Destiny

[Midtime]

Somewhere onwards, a figure fights.

He is surrounded by darkness, yet is seen as if not exactly shining, but shone on. Clad in a hooded white robe, he dances, the sword held in his hands touching innumerable foes. This world is black, so that a watcher would not be able to see if there is a black floor or simply an invisible surface, a ceiling or the starless night, a wall or a slope or simply oblivious, unreachable eternity.

Yet a sense of presence detects something behind the swordsman, a portal, leading back to the land of the living. The figure is a guardian. And surrounding him, invisible, as black as their surroundings, the legions of those who wish to return through it.

Each one is faceless, mindless, incapable of thought, yet drawn as if by a magnet to be cut down by the sword...

...or rather vanish. What the sword does to them is unfathomable. In fact, the sword itself is a mystery, an enchanted silver colour as if touched by moonlight.

This is the world of the dead, where necromancers venture when needed to attempt to maintain order where chaos is threatening to erupt. But they do not see this; its sheer fractal simplicity might send them mad. They use the tool of visualisation, so that the place becomes a maze of faintly lit rocky terrain. They do see the portal, as a swirling bright mass, with the dead as glowing images of who they were in life. But instead of the swordsman, they see around that portal a gently glowing, pulsating barrier, impassive except when touched, sending the departed to places forbidden to those who are alive.

Only one necromancer has ever seen the dark realm as it truly is and been in a state to remember it afterwards, who is revered as the father of true necromancy. He had one presiding thought when he dared do so. Who is the guardian?

There is no time in the land of the dead. Those who visit force it to follow the time of their own world, but it is in truth timeless.

 

The Guardian has fought for an eternity, and an instant.

 

 

Somewhere in the world of the living, a figure in a black robe floated above the buildings. He was moving very fast.

In his hand was the ancient scythe, a faint blue glow surrounding the infinitely sharp blade. He was, technically, a necromancer, but he would live for a thousand years, five times the normal necromancer's lifespan.

To those whom he met, he was Death, the Grim Reaper.

The scythe has been handed down three times, but its blade has never dulled, the black handle never lost its perfect shape.

Contrary to those few who believe in this personification, Death is not a skeleton, but can take on whatever age and appearance he or she wishes. As a matter of fact, the appearance that the current Death was using at the time fit his actual age, that of an abnormally tall mid-teenager.

He floated over the 30-metre-tall barbed wire fence of one particular building, and silently landed in front of what, for lack of a better word, we will call a door.

It was almost as tall as the fence and made of reinforced steel, with several cameras covering its entrance. There was no handle, of course - no human could open it alone. Anyone trying to enter would have to first undergo a highly advanced identification and weapons check system before the door was opened mechanically. What a waste, the black-robed figure thought, and stepped forward. The door offered less resistance than the air.

The guards saw as little as the cameras. Death snapped slender fingers, and an hourglass materialized in his hand. The silver sand had almost finished trickling into the lower section. Still holding it, he continued, silent as a shadow.

Eventually he reached the door he wanted. He slipped through, where his target lay sleeping, interestingly. The middle-aged millionaire had been so paranoid lately he hadn't rested at all some nights. Even now, four unseeing guards armed with rifles kept watch.

The hourglass was almost finished. The last few grains fell...

And one of the guards, quicker than the eye could see, aimed his firearm and fired four shots. The guards fell, and the sleeping man seemed to wake. But as he rose, he left his body behind. At first he didn't notice this. He pointed a shaking finger at the bemused black-robed figure and screamed, "Guards! Guards! Shoot him!"

OH, I'M NOT AN ASSASSIN. said Death dryly, in a voice that was not exactly a voice, a voice that sounded as if warped from the surrounding ambient noise. NO, THE ASSASSIN'S THERE. he added, indicating the escaping bogus guard. He raised his scythe, towards the glowing blue-white line that ran from the dead man's heart to... well, no one knew.

He cut it, and they vanished.

 

((Before anyone says anything, yes, I know people die quite often. That's why Death can be in more than one place at the same time. It's one of those things.))

 

And so, we return to the world of the departed.

The former millionaire looked upon a moonlit rocky desert. There was a path, visible by the path that countless feet had worn into the ground.

THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO GO.

The man looked behind him. There was no wall. Why not that way? The panic he had felt seemed a thing of the past, which it was.

As if anticipating his thoughts, Death continued. IT HAS BEEN PREDETERMINED. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER.

And indeed, the way forward suddenly seemed infinitely attractive.

The man walked onwards. If Death had stayed to watch, he might have seen the man begin to change, become in some subtle way darker.

But the figure in the black robe had already left.

Once he was sure he was fully in the world of the living, he collapsed. In a much more normal voice, he whispered, "Why? Why does everyone have to die?"

