit's legacy tethered to the living world. How much is really forgotten all at once? How quickly is it pooled into a new spirit by Rrataradn, by our deceptively calm sun? Writers and poets, the like of my own kin, are to die and remain without half our minds! All unwritten fragments is what we may retain.
Then why not every peasant who amounted to nothing? Why not the hermits returning in full, filled in only for the few merchants who had recalled their home?
Maddening to think about, the wine-dark skies of billions of lost souls. It is possible that they simply have not been remade, or that impact must be significant to be retained... or that the realm itself unstructures them for parts. The amalgams made unknowable, foreign, truly new in a way that children are new people by imitation of their peers, those are the Rrataradh we are familiar with. They are Echoes still, but mere dust containing plausibly hundreds of peoples' forgotten affect.
A Glass Echo is not always known as one. They are the mighty to return from the putrefaction and sieve swiftly and intact, augmented and re-completed only for what is still remembered about them. What has not been hidden. They are falsely led, with the same malformed willpower Haerox instills into all her dark brood, to seek out and destroy that which recalls their living memory. It will not be returned to them. It will be utilized in new spirits that need those areas filled out.
This second death is a cruel and merciless one. The body and mind may go out all at once, but the legacy... that which is left behind fades over agonizing centuries. Imagine one's birth being strained over such esoteric parts, such lengths of time.
Though that is arguably how one's living self and memory forms. The legacy lives and dies much too quick for the substrate upon which it relies.
Regardless, there is a definitive amount of data collected about these... echoes. As fundamentally they determine a minimum turnaround time between first-death and the manifestation of some part of their lost information, this can be a yardstick for how quickly one would need to be forgotten entirely―or intentionally excised from history―to manifest in full as a spirit. This is purely hypothetical, supported only by cursory third-hand anecdotes of a coherent deity manifesting in the realm following an ethnic cleansing of its patron culture.
Three years. The earliest a Glass Echo has been sighted after one's death was three years. A man of few words and excellent impact, returned in some part to slaughter those who recalled that vulnerability and reclaim the missing parts. Futile, as discussed above, and easily dispelled with faith-based arts, as all of these reminder-spirits are.
If one were to cover up, erase documentation, murder all acquaintances, forget, kill themselves, over a deceased person, or to do that erasure for themselves pre-mortem, the whole of their legacy may yet manifest in that second death right after the first. Two years at most for post-mortem acts of this. All at once, one may slip through the sieve, be resilient against the solar influence, the urges.
Potentially, the spirit could be a person. A continuance. A new life unbound from mortal lifespans.
Do not do this for me, reader. If you have read this recently following my death, do not attempt to revitalize me through this dark spirit science. For all else, take away this alone:
No spirit from our sun is free of its taint. Her jealousy and outrage make them monsters in their own right. Do not let the glass deceive you into thinking it is invisible. Into believing it is not there. No matter how close the echo, the price of a free Rrataradh is a crime worthy of a third death.
—Hvalabarath the Ink-Stained, A Musing on Deaths

It hangs like an open wound for eternity, a nervous instability just on the shoulder of pain, a hollowness, a sparsity in the flesh like thousands of filleted cuts too thin for the eye to see. Like you're made of sponge, the cold wind rushing through your chest and guts as through the needles of a fir on a ghastly winter evening. Some romanticize it, some fear it, some hide from it in food and spirits and dancing and lust. Run from it, no matter how quickly, and its claws will still sink into your essence. It was born within you the second you allowed joy to be at home there.

It holds itself open in the bitter old wounds of the stomach, itching under the scars from overzealous foes who believed they could show you a deeper fear than it. A reminder, perhaps, that it is your most incommunicable and yet intimately shared experience. That nothing will ever be more potent, that nothing could be lost more than already has been. And yet, you think to yourself, what remains is what is lost. Two seasons' worth. Time enough to shudder and pretend your body could settle on top of itself, suture lesions that were never there. Time enough to let it consume you, if the wretched thing didn't come with twists forged into its obsidian knives. Hanging on your shoulder, it keeps whispering just before its jaw closes on your throat:

"But what now will be forever gone? What left have you failed to do?"

