I don't think that anybody can answer this question except you.
I don't think that anybody can answer this question except you.
Yes... Hm...Originally Posted by Frostyvale
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Alright, I got it:
PDF version: What the World Can't Make Sense Of
Last edited by Historia; September 1st, 2015 at 07:37 PM.
I wrote a story about this like two years, who he was and how he died. I think I had like 10 more pages to finish.Tell me about the amazing
backstory of the old man that
attacked Shiki! <Neuta>
Takeuchi: You mean that flashy walking
corpse, right?
Nasu: He was a charismatic Cyber DJ. ...That's
a lie. Actually, the only reason he had such a
unique character design is so that the
audience would immediately understand that
the corpse that was wheeled in at the
beginning and the corpse that attacked Shiki
are the same. It was the production staff's
idea, so give them a hand
thoughtfulness, okay?
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
Speaking of What the World Can't Make Sense Of, I tried to do it seriously at first then I just went "fuck it".
I kinda liked the part where Mordred beat that man's face in for no reason.
Lesson of the day: Don't mess with knights who have daddy issues.
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Also, you read all of that that fast? Chew your food, dammit.
Oh wow it happened Ill dump all my Untouchable in here.
On my phone right now but if this waiting goes on any longer Im just gonna type it all like this hue
[04:55] Lianru: i3uster is actuallly quite cute
Mano Po goes here until further notice.
i swear i'm working on it
Untouchable is a story with a bad start that reaches the height of mediocrity around the end of its second arc. It was the first longer fanfic I tried to write and as all OC-fic the cast was kinda badly designed beyond the main cast since everybody was basically one personality trait and cool abilities.
It's here:
http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread...43-Untouchable
Recently Nasuverse canon got rid of the central premise since a sealing once in a lifetime is already a great event for an enforcer so it's not even in the back of my mind to continue this.
For all the cool people who followed it, kept me going with comments and wanted some closure, the arcs and intermissions I had planned:
Spoiler:
[04:55] Lianru: i3uster is actuallly quite cute
Hey, remember that one thing I wrote? You know, the one that people liked and I swore up and down I'd finish, unlike Leo's judging?
Yeah...
Anyways, here's what I managed to write before it became an interminable chore to get out of the way before I started False/Trinity (read please, readers please me).
“To err is human. It’s a common enough phrase, with a common enough follow-up. However, forgiveness is an incorrect deduction. If the capacity to err is human, then would that not imply that to be incapable of error is to surpass humanity? With enough power, there is no capacity for mistakes; with enough strength, no path is out of reach. For a people devoted to surpassing humanity and casting it aside – especially a group like them – wouldn’t they have found a way by now?”
- Theodore Thirioakis, 4th Family Head of the House Thirioakis
The dying light of sunset scraped across the concrete roof, filling the myriad gashes and craters with bloody red. Spatters of crimson flew through the air to splatter against the pockmarked roof as silver blades tore through the air to hungrily gouge the ground. Streaks of green light roared with the force of meteors, piercing the air with a staccato of violence.
On the roof of the hotel, the two magi fought.
Dimitri threw himself backward, crashing into the roof, and rolled to the left as Bazett’s fist crashed into the concrete beside him, throwing him into the air in a shower of dust. Another gloved fist crunched into his side, sending the man skittering across the roof like a thrown stone. Dimitri shoved himself to his feet and spat another clotted lump of blood to the ruined roof; he forced hazy eyes forward to see runes spiral into Bazett’s gloves, dying them a brilliant green.
With a bestial roar, Dimitri flung his right arm forward, shooting a storm of feathers at the Enforcer. She lunged underneath them and shot forward, a single fist firing upward to destroy his stomach. The cannon roared once more, and Dimitri grimaced in agony as he twisted to the side, reeling as Bazett’s strike scraped against the dented feathers lining his waist. He ran backward, sweat and blood streaming from his body to polish the battered roof. Another contortion flung him away from the next devastating strike, and more feathers shattered as they fell, leaving bloodied flesh in their wake. Without their protection, the result was inevitable.