The only answer had already been given, time and time again. It was predetermined. It was Destiny.

 

Destiny is harsher than most people think.

 

 

This is the modern world, except in a few respects. Hidden for the most part are two clan-like extended families branching from the same source: sorcerers and necromancers.

Sorcerers draw their power from anything living (or, rather, animated - the term "living" is stretched a bit for them) and manipulate it however they want. They are generally solitary and withdrawn, many spending their whole life increasing their power in a bid to achieve immortality. This never works.

Necromancers use, in contrast, the residual life energy that every living thing releases when it (or him or her) dies. As killing a person - particularly a magic user - and absorbing the released energy immediately would grant a necromancer a large amount of power for a period of time, most sorcerers believe that necromancers do this all the time. They are wrong - if a necromancer really needs power, they will generally kill a cow or similarly sized animal, or go to a large farm where ordinary people do it for them. Necromancers generally stay together, feeling a strong sense of kinship, and accept Death as one of their own, which he is. Another reason for their staying together is that if and when a necromancer separates from the rest, he or she can become misguided and very, very dangerous. Necromancers explore the concept and physical realm of death as if scientists, and have discovered evidence to suggest a secret guiding influence to the whole matter. It is, more or less, destiny.

Every (slightly less than) 1000 years, the current Death returns and chooses an infant to take on the vital role of guiding the departed onwards, eventually using his or her own death as a sort of hands-on tutorial. The sorcerers have a misconception of this as well, thinking that Death is actually the cause of ((well, I can't think of a better word :P)) death.

There is also, in the realm of the dead, a Guardian - or so the 'father of true necromancy', Seleion, said. Apart from a brief description of what Seleion could see of him and what he appeared to be doing, no-one knows anything about him. Some necromancers have become so frustrated with this dilemma that they have declared that Seleion was merely seeing a badly chosen visualisation of the dark realm. But the Guardian exists, and is still fighting...

 

 

((Yay! My first roleplay! :P

Your character can be anyone, as long as they aren't superpowerful or contrary to the general theme of the roleplay (no aliens, people from the future, mutants, that kind of thing).

Just a note: the general philosophy of the roleplay is the sheer inevitability of Death, but that's not the main plot. The main problem is the war between the sorcerers and necromancers. You may have noticed that I'm slightly biased towards the necromancers. :)

There is no entry form - just introduce your character any way you want. It doesn't have to be as long.

 

Just another note: If you've read Terry Pratchett's books, you can probably spot where most of the Death ideas came from.))

[antiaircraft]

((Nice roleplay by the way :) ))

 

Somewhere far above the dark clouds that obscured the sleeping world below, Delend soared. With his arms stretched out to either side and a dark grey cloak wrapped tightly around him, he closed his eyes and savoured the blissful sensation of floating on nothingness, with the chilly air whipping viciously, but ineffectually over his face. Flight was one of the few pleasures left to Delend in the world, and he wanted to enjoy every last second of time in the air he could get. Unfortunately, he could only draw so much energy from his own reserves, and would soon have to return to the ground, back to the many troubles that had driven him to take refuge in the sky.

 

Delend was somewhat unique in the history of magic users - he had been identified as a magician from a young age, and trained in the magic arts by a reclusive group of sorcerers known as 'The Red Dawn'. That was all long in the past however - they had shunned him, placed a death mark on him with a price great enough to bring several of the world's most skilled sorcerers into the hunt, all because he had seen things differently. He had seen past the superficial differences between the arts of sorcery and necromancy, and had realised that they were two sides of the same coin. He had been ready to learn both disciplines studiously, and demonstrate to the world the many wonders which could be achieved through their combination, or failing that, cooperation. But he had been deemed an evil heretic before he even had the chance to voice his argument, and had only the death mark to show for his attempts to make the sorcerers see reason.

 

All was not lost however - Delend still had a purpose in life. He would find a necromancer and learn the arts for himself, or die in the process. It wasn't simple stubbornness that drove him toward his ultimate goal - something deeper was at work here. Destiny had taken hold of him, he was sure of it.

 

Delend sighed, took several deep breaths, and began to descend.

[Guest Levy]

((I think I understand this. Mind if I try something? Speak up if you think it is too far fetched.))

 

The fires of the world are what she longed for. They are like tropical paradises for her. They are the only places she truly felt at home.

Beau, not quite human, not quite immortal. Much like the vampires of the myths of ancient man or the werewolves of urban legends, she had been given a curse. She was a simple child of the 19th century when her village was attacked by an ancient and long extinct race of Necromancers known as the Necroflammerin. They were unique not only in their practice but the fact they were all female, being only the female body could withstand the curse, a male body explodes with power if infected. This is how the greatest volcanoes of the world and craters have been created. She was abducted and deemed worthy of being the last Necroflammerin.