A false sense of duty. You did your job, respected their orders, hell knows what else had to be done. It was an answer to it, you supposed. Running from the fog of piercing aches that cuts as subtly as broken untempered glass. No memory to hold, no reminders to reignite the ice spreading. None but you.

What strings of murders could be done without sparking more conversation, more information, more connection between yourself and them? What libraries burned would do good without the silencing of their authors? How long would such research take? The easy road, the legendarily rare power of a wish, was gone. Laughed out of the room by a collective billions strong hiding behind that mask. You'd done so much, compiled every history yourself just to destroy echoes of it. Destroy their presence.

As requested. As ordered. As begged for by a... you couldn't dare call them a friend. An incidental ally, more hopeless than anything, no light from behind the eyes.

"For what purpose?", you'd asked. You hadn't received any explanation, but there had to be a plan. It was such a ridiculous gambit with no perceived payoff. No reunion in the void, no possible redemption of the ideas you'd fought for. Gained those scars believing in, the ones bitter against the waning sun. Their words haunted you even through it all. No real answer, but an answer truer than any real one would have been.

"I'm scared of death."

Weren't you? Weren't they? As if years of literal warfare could armor your psyche in jade thick enough to turn your core to that stone, to make you truly impervious to fear. Fear that somehow failed to live up to the reality of the aftermath. Something wrong, hollow, missing, a pressure gone, a halfway freefall sensation. All so bland, so vague, so mild sounding, but all too vivid.

Tonight on the hilltops, the night-birds sang their song to announce the nesting. They came up from the frigid south this time of year. Curtains of ice fell in their summer homeland now, and the people braving the weather and the fell folk of the snows did away with ancient patterns like them. Abandoned by their presence, some would say. You struggled to sleep the past few nights, and tonight was no different. Nothing ever felt different.

Why? Why over someone so briefly traveled with? A surface-level preposterous request from a fallen hero before their final battle, reaching out to just the first person available. Why you? I've always known. The closest around, incidental. Always incidental. Always the same with you two.

The short brush rustled. Animal noises. Nothing to fear, for yourself anyway. The plague-ridden and the undead were only marginally different from any living beast when it came to disabling attacks. Rationalizing, the knives in your scars told you.

It was a deeper emptiness than the inkwell had foretold, but disregarding even that, it carried nothing of Truth within it. You had become quite apt at it, wandering the forgotten lands behind all shadows. Failures, microscopic but still present, fragmenting your self like the grief you'd never had a chance to appropriately feel. Mourner of only ideas and cut ties, you. To not see, but feel by the echoes of wrongness, of cut-and-glue patchwork monoglyphisms, under tar-like cave ceilings that pretended to be a sky, it was a reminder of what was left, and what would not be returned. It was too late.

Had it been natural, even this coherence would be impossible. But that tar stretched on behind your eyes, that spiritual sense of ritual and theme disoriented what was reclaimed. The lenience of the process was miraculous, evident in the simultaneous existence and knowledge of the one who cut you from the truly irrecoverable. Evident in the very thing that ruined you.

You lost sense of time rapidly without a moon or sun to rely on. Direction was easier to retain, if only for the infection in your very mind and soul. What was gone now would be gone forever, reclaimed by the ways of all things for worse fates. Would you still be present in them?

No. Clearly not.

But were you even present in yourself now? Converted now, enchained by the truth behind the mask you thought you rebelled against. The very thing your benefactor would deny knowing. Wouldn't know, you reminded yourself. Smoke and mirrors until the unforgivable crime of true birth, which had ultimately been the secondary trial you would have failed had the first one not ended the way it did.

Nobody with this coherence forgets the feeling of Death creeping in. How would one not hide it by dying? How, how, HOW? Anything to forget the void between exhalation and restless reclamation.