His arms tore ragged paths through the air as Dimitri shot more feathers at Bazett. She slid past them, sending the feathers streaking into the ground behind her, and the manic dance resumed. Bazett led, her rain of blows beating a tempo into flesh and stone as she mercilessly advanced. Dimitri followed with desperate motions as he hurled himself to the ground and fired countless feathers, the blades either punched aside or dodged entirely to dig into the concrete of the roof. For the fiftieth time the Designate spat a ragged curse to join the latest clump of blood.
The Stymphalid Transformation’s offense had failed, and its defense had flagged as well; even his trump card had failed. Dimitri could not win.
“I open a gate here.”Ανοίγω μια πόρτα εδώ.
Bazett erupted forward, her left hand no longer a fist, but a glimmering spear. All around her, the feathers buried in the roof thrummed and glowed, forming a magic circle.
“The cage opens. The doors are flung wide!”Ανοίγει το κλουβί. Οι πόρτες διάπλατα!
Dimitri shoved his arms forward, and a stream of bloody feathers gushed into the roof in front of the charging Enforcer. She leapt into the sky, and with a brief burst of green light kicked down to shoot straight at Dimitri.
“Let the gardens bloom with an orchard of birds!”Αφήστε τα κήποι ανθίζουν με ένα περιβόλι των πτηνών!
Bazett’s hand plunged into Dimitri’s chest.
And Dimitri exploded into a cloud of birds.
The thrum of wings brought thunder to a cloudless sky, and the torrent of starlings rose into the air. Bazett flung her arms up to shield her eyes as the piercing calls of the birds lanced into her ears and the endless barrage of feathered bodies slid across her ensorcelled suit. She cursed and leapt out of the flock, feet skidding across the roof as she glared upward to see the flock spiral toward the nearby forest.
“Dammit!” Bazett raised a hand to trace lines in the air glowing with myriad light, and launched a fist through them. A torrent of howling wind and force shot forward, carving a tunnel of ruined feathers and bloody meat through the black cloud. Even as their brethren fell, however, the starlings funneled into the forest and disappeared.
The sun fell, and Dimitri was gone.
The dull grind of teeth warring in rage filled the air, and a single cannon blast returned the roof to silence. Bazette stood, and spoke into the air.
“He escaped.”
“What do you mean he– dammit!”
The glyph on Bazett’s earpiece flashed as Jenna swore. The communications spell had been Ethan’s work – he’d used his skill with Bounded Fields to create synchronized spaces that mirrored the sounds created in them.
“You read the report. You knew why he made his base here.”
“Yeah, I know! It was your job to stop him from reaching the Black Forest, so what went wrong? You’re obviously not dead; so what, did he tear off your limbs or something?”
The hotel’s location was no coincidence. It bordered one of the most mystic and magically charged regions in Germany – the Black Forest. The forest was renowned for sheltering all manner of beasts and fantastical creatures, particularly werewolves; and even now was filled with countless cobwebs of unique natural spaces and mana rivalling even the strongest of Bounded Fields. Alone, the protections of the wood would at best confuse a weary traveler. But layered as they were – trap upon trickery upon disguise upon labyrinth – and strengthened by the advent of night, the protections of the Black Forest were akin to a Reality Marble. For a being like Dimitri Thirioakis, there was no safer haven.
Jenna’s anguished voice pierced Bazett’s reverie. “What the hell happened up there, leader!”
Silence hung over the ravaged roof, the shredded fineries of the hotel, and the grass stained with tears and blood.
“I miscalculated. While facing him, I had the upper hand the entire time. There was no need for further measures; in three, no, two more blows he would have fallen.”
A deep sigh punctured the air.
“However, he was stronger than indicated.”
“Yeah, I got that. He held back in the last encounter; no one mentioned him being able to control familiars of that size, let along being part-Monstrous Beast! The hell was with those ‘special circumstances’, anyways? He was supposed to be rank C at best!”
“That is not what I meant.” Hearing no further complaints from Jenna, Bazett continued. “While facing him, I was prepared to use the Answerer at any time. However,” the Enforcer paused. “There was no suitable moment for its use. The powers of the Stymphalian Bird are no longer his trump card.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Moonlight shone as the thick, jagged branches of the trees clawed angrily at the moon, desperately trying to rip it from the sky. The air thrummed with the weight that only night could provide, and each gap in trees sucked in the light, beguiling all who walked within with promises of egress and mystery while pulling their strings, each rustle of leaves in the wind a mocking laugh condemning any wanderer to an eternity of hopeless stumbling.
At the base of one tree lay Dimitri Thirioakis, surrounded by the corpses of starlings. A hacking cough sent yet another clot of blood and spittle flying through the air, and a small bag followed to plop onto the grassy floor. He grunted in pain, and forced a broken arm forward to reach inside the bag.
“That damned imbecile… so she could attack like that as well.” Dimitri slid bloodied fingers around the velvet case in the bag, savoring the rhythmic pulse of the runes on its surface. His ragged breaths slowly grew gentle as the shuddering of his ruined body shifted to an even rise and fall. A hiss of pain escaped into the night air, and Dimitri shunted prana through his body to knit the ruined flesh and bone. The last spell he’d used to escape – a larger scale version of his Familiar Creation combined with his Familiar Transformation for camouflage had cost him every drop of magical energy he had; without the restorative and protective effects of the Black Forest, he would have undoubtedly died.
“The case still works somewhat in stabilizing the sample, but it isn’t enough. I need… yes, that will suffice. As for the materials…”
Dimitri breathed deeply and winced at the stabbing pain the motion brought to his sides.
“I will have to return home.”
His body burned as strained circuits writhed from activity, and on the base of his spine, blue scales began to glow. Another wave of pain crashed through him, and Dimitri cursed the Enforcer who fought him on the rooftop.
“Stay out of my way, you selfish fool. For I am the one that will save this world.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
“So what’s the plan now, leader?” Jenna slouched onto a couch in the hotel room the Enforcers had made their base. The room was an expansive penthouse suite in one of the many hotels of Stuttgart; five rooms, each with accompanying bath, branched from the central living room and kitchen. On one wall hung a Rembrandt, on the other, a Vermeer. Between the two paintings was a solid wall of glass, offering a king’s perspective on the whirling fireflies of the people and cars below. Bazett turned away from the window to face the blond Enforcer.
“I finished my report; Thirioakis has been reclassed as an A-rank threat. We’ll be receiving the appropriate amount of reinforcements within the week.”
“A bit late for that, isn’t it?” Jenna grimaced. “We lost three people today, leader. The hiring rate of this job isn’t exactly high.”
“They knew the risks.”
“Not in this case. We walk with death, not fling ourselves headlong into it! This case has been rotten from the very beginning; there’s no way we should’ve gone into that hotel with just the five of us! We skipped half the usual protocols chasing Thirioakis down and the other half assaulting his base! Observers like Sebastian and Ethan would’ve never been on the frontlines if this had gotten the right ranking!”
Jenna slammed a fist into the sofa’s back, knuckles digging into the fabric. “Just what the hell did he steal to make us dance like this, and from who? Why didn’t we get the full situation for this mission? How are we supposed to do our job like this?”
Fists and teeth clenched as eyes began to water.
“We keep people safe, right? So why did they have to die?”
Bazett frowned. “That is incorrect. Enforcers protect the secrecy of magecraft; the safety of others is merely an inadvertent side-effect.”
“What? But–”
“Don’t misunderstand.” Bazett clenched a fist, fingernails gouging into her palm. “We aren’t heroes, and we don’t save the world. We’re only here for our own selfish reasons.”
She stared down to meet Jenna’s gaze.
“That’s the kind of creatures we magi are.”
The two women stared at each other, gray meeting brown. Finally, Jenna slammed her arms into the cushions, shoving herself up.
“So how are we going to find this guy?”
“We’re quite lucky. For whatever reason, he still possesses something we can track. And when we take the amount of stress he’s placed on himself alongside our updated information,” Bazett opened a drawer on the table and pulled out an atlas. She flipped through the book, and pointed to a peninsula. “He’ll flee here.”
Jenna grinned. “Then all we have to do is beat him there and set a trap.”
“Correct.” Bazett returned the younger woman’s enthusiasm with a slight smile. “We know what he wants and where he’s headed. This time, he won’t escape our cage.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
“Where you headed, sir?” The ruddy-faced driver scratched at his unshaven skin, fingers scraping across the bristles. He turned his head back to stare at the man in the backseat, who flicked his head up at the motion and met his gaze with bloodshot eyes.
“The plateau south of the city.”
“You sure about that? The only thing you’ll find there is a view, and you can get that and a beer down at the beach.”
Dimitri’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe I stuttered.”
“Have it your way.” The driver turned back to the dash and shoved his foot on the gas. Dimitri relaxed, and his head lolled against the grimy window. Dark green brush clung to the dry earth as the car drove by, blurring into an earth-stained quilt clinging to the sheer cliffs in the distance. The muggy air lounged on Dimitri, pulling sweat through his plain white button-up and khakis to further feed the humidity. Every so often, a stray stone or hole in the dirt road struck a tire, sending a percussive jolt through the dull hum of the engine to rattle the magus. Dimitri peeled his head from the window and addressed the driver.
“I have a query to make of you.”
“Uhh… Shoot.”
“Assume you are a gardener. It is a splendid garden, one that would put even a king’s orchard to shame. Inside it are all manner of creatures, from those larger than the mind can fathom to those smaller than the eye is capable of perceiving. Upon viewing its glory, even the most lauded of architects would tear down his works in despair, knowing that there is a perfection he can never reach. Beasts, greenery, earth, rivers – every element is in perfect harmony.”
“Okay then…”
“That garden has been sullied. Pests have invaded once pristine perfection and promptly razed it to the ground. You thought to give them a chance, believing that all creatures should be permitted in your garden; however,” Dimitri clenched his fists, and continued. “They brought naught but ruin. These pests blithely defiled the garden, slaughtering their predecessors, their fellows with the mercilessness and cruelty born only by ignorance. In this case, what should be done? What would you advocate, gardener?”
The driver scratched at the back of his head. “Well, isn’t it obvious? You’d get rid of the pests.”
The car hit another bump in the road, jolting Dimitri once more. He smiled.
“Yes. Yes, that is the correct answer.” The magus raised a hand. “Stop here. We are at my destination.”
With a rumble, the car scraped against the earth, sending dust billowing upward as it stopped. The driver flung his door open and walked to the passenger seat as Dimitri shoved his door open. Dimitri flung a hand outward to grab the door and pushed himself out of the car.
The driver frowned. “You okay? You look pretty messed up.”
“I will be fine. How much is the–”
Dimitri slumped forward, and the driver stepped forward to catch him. “You don’t look fine at all. Hang on, I’m gonna get you to–” His eyes widened. “What on earth happened to your arm?”
Matted brown fur, bloodied dull gray scales and shiny black bristles covered Dimitri’s right forearm, now bare due to his fall scrunching up his shirt sleeve.
“The body is a menagerie. The blessing is that of Pan.Το σώμα είναι ένα θηριοτροφείο. Η ευλογία είναι ότι του Παν.
“Huh? What kind of crap are you babbling?”
“The soul is a garden. Its flower is…”Η ψυχή είναι ένας κήπος. Λουλούδι του είναι...
The driver turned to run.
“... a lion!”... ένα λιοντάρι!
There was a snap, and then a thump.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Dimitri stood and pulled reddened sleeves into place. He strode away from the car toward a nearby cliff – an impenetrable wall of craggy rock that stood resolute against the crashing waves below the plateau. Without a moment of hesitation, the magus walked straight at the mass of stone, and then through it.
The darkness of the illusionary wall yielded to the shining sun above, and Dimitri beheld his surroundings in relief. Sculpted terraces of marble sloped upward from the flat of the cliff, each adorned with outcroppings of moss and brush, belying a beauty wholly unrelated to the artful trimming of a garden. Atop the layers of stone stood an expansive building of carved white marble; columns grew from the stone below, their arches forming a canopy of glistening white as sturdy branches of ivy gave the trees leaves.
Ahead of Dimitri was the palatial chateau of the Thirioakis family. A grin rose to his face as he strode up to the lair and stepped through the front archway, raising a hand and squinting as a beam of sunlight lanced into his eyes.
There was no roof. Inside the building grew sturdy trees, their branches flowered with haphazard chunks of marble and brick-red ceramic – bygones of a less natural time, when the trees had been controlled. Loam sank under his feet and marble tiles clattered as Dimitri walked through the front hall; in front of him was the landing of the second floor, with two curved sets of stairs arcing upward from the floor to meet the landing in a clump of vines and wood. The second floor was not Dimitri’s destination. He breathed deeply, savoring the rich air of the jungle inside, and padded toward the right side of the grand foyer, brushing past hanging liana to reach for a discolored patch of stone on the wall. His finger traced circles along the wall, each swipe drawing light from the rock to reveal the ritual circle inscribed on its surface. Yellowed and ragged fingernails dug into his palm, and he hissed as blood began to flow. A final pulse of light, and the bloodied stone sunk into the wall with a low rumble; the stone curled inward, encroaching on itself to form a doorway. Dimitri stepped through, his feet clopping along the stone steps as he descended into the depths of the chateau. Stone gave way to loam as he moved down the passageway, until at least he reached a chamber at the end of the passageway – his atelier.
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Right after this would be when Dimitri drinks a potion that stabilizes him a bit and promptly wonders just where the hell all of the animals that are usually in the chateau went and why on earth was he so at ease?
And that's when the Enforcers show up and overwhelm him, leading to the rest of the outlined events from the original entry. Alas.
Last edited by Rafflesiac; September 3rd, 2015 at 12:00 AM.
lolblogcrosspostingjust4raff
So I've finally decided that Fate/Terra Nullius is never actually going to happen, even as a quest on /tg/ or something. Which means it gets to go here so I can dump ideas out of my head.
It has been hanging around in one form or another since 2011 at least, and the basic idea was that I had too many Servants I wanted to write about and feature in a standard grail war. So taking cues from EXTRA and the recently revealed details of the cancelled Apocrypha game, Fate/Conflict Eternal was born. Later on, due to the idea of the land used for the Grail War being essentially not under the rule of any specific Second Owner, I renamed it Terra Nullius (No Man's Land) because Conflict Eternal is an awful name lol
The setting was Australia, since I know about it personally, it's never really been raised in TM lore and is a blank slate, and seems like it could be a place with a lot of potent leylines. The concept was a nationwide war with 72 Servants participating. Why so many? Essentially it was my little wankfest of a quest story, it was supposed to be basically an entire nation of interlinked skirmishes that could happen session to session or arc to arc, as essentially an ongoing campaign.
I didn't have much of a plotline as such, but at its core it was set in the declining world of EXTRA. Because of the vanishing magical energy somebody (probably an Einzbern splinter faction but maybe the DAAs trying to repair the damage done by their failed Aylesbury ritual, I never quite decided) just developed a brute force system. Feed enough servants to an inferior grail and eventually the numbers would offset the inefficiencies it had in retrieving soul energy compared to the Fuyuki Grail.
The quest would have worked in such a way that there was no safety net. With so many characters available, if you fucked up in a battle and got killed the POV would just jump to another Master/Servant pair. I had a chart of summoning that allowed about half of the Servants as playable ones, the others being deemed as Too Strong and better as obstacles and foes to overcome.
Due to changes in the Grail System it had 2 additional classes, Striker and Monster, and Assassin was changed to Hunter, which later became Killer. Striker was a class for bare hands, blunt objects or crushing attacks, so things like maces, axes, hammers and the like. Monster was for Servants that could shift to an inhuman form. Transformations occurred via the Class Skill, Bestial Curse, rather than as NPs, so that Monsters could hide identities a little by relying on their weak NPs in human form.
Overall, there were 7 "teams" of 9 Servants, one for each class, but it was really more like a tier of power as opposed to a team, since due to the nature of quests it seemed likely readers would form up alliances of their own.
In the end it got scrapped simply because I am lazy. My excuse is that I couldn't think of an engaging enough hook or twist to the Grail War concept to subvert it and make it compelling from a literary perspective, but really I just didn't want to have to characterise up to 72 Servants and potentially a lot of Masters too.
Also I figured that BL being BL another Grail War quest would just die quickly, and I came up with what i personally think is a much better idea for the magical terra nullius concept if I ever want to write about it one day.
Maybe I'll follow this up with a brief outline of the Servants I ended up choosing for the lineup, with some scant run downs on some NPs, rejected or discarded character ideas and the likes. Many of them just ended up published in the Create A Servant thread in the end. 25-30 of them, at least.
I have never read and will never write a fanfic, but here's an idea I toyed with:
THE FUYUKI FILE
This would be the story of the man who was charged with explaining the death of Captain Ougi and the disappearance of Second Lieutenant Kobayashi, along with the total loss of the two F-15J aircraft they manned.
For the record, the official version was that Kobayashi shot down Ougi and defected to North Korea.
Of course, after some serious investigation, our hero didn't buy the official version.
But when he reported his findings, the higher-ups ordered him to stop investigating.
Ignoring those orders, he gathered all his investigation data into a file (fuyuki.lzh) and leaked it to a public BBS.
This came to be known as the Fuyuki File.
After that, the story gets complicated.
Last edited by aldeayeah; September 10th, 2015 at 06:01 AM.
don't quote me on this
Sorry Raff, I don't think this thread is the place for a profile dump like the one I just stuck on my blog. Not really any story in that part of the F/TN notes.
Very well then. At any rate, thanks for contributing in the first place.
I can stick plenty of ideas in here, just little in terms of actual writing. I just have heaps of docs with dot points all over them.
The Magnificence is officially dead.
I set out to write a story that aped the Akira Kurosawa classic, Seven Samurai, with spell slingers instead of swordsmen and vampires lead by Fina-Blood Svelten menacing the small Danish town of Samso rather than bandits. I had envisioned an eclectic cast of seven pseudo-heroes, who were to have been as follows:
1. Shirou Emiya, wandering do-gooder. May or may not be on his way to becoming Archer. In this story, he spent a brief time with the Enforcers before deciding Clock Tower politics weren't really his thing.
2. Kairi Shishigou, veteran freelancer and necromancer. More Mickey Rourke's The Wrestler in how I wrote him than how he actually appears in Apoc. Briefly worked with Shirou on a job long ago and acts as a more pragmatic foil/mentor to Shirou's reckless idealism. Some of the other initially dismiss a necromancer as useless against the undead, but he proves them wrong. Knowing how to manipulate or bargain with the undead also gives him some unique insight into dispatching them. Would have eventually used a Kandarian dagger (Evil Dead reference), which was used by ancient necromancers to paralyze wayward undead instead of killing them outright. Uses this to take a prisoner after the first attack and get some answers, kick starting his investigative sub-plot.
I had also pictured a set piece during the final battle against Svelten and the bulk of his horde when Kairi taps into the spirits of the legendary berserker Angantry and his eleven brothers, who were said to have perished battling the heroes Orvar-Oddr and Hjalmar upon this island. Rather than a full-blown Heroic Spirit summoning (not that kind of story), it would be Kairi conjuring a dozen wraiths that may or may not be the brothers of legend and shoving them into some of Touko's spare puppets to build a berserker corps that kicks ass and chews bubblegum right up until the moment Svelten steps in and demolishes them, signaling the beginning of the endgame.
3. Rottweil Berzisnky, the Silver Snake, so named for his getting on in years (a "silver fox") and his use of an obscure (read: fictional) martial art that is designed to mimic a snake's swift strikes. This is based on an old kung fu flick called The Five Deadly Venoms, where five students of an ancient grandmaster each take on an animal-themed fighting style (Snake, Toad, Scorpion, etc.) before turning on each other as they ally with or against the evil one in their ranks.
4 and 5. Andrei and Sergei Pentel, the Russian Gum Brothers, who carry a unique enzyme in their saliva that allows them to manipulate their Mystic Codes. These Codes take the form of several packets of a gum-like substance crammed into a pair of cigar boxes that they pop into their mouths, chew up and spit out for any number of effects, such as spitting acid, quick drying adhesive, poisons, truth serums, etc. It's a pretty versatile form of magecraft with the only real weakness being the time it takes to chew. Deliberately weird. Their schtick was that first born Andrei heard of the magi tradition of raising the second son in ignorance, said "that's stupid" and gave his whole family the middle finger by first teaching Sergei some magecraft on the sly and then running off to join the Enforcers in protest. This would have been the first of much magi world building and lore porn, as I would have exposited about the nature of the Enforcers and the way joining them became a sort of fashionable trend among rebellious young scions to pass over lofty appointments or arranged marriages to become Association legbreakers. The first Enforcers were those magi not smart/talented enough to make Lord or an academic position, so they became the muscle, beginning the tradition of Enforcers being looked down upon as "the help."
There would have been an undercurrent of Sergei being the more mage-like of the two, as he must constantly observe and study and compile like an academic to keep himself sharp without the luxury of the family Crest. Andrei, meanwhile, takes most of his gifts for granted and acts as a loudmouthed, oversexed, boorish hooligan. Sergei secretly resents his brother for getting everything and not using it to his fullest advantage, but he loves him for plucking him up from the mundane life to be something more.
6. The Jewel Killer. Answers to the name of "Toulemonde," which is a rough French equivalent of saying he is "Mr. Nobody" (or so Google has lead me to believe). He plays things extremely close to his chest, giving up as little information about himself as possible. All his appearances of being French are a bald-faced lie. He's actually Ivorian. He's so paranoid he doesn't want anyone to know his country of origin. But he has good reason. The Jewel Killer is an inherited title, passed down from generation to generation by a family that was once apprenticed to Zelretch before his cruel training methods drove an ancestor mad and instilled in the family a deep hatred and mistrust of conventional magi society. How could these people hold up a monster like Zelretch? In a way, he would have been a dark mirror and a warning to Shirou, as he, too, is someone who uses his powers to help people without any desire or expectation of reward. But he does it mostly by assassinating magi and is unapologetically cruel in doing so. He believes in repaying evil with evil.
The Jewel Killer handle is a reference to both the family's past shame as students of Zelretch (which saves his life when he's forced to burn a vampire to death with a jewel-grenade) and their dedication to hunting down the other apprentice families to wipe Zelretch's taint from the world -- both a killer who uses jewels and a killer of the jewel magecraft. In fact, he only joins the band of seven with the intention of abducting Shirou and torturing information about Rin and Luvia out of him once it's all over.
Normally fights in a hand-to-hand style not all that dissimilar from Rin's.
7. Touko Aozaki. The seventh and last and the least dedicated to the vampire-slaying crusade that brings them all together. She's in mostly to raid the workshop of the legendary Shazard Lugandy (Slayers reference), a prolific creator of world-class Mystic Codes. She and Toulemonde are essentially the "bad guys" on the team the others have the most trouble trusting, but they mostly come through in the end.
Long story short, the titular "Magnificence" wasn't as world-changing as the name implies, having been little more than Lugandy's new and improved prana furnace. He had a knack for hyperbole. Indeed, the Magnificence is a glorified red herring, as Svelten only attacked the workshop and sent his apprentices looking for help and eventually recruiting the seven magi due to vampire politics. Lugandy was an old friend of the Dead Apostle Ancestor Van-Fem, who tasked him with running some of Ortenrosse's numbers about the upcoming Aylesbury ritual. Lugandy had found evidence the ritual will end in catastrophic failure because Ortenrosse is still working on the assumptions of old world (Age of the Gods) magic theory, and Svelten took this as an unforgivable insult that a mere human was taking sides in the ongoing Ortenrosse-Altrouge feud.
(Specifically, the ritual would likely damage the planet in such a way as to reduce the amount of mana in the world in a nod to Extra, provoking a response from the Counter Force. In essence, the ritual is a planet-wide murder-suicide. Van-Fem commissioned the Magnificence to find a workaround that would allow them to pull off the ritual without obliterating themselves.)
So after fending off a raid by some of Svelten's lieutenants, the Elders (so named because they are mostly adults, and he bit them shortly after becoming a vampire himself, before he learned to prey on young boys), the gang of seven finds out via an astral projection of Van-Fem's that Lugandy was actually in cahoots with vampires all along, which his students have strenuously denied, and this whole thing is an undead pissing match. The seven resolve to stay and keep fighting anyway, as the people of the town didn't know about any of this. This end badly for everyone involved.
By the time it's all over, Sergei, Toulemonde and Berzinsky (another one in cahoots with Van-Fem all along) are dead. Touko's current body is trashed, and she reboots into another one without any way of getting back to the sealed and demolished workshop. Kairi loses an arm. Shirou overtaxes his circuits and drastically shortens his lifespan tapping into an unspecified greater power to push back Svelten's Reality Marble, Parade, with Unlimited Blade Works. Maybe this was his contract with the World moment. Maybe the kids lived up to their promise to finish the Magnificence, and he tapped directly into it.
The story would have ended with Shirou waking up from a coma on Andrei's boathouse, wondering where Kairi is. We cut back to the ruins of the workshop, where he puts together a string of coincidences and lingering questions for the last remaining apprentice. She confirms his suspicion that Lugandy died long before Svelten's initial attack, lowering the bounded fields and most of the other defenses long enough for him to invade in the first place. She found out he had been consorting with vampires and decided she would rather see him dead than let him tarnish his own reputation. She's also been responsible for a handful of other oddities, hoping the vampires and the magi would wipe each other out. Kairi brings everything to a close when he wrestles her dagger away from her and slits her throat.
In the end, I abandoned it due to canon smashing my ideas to bits. I never thought the unseen Apocrypha Masters would get any sort of exploration, so imagine my surprise when the Apoc Materials book came out and started blowing my plans to smithereens. I also made the mistake of clinging too fiercely to my idea of how a biker-necromancer like Kairi might act based solely on his looks when I first saw his character design. He was never really going to be in character.
So I scrapped the whole thing, and I'm tooling with something that might see the light of day. Fingers crossed.
Last edited by Imperial; October 25th, 2015 at 03:04 PM.
triggered so bad by "the town" Samsø.
There's 10 towns on it. 11 if you count Tunø Town being part of the municipality.
Last edited by Christemo; October 25th, 2015 at 03:16 PM.
Island, then
It's obviously not super well researched. I was using Samso mostly for the mythology connection.
To follow up on something you pointed out:
Most of the kids don't have Danish names, but they weren't Danish anyway. When Lugandy rage quit the Association over all the petty politicking and back stabbing, he traveled the world reclaiming most of his old Codes and came across some kids with magical potential who had been orphaned or used for experimentation. He took them in purely as heirs to his technique with no humanitarian intentions, but they came to see him as a father figure, so they took his word as gospel that most magi are selfish, barely human trash.
Which is half the reason Ana snaps and murders him when she finds out he's just another "mage" rather than a "magician," as Lugandy styled himself. In her mind, he has betrayed his own lofty ideals and reduced himself to the same level as the people who used her up and spit her out. She was doing him a favor by killing him before the world could discover how far he had fallen, you see. That's half the reason she tries to guarantee there are no survivors among the seven.
Last edited by Imperial; October 25th, 2015 at 03:25 PM.
Daaaamn shame that you aren't continuing with it. Seems like something I would have really dug.
Thank you for saying so
Who knows? The story proper might be dead, but I may try to repackage these ideas somewhere down the road. Most of my pitches are chimeras in the first place, cobbled together from other story seeds with themes I already wanted to explore.
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