A Necroflammerin not only collects their energy from the dead, but the flame as well. Nothing kills more swiftly, more decisively, more hellishly than fire. But fire releases the souls much more quickly and with much more power than a regular death. In order to obtain this power, a Necroflammerin must absorb the force while the life is leaving the damned. Thus, they can withstand enormous temperatures to the skin in their flamerunner form. The flamerunner form is basically a bipedal, armor clad, firetammer. But for a Necroflammerin to get into this form they must take in twice their lifespan in regular souls, needless to say a Necroflammerin reserves this energy for emergencies only.

Her time is nearly over now. Within the next few years her body will burn and turn to ash. But not before completing her task. She has been given this curse for a reason, and that reason is to survive. Survive to give birth to Death's heir. That was her purpose, that was all she was destined to do. As she rests on the side of the volcano, she says aloud, "Why was it me who is forced with this burden. Why has destiny chosen me?"

Beau's blood red robes, which are melded to her skin by her extreme body heat even in her human form, cracked as the wind attempted to blown them. The flame shows little mercy to her surroundings. The only thing on her body that the wind can easily effect is her reddish orange high contrast hair which falls to her slender waist and folds gently with her body, which appears eighteen.

[Midtime]

((It's okay, I guess. I did, however, mention that necromancers are all a single family with strong feelings of kinship with each other? Any skills obtained by one would be instantly revealed to the rest (Death being the exception. I'll explain sometime later). Still, the Necroflammerin could be different, a race that came from necromancy but had different ideologies. How about that?

But to both of you - just to clarify - when I said family I meant family. All necromancers and sorcerers are related by blood. Everyone born to either group is a magic-user, and no-one outside that bloodline has any ability to utilize magic whatsoever.

Note: The soul of a living organism, released when they die, is made up of a controlled part of the magical energy that they harboured when alive. Thankfully for the soul, this energy cannot be utilised by either branch of magic users. There is also a large amount of uncontrolled magic energy that is released and spreads out, a bit like smoke in wind, but quicker. A necromancer can, if he/she is quick enough, collect the energy from the soul before it spreads. If even a mosquito was killed and the energy collected in this manner, it would be a considerable amount compared to the ambient energy that they usually use. A sorcerer can collect this energy (which is restored to the limit that the organism originally had over a period of time) from an organism that is still living, but only up to the point that the target has (necromancers have approximated) about half of its original amount left, so a sorcerer cannot kill a person just by drawing all the magical energy out.

Well, that's enough of that. :)))

 

Death looked at the lifetimer, and frowned.

It didn't make sense. It had seemed so short a time, eight years. Eight years since his predecessor had yielded the scythe, and it had almost happened.

I should have found the time.

She had made him promise that he would come back, more than once at least.

His dear mother was nearly dead.

Not from old age, of course; necromancers live for two hundred years on average.

Not from disease; she had never been sick in her life. Well, except for the flu when I was 4 years old...

That was what was good and bad about lifetimers. They could predict the future.

Not an accident; she seemed to make an effort to be elsewhere when they happened.

A murder, then? But who or what could be strong enough to kill a necromancer and get away with it, or demented enough to face the wrath of the others?

It was time to find out.

Scythe in hand, floating on a gentle breeze, he returned home.

 

((Just a note - necromancers don't come through the portal when they enter the land of the dead. They appear... somewhere else. Wherever they think they appear. Measurement of distance is irrelevant. :evo: ))

 

The Guardian has a problem.

He is not tired; he will never tire. In contrast, the number of foes is decreasing. That is the problem.

A distance away - measurements are immaterial in this world - another portal has opened.

 

And the dead are swarming out of it, transforming as they go into their living selves, directed by the power of a necromancer gone mad, destroying all they see...

 

((Did I mention that? That's... um... the other problem. They're related. :yes:

The necromancer has been isolated, and I already mentioned that lone necromancers get weird ideas about domination. This is what first gave necromancers a bad image.))

[antiaircraft]

Delend broke through the lowest of the clouds, and saw that he had made good progress already. Crossing an ocean was no easy task, even for a magician, but his natural talent for flight allowed him to make a trip of many thousand kilometres with relative ease. Still, he was now in sore need of a rest, which he would hopefully find on the island volcano that rose out of the ocean in the distance. Actual sleep was a different matter however - he needed to stay alert if he was to survive the magical assailants that were sure to come for him in the night, summoned by some of the more proficient sorcerers. He fervently hoped that there was nobody on the island already.

[Midtime]

((One more thing, Levy: What do you mean, give birth to Death's heir? You mean there's another Death, or that "a few years" to her is 987 years, or that the child she will give birth to was intended by the Necroflammerin to be the next Death (only the previous Death knows who that will be)? Unless you're talking about a different time.))

 

There.

 

The simple cottage in the meadow, projecting such a strong impression of peacefully ignorant innocence, the wind whistling through the nearby trees, wreathed in the flowers his mother liked so much to grow.

And inside the house, somewhere hidden, a magically concealed piece of floor that slid aside to reveal the entrance to a much larger and less modest network of tunnels spanning the world, with similar entrances everywhere, in which the great family lived...

That would come later.

 

The figure in the black robe alighted on the grass. The door to the world of his childhood stood in front of him, but as it had always been, it opened before his fingers brushed the wood.

In front of him stood a smiling slender figure decked in a black lace dress, those familiar ever-laughing black eyes - a trait of their bloodline - twinkling at him out of a face as yet unmarked by the long years, long black tresses framing her shoulders.

He wasn't sure what to say. He stood there, motionless, and eventually she laughed.

"Ayra, you little rascal." his mother said. ((Yeah, Ayra is the name I just thought up for him. Now I need to think up his mother's name, his surname, his relative's names, etc. :P)) "I don't get a visit in eight years?"

"I've been... quite busy." Ayra confessed, removing his hood, revealing slightly unruly perfectly white hair ((a common side effect of attempting to magically grow it back after you've burnt it all off in an accident involving the inadvisable use of a fire spell on cooking oil)) and two pools of blackness looking out at a world they knew to be a death pit.

 

"Come on," said his mother, "and..." the briefest of pauses, and a quick frown of worry flitted across her features, though she tried to hide it, "you'll see what all the fuss is about."

 

 

The Guardian has not had to act on initiative for... longer than he can remember.

The portal he was set to guard is safe. Not a soul has passed, or attempted to.

But there is another portal, through which the dead flow continuously.

In the world of the dead, the flow of magic can be seen, and the flow of magic is from the world of the living, through the necromancer, into the dead who return where they should no longer go.

As the necromancer's time, imposed upon the world of the dark, begins to permeate him, he reaches a decision...

 

The sword arced down faster than the eye can see, aimed to cut clean through the rogue necromancer's body.

And, impossibly, was brought to a halt.

A glowing green barrier flashed and crackled as it frustrated all attempts to break it. The Guardian lashed out again, and again, but each time a force stopped him. The necromancer barely turned.

((Just to give you an idea (hopefully), the sword put magical power into every soul it touched to do whatever it did to it. The total amount of magical energy used by "now" according to the intruding necromancer is about equal to that which is currently existent in the world, including magic-users, plus all the energy that the Necroflammerin absorbed in their existence. This necromancer is very, very adept.))

Eventually, halting the procession for a few seconds, she turned and sent a crackling green bolt of magical energy towards the Guardian, blasting him into unconsciousness, through the open portal...

And into the sunlit land of the plain.

He landed, coincidentally, into the one cluster of bushes large enough to prevent him from being spotted by the necromancer again.

 

And, perhaps, or perhaps a trick of a mind trying with all its might to find meaning in the chaos, to the attentive listener who could silence all other noises, there sounded the echo of a silent whisper:

- this one may be necessary

- i will preserve him

- destiny will prevail

 

- i will prevail

 

((I'm not saying that there is an omnipotent being that plays games with innocent lives and makes million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. I'm saying that in this roleplay, there might be. The existence of such a being is a million-to-one chance, of course - but should it exist, the chances of its existence are nine out of ten. :evo:

Just ignore it. It's kind of abstract, and there's only a million-to-one chance that it's related to the main plot...))

[antiaircraft]

((Hey c'mon AA3 - loosen up! :P This is a roleplay after all.))

 

Delend levelled out smoothly about a hundred metres above the dark water below and adjusted his flight path slightly so as to line up with the island ahead. If only there was a spell for floating effortlessly in midair - then I wouldn't have to put myself in harm's way just to get some rest. The magician allowed himself only a moment's self-pity however, quickly banishing the pointless feeling and opening his mind to the magical auras around him.

 

Pulsing gently below was the calm presence of the ocean, its soothing essence belying the unstoppable power that it could unleash if it was not given due respect. Ahead of him, the volcanic island he was heading for raged, fierce and fiery, working viciously to destroy the rocky barriers that held back its destructive fury. But there was another entity on the island, one that rose and fell with the breath of the volcano, and held a rapid, hellish energy to match. Delend would have been unable to distinguish it if not for the slight hint of resistance it provided when his sweeping magical probes passed through it.

 

There was another magician on the island - one that had almost certainly noticed his presence. Delend veered sharply away from the island and raced up towards the safety of the clouds, hoping that the magician he had sensed was not one of the sorcerers hunting him.

 

((Cue Levy ;) ))