What happens to the concentrate of such memory?

The mountains―stalactites, if you wished―stretched on for a hundred thousand miles in each direction, as colorless as the fake sky above. Another one pooled in it. Three more days for the glass to settle. "Days", as if that had meaning. Night had no meaning either. No wonder the myths were falsehoods; without a sunset, how could the god of beyond the eventide know when to wander the earth?

I told no one of my dreams in life. They have always been elements of prophecy for some, but I have found myself most fond of the ones that begin before I sink into slumber. Not that I can sleep anymore, not that this body which is hardly a body can rest. Not that I can be inarguably I anymore. All certainties have been flipped, all faithless doubts shown. Yet I still trust in my waking dreams to guide me, because they are love. They are the dreams which all hold onto with all their might as the blood, whatever color it pours, drains from the pressure in their shattered limbs. The dreams are my truth when all truth besides failed. I have been loved, and so I can still dream onward in this state beyond all written imagining. I was loved before I boasted my forgotten feats, before I rose in this lightless place. I was loved before the face behind the mask of my false sun's skull reared its ugly faceless head to enslave the people I had already lost. I was loved before the moons had shattered into motionless bands, before the suns were set upon to burn, before the stars were slain and bled of hue. I was loved before before itself, before I was I myself. And so I follow, burning the black flame, awaiting the change I have dreamt of in my restless wake. I follow. I wait. And I dream.

Meta Info

Article Creator

Scope

Setting

Author

Demographic Info

Status

Inactive

Race

Human

Gender

Man

Assigned Sex

Male

Pronouns

He/Him

Homeworld

Keppel

Homeland

North Remna

Socioeconomic Class

Outcast

Nationality

Thotoni

Faith

Deific Accelerationist

Astrological Sign

Alcaernon, Will of the Beholder

Physical Info

Height

5'5"

Hair Color

Black

Skin Color

Very pale

Missing Body Parts

Eyes

Extra Body Parts

Replacement Eye Artifacts

Personality

General Demeanor

Detached and grim, nonchalant

Core Values

Self-preservation above all
Family as perfect bond

Goals/Aspirations

Resurrection of his younger sister

Hobbies

None, lives for his "grand purpose" (self-alleged)
Testing magical materials on passersby

Interests

Magic, particularly alchemy

Unusual Interests

Necromancy

Weaknesses/Flaws

Obsessiveness
Pride

History

Greatest Achievements

Theft from the Shadow King's Study

Greatest Failures

Death of Melody of Thoton
Ultimate defeat by the Autumn Camp

Narrative

Narrative Role

Antagonist

Relationships/Affiliations

Siblings

Melody of Thoton (deceased)

Lineage

None

Rivals

Vyerul, King of Shadows

Sworn Enemies

Dúmhail Cechtan
Vyerul, King of Shadows

Skills and Abilities

Powers/Abilities

Wraith Phylactery
Eye of Deconstruction
Eye of Authority

Physical Strength

Low

Stamina

Very Low

Durability

Low

Magical Aptitude

High

Magical Class(es)

Lunar Artifice
Alchemy
Evocation

Blessings/Boons

Extended Lifespan

Abilities Inherent to Race

Idyllization
Eclipsing

utter failure of a guy
stole literally every power he has, calls them "cheat codes" or other such things
- Black Mage title comes from the stolen Wraith Phylactery from Vyerul's study
- fucked up magic eye that he CLAIMS is one of the Eyes of Starlight is actually not. its a stolen artifact as well
OP protag syndrome
hairless anime twink with the fuckass manhwa long hair that signifies "dark and evil and refined"
make him ultra edgy and powerful but be super chuuni about it
GUESS WHAT HE HAD A LITTLE SISTER NOW!!! YOU GET UNDERPOWERED ANIME BOY WITH CREEPY SISCON! TWO TERRIBLE CHARACTERS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE