Patches (Open RP)

Long ago, it was a place like any other. Empty. Peaceful. Ordinary. Then came the Builders, and with them their dilemma. Existence was so vast, so grand. How could they ever hope to meet others in this gigantic tapestry of so many empty, peaceful, and ordinary spots? There were so many, such an incredibly large number of spots to look that the idea of traveling about to look was surely ludicrous! It just couldn't be done! And messages were all well and good, but the fast ones most wouldn't even notice, and the slow ones would require such great transmission power as to spiral into madness! Even then, they would've taken ages to arrive!

And then the Builders got an idea.

Why go to other places to meet other people? Why not being other places to them? It was discussed. It was approved. And it was done. They found a place close-by. An empty, peaceful, ordinary place. And they began to build. They built the earth. They built the oceans. They built the skies. Finally, they built the threads. The glorious, the wonderful, the magnificent threads that would pull other places, and with them their people, here to them so they could meet. Oh, it was a time of bliss. Though many places turned up empty, the threads just kept pulling. Eventually, inevitably, a place that held people always came, and the Builders rejoiced in celebration. Slowly, gradually, but with steady pace, the collection of pulled places grew into a world of its own. It became a single place, constructed from a patchwork of many, and thus the Builders decided to name their great work.

They called it Patches.

And they were far from done. They wanted more. So they expanded the threads to reach not only through space, but through time as well, and even through the very fabric of existence to reach into the multiverse...and beyond. It was their ultimate achievement, even as they met and greeted, talked and traded, and their knowledge and wisdom grew into the boundless realms.

For that was the end of the Builders.

Even for them, time moved like a river. Eventually, they moved on. They had no more need for the material and traveled beyond the veil, drawing it behind them. The Builders were gone.

But their creation did not go with them.

It had a simple task. Reach new places. And it kept performing that task. Only now, without the Builders, there was no one to do the greeting. No one to do the explaining, no one to do the talking. Worse yet, there was no one to say goodbye and send the pulled places back. But the threads kept pulling, the creation continued to do its job. For ages. Places began to pile up. Some places landed right on top of old ones, and chaos erupted. Eventually, the purpose of this patchwork world was forgotten, and people that lived in newly pulled places were only faced with the chaotic tapestry of tapestries, the disorder that ruled this world left behind by its makers.

The people of some places began to conquer others. Domains spread across the face of the Builders' creation, their oft-frightened rulers clinging to whatever they could. It was a time of war, a time of devastation, and a time of suffering.

And one day, Patches found the Paragon City of present day...
__________________

As usual.

He sat on his usual spot on a usual day. Well, perched to be more accurate. A few dozen floors above ground, on the slim stone rim that jutted from each face of this high-rise, which in turn was just one of Steel Canyon's many. Clawed fingers curled about the edge of the block, the large boots of his digitigrade feet placed securely against the stone surface, he surveilled the streets below with dispassionate eyes, letting his long tail hang loosely from the block, its deltoid tip swaying slowly to and fro. To his left stood another block, and atop it a stone gargoyle. To his right, another perched on its, sitting there motionless, stoic, and cold.

Just like him.

He hadn't always been. A long time ago, he'd been a dragon. Fire, warmth, they'd been so close, so easily accessible...he'd always taken them for granted. Just like having a heartbeat. He'd lost that when he died. He didn't really remember being dead, but it had probably been a good while before he'd woken up in the body which the metal claws he now looked upon belonged to. His body. A machine's body. So then he'd been a robot. And now he was a gargoyle. The world worked in strange ways sometimes. But now, after everything that had happened, sitting up here alone and watching the city was just...the usual.

And as usual, it made him depressed.

He could dress however he wanted, but it never made a difference. Thick black boots, densely woven pants, a sleeveless biker jacket, it never mattered. He was still cold. Still metal. Only his head still resembled what he'd used to look like, but both the long black hair and hide of velvet brown were artificial. Dead. Cold. Even the bright, smiling sun overhead never warmed him up. Nothing did. He'd given up zipping that jacket a long time ago, just letting it flutter open in the wind. What was he doing here?

L-System anomaly. Spectral flux detected.

The white text blinked across the deep-red HUD that was his sight before he even really noticed it. Spec what? That had something to do with light...right? He looked up at the sun. Didn't look any different. Although...had it? Maybe for just a moment? He wasn't sure. Living in a world of red didn't make for a great ability to discern color.

It did, however, give him remarkable skills at discerning shape - and even from here, it took him but a glance to the north to note that 'Boomtown' didn't look like it used to. The buildings were...different. Still slanted, still crumbling, still burnt-out ruins, but definitely different. Something was wrong here. He just knew it.

What he didn't know was that it wasn't just here. It was all over the city. Some zones suddenly took on a dead, deserted nature. Others simply vanished. In Independence Port, ships ran aground as the sea beneath their keels became a desert, the waters cascading into the sandy wasteland that had appeared to the west, leaving the great vessels high and dry. The same happened about Talos Island, though there the sea fled east. It was some twisted perimeter, like a ring of lifeless earth and ruined structures that had suddenly been stamped about the edges of the city.

And from those edges, dark clouds gathered.

As usual...
__________________

OOC:

Ever wanted to see the world? Wanted to see a world? Created one and wanted someone else to see it? Well then, here's your chance. Welcome to Patches, the world of many worlds. Or rather, pieces of them, one of which is now the bulk of Paragon City. But what of the others? Well, 'the desert' is one. The others are up to you. Are they dangerous? Do people live there? If so, do they want to go home? Or do they like it better here (some for more fiendish reasons than others)?

All up to you.

And if you don't feel like managing a setting, then don't and just come along for the ride. Be heroic. Be villainous. Be your character(s). Be respectful to your fellow writers, and don't do anything to their characters that you wouldn't want done to yours. Just common courtesy.

As usual.

Sometimes when a thread reached out, the targeted world tugged back. Natural, instinctive resistance to the pull. As Paragon City did. But it was not enough.

The thread pulled. The city snapped off. Denizens local, foreign, interdimensional, and spiritual were now unconsulted residents of Patches.

Prosopopoeiasys was of the latter.

At the changeover her amber-red eyes blanked, uncomprehending the sky abruptly overhead. Knees buckling, she crumbled.

Because her spiritual connection was strongest to the land of Paragon City, the relocation had yanked her from the Rogue Isles where she had physically been moments before. Pulled along on the snare torn in the world's fabric of time and space.

It felt like her hand had been cut off. No, it felt like she was the hand cut off from the body. A pale copy, a shadow ripped from its caster. Or an organ grafted, its function rejecting and rejected by the new environ.

A keening wail rose from her throat. Hers the first cry of anguish repeated throughout the city as awareness of the change dawned on those within.

The first she knew of it was when the whole room shook around her, practically catapulting her off the bed to a painful landing on both wings. She let out a pained groan, which reverberated around the room and the larger space beyond. "Ugh.... ow. Fine, I'm up. Now WHAT IN THE HELL is so important?!", she yelled, to someone. No one in particular, just whoever happened to be listening. Which at present was quite likely absolutely no one. But she asked anyway, just because she could. And only after she did, did she open red-irised eyes, catlike slits embedded in a pitch-black face ringed by blood-red hair and tipped by small scarlet horns. Muttering quietly to herself she headed for the door, only to stop herself.

"Right.... Where did I put those?" She looked around, then hurried over around the other side of the bed. She gathered up her clothes, a purple tank top and black pants with a slash pattern in the same purple down the sides. Throwing them on quickly, she again hurried out.... and stopped again, staring incredulously. "Aww, what the hell?", she asked again, looking across her living room to where the entrance portal usually was. Except it... wasn't. Instead, it was as if that whole area simply wasn't there. "Well that can't be good..." She hopped over the balcony she stood on and glided down to where the portal usually was. It and a good half of the structure usually around it was simply gone, leaving what she could only describe as a hole.

Through it... clouds? "Yup... definitely not good", she repeated, grabbing hold of one of the unlit torches on the wall and leaning out over the hole. Well there was something down there.... what it was, she had no idea. Welp, one way to find out. Stepping back a little, she took a short run up and gracefully dived off the edge with the traditional cry of "Geronimo!" Of course, the idea she might not get back never even occured to her. It should've, really, but she'd never been one for thinking ahead. Nor did she realise that what was by all appearances a demon dropping out of the sky above Paragon. (And it was Paragon she was headed for, she could see that now as the clouds cleared)

((Fine, I'll play your game. Just don't pull the rug out from under my first post like Khell did with that last thread of his >_>))

Finding your place in the world; your home; yourself. It is a journey for some, a journey one seeks to find the destination of as their goal or prize. Your place provides closure, your home peace. It is the revelation of religion that the wicked will be punished and the righteous will live in everlasting peace and tranquility. It is the wish of the mortal that once dead and laid to rest, struggle, strife, pain and fear will be a distant memory.

But for one individual, his journey is unique. A destiny. A pilgrimage. To overturn the very destination of all of us? To disrupt the tranquility of the ‘end’ itself? Or perhaps to simply enlighten himself as to what that final truth is?

Any of these would be profound and glorious destinies anyone would be proud to set forth to find. However, Ry the traveler, despite the brevity of his journey, has forgotten what had set him out on his journey. All those memories lost to himself just like his friends, family and loved ones. Everything is as distant and beyond reach as the path Ry walks. His clothes a tattered mess, his body battered, bloody and bandaged, his walking cane in hand…Ry walks. And walks…

As varied as this world of patchwork reality, Ry has seen many a place. His young taut green skin has felt the rays of many days and his bones chilled by the cold of many nights; all alone. And yet, he never felt an ache of loneliness. Just as his past close ones were now distant, those emotions are easily forgotten and what you cannot remember, you cannot feel. So, Ry walks and travels, his whole life it would seem

Like no creature you’d normally see, Ry looked like an amphibian creature. A green salamander or frog? But human sized. He had spine looking strands of hair that swept to his back and a tail like a mammal (a monkey?) covered in fine brown hair. The rags he wore hung loosely over his compact frame and the bandages wrapping his arm and chest were soaked through with red blood. He walked along his lonely path with his same-height staff, his posture pain and worry free.

Many times during his travels, he’d simply forget to look at his surroundings and instead make sure one foot continued to step in front of the other and only occasionally looking up to admire the beauty or harshness or strangeness of the environment. Looking up now, Ry was among a desolate ruin of a former city, dilapidated by war and fire. Although he had seen things like this before, now it was new to his eye so he looked on in awe at the destruction.

((Where are we suppose to be anyway?))

(( Wherever we feel like, the whole thing here is worlds colliding so you could quite literally be anywhere. ))

He was falling. He had been for quite some time, but now was the first moment he was conciously aware of the fact.

'...Falling...'

It was not a graceless fall. He was falling in a straight-up position, like a thrown needle about to bury iself in a wall.

'...Wait. Falling. It fell, and I...[censored].'

The previously stiff and statue-like figure suddenly started flailing about in its descent, and finally took the time to get a good view of its surroundings. The sky above was a patchwork of colors. Directly above, the sky was orange. Several degrees to the North, it was blue, and green to the south, and in fact the entire sky in every direction was a quilt of colors. Looking down, the figure could see the very first clouds on its drop. He was at the very outermost layer of the planet's atmosphere...

'Plenty of time to get out of this [censored] mess then, at least...' The falling figure thought, although in truth he already knew how to recover from such a fall. However, he knew that something was awaiting him at the end of the vast drop. Something that would utterly destroy him, where the ground and gravity would fail. And he was going to land right on top of it...Looking down to the land below, the figure saw that it, like the sky, was a vast patchwork. He saw cities, advanced mega-metropolises next to simple mud dwellings, a vast canyon, castles, lands of shadow, alien landscapes, an icy mountaintop...It was as if the landscape could not decide what it wanted to look like. This was all ignored in favor for viewing what was directly underneath the figure's feet:

Empty space. One patch amongst the huge collection with nothing of interest. A smooth, peaceful plain. The figure narrowed his eyes, the same focus that enhanced his accuracy enhancing his perception as well. There was nothing down there.

'Wait...' He focused his gaze.

Correction, there was something down there. Rather, someone. There were standing right below him, unmoving, as if waiting to be obliterated by his inevitable impact.

'[censored]' He thought.

The falling figure flailed some more in an attempt to correct the angle at which he was falling. Hurtling into the side of a mountain or down a crevice leading to the center of the planet was infinitely preferable to impacting that lone person standing below him. For he knew that while the person itself was not much of anything worth aknowledging, they carried an object of power. An object of power with a very narrow portfolio within it was actually useful, but the falling figure knew exactly what it would do once he smashed head-long into the nobody who possessed it. The falling figure rushed past the clouds he had seen earlier. He hit terminal velocity and then accelerated as he fell, as if fate itself was speeding his way to Death's door out of spite. The figure himself, not prone to panic in even the most dire of situations normally, was practically having a heart attack. Pure and unadulterated high-octane unleaded nightmare fuel flowed through his entire body, a primordial sense of terror welling within his mind, and screaming at the top of its lungs as it clentched greedily at every particle of his being.

He fell even further. The tips of the various mountains dotting the landscape greeted him, and then immediately said farewell. The lone speck below was looking a lot larger now...The falling figure continued to flail uncontrollably. He fell even further. The tips of a few sky-scrapers blankly followed his decent past them. He fell even further. And now he could clearly see the person he was about to crash into clearly. It looked familiar, and it also looked genuinely surprised as it looked up at him. Before, it had been looking upon the strange piece of scrap-metal in its hands...

If it was possible to die of fright, the falling figure would have shot right through an Aeon's worth of reincarnations.

And then he woke up.

***

'...[censored].' He thought wearily as he opened his eyes. He was lying flat on his back, upon the soft ground. He leapt to his feet in a single rapid motion, and felt at his chest like a person would feel at their heart, checking for the abnormality that was within his body. To be absolutely sure.

'...It's still there...' He thought, instantly relaxing. His body, previously more tensed than a wound-up coil, relaxed. He closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. The terror that had previously filled him fled. '...All is as it should be. Ok. Alright. Ahehehe.' The figure grinned and opened his eyes.

He was in the middle of a desert.

"Well. [censored]." He said in disbelief. This was NOT where he had gone to sleep. His first instinct was to look up, and there he saw a very familiar patchwork sky. He looked down once more, spinning on his feet. In the vast distance beyond the vision of a normal person, but easily within his sight, lay the variety of multiple landscapes that seemed to war with each other in every possible way. It was the same patchwork world of his dreams.

"[censored]." He growled in a stern voice, clenching his fists. "I don't have time for this [censored]! Whichever [censored] dropped me here had better UN-drop me right NOW before I hunt you down and curb-stomp you and grind your head into a fine paste that becomes fused with the ground!" He shouted vainly at the air before turning silent and fuming with anger.

Tafari thought for a moment. Something like this had happened before. Several times, in fact. He would be minding his own business and then *Yoink!* You have been dropped into a different world, sucker! Such ordeals usually wound up taking YEARS to get out of, and this was probably not an exception.

"'An great, now I have to walk the [censored] planet until I find a stupid macguffin or kill everyone or kill the right emaciated overlord or find the stupid control center of start a revolution or free the slaves or kill the god - On second thought, that last one would be nice - or eat the stupid crunchy fruit or run into the right street-post or fall down the right hole or jump on a really big trampoline or..." Tafari muttered to himself furiously as he started walking in a random direction.

"Heads are gonna roll for this." He seethed as he began his likely very long journey across the vast desert.

Structure - Type 6249
Primary material content:
- Iron
- Carbon
- Silicon_
|
No life signs detected

Structure - Type 11267
Primary material content:
- Iron
- Carbon
- Copper_
|
No life signs detected

Structure - Type 212
Primary material content:
- Carbon
- Silicon
- Oxygen_
|
No life signs detected

Structure - Type 312659
Primary material con_

He walked steadily along the dusty ground. By now, he'd stopped paying attention to the sensor readouts that scrolled on the left of his HUD. White text was white text, and despite the like-hued outlines that flashed briefly about blocks, cylinders, needles, and a great many other shapes as his crimson sight passed over them, nothing had yet triggered any manner of alarm. Not that he really wanted it to, but...it would've been nice to find some kind of clue already.

Well okay, so technically he'd found two already. The first he'd literally walked across when he'd entered 'Boomtown' - namely that a dividing line ran roughly parallel to the war wall to the south, separating two compositions of ground. They were extremely similar, but not close enough to be overlooked by his sensors. Or rather, their dates weren't close enough. The dust his heavy black boots now left their footprints upon was at least a century older than that which covered Baumton.

The second was the ion storm building overhead. The dark clouds had been only the beginning. Slowly but surely, they grew denser, darker, blotting out the sun. Lighting kilometers long spidered through the menacing vapors like the skeletal fingers of unseen titans. And yet it hadn't rained a drop. It wouldn't either, no matter how much he wanted it to.

And he really wanted it to.

Please...

The metal Dragon raised his nose toward the sky, pulling the lapels of the sleeveless jacket across his chest as the wind picked up around him. His eyes pleaded.

Don't let this be Rauk.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kare_Ann A keening wail rose from her throat.

"Mh?" escaped his nostrils reflexively, a blink and flare of his ear flaps adding themselves to the spontaneous reaction of his head snapping in the direction the sound came from.

Someone was there!

Move, numbskull!

So he did.

Tracking signal source_

The rapid steps of his heavy feet crunched into the dirt with vigor, and Prosopopoeiasys would likely have no trouble telling he was headed her way. Single-mindedly too. He didn't even notice that one crunch was that of a human skull, buried just below the dust.

"Hello?!" he shouted into the wind, his voice little different from that of a young human male, "Is anyone there...?!"

One thought overwhelmed: It has to be here.

The possibility that it was inaccessibly in the Rogue Isles was too painful to comprehend. Worse than if learning all air had given way to a vacuum. She began hyperventilating from panic, though a pocket of air around her remained pure from the contaminants coming in to claim the broken city.

It has to be here.

At the edge of awareness was perception that her connection was limited. And fading. The land was bleeding, its anchoring "self" identity ripped away. Going beyond this cut flower of a city where concept of "I" was nill was another thought too horrifying to form now.

It has to be here.

Though the spirits were strong. In fact, they were stronger than ever. So many more had just joined the ranks of the dead. And they knew she, their tool, their gateway, was near. They would eventually converge. She needed it to give them.

She just had to find it.

Yes, that was it. She could find it. Then she could have hope. They could all have hope.

Hope of what, she wasn't sure. A breaking mind will reach for sanity in any form no matter how insecure.

She pushed up, limbs designed to be lithe made gangly by delirium. The last living she was in the presence of had seen her as a satyr or faun. Three forehead horn stubs almost hidden beneath a wild shock of pale lavender mane. Earth brown fur scored from the tattoos and abuse of former masters. One of whom had left her with shredded remains for wings so only tatters remained. Bone growth had begun appearing at her shoulders, but it was unknown when they would sprout feathers suitable for flight.

"Hello?!" came a shout on the wind accompanied by heavy crunching, the voice little different from that of a young human male, "Is anyone there...?!"

Ears twitched round towards the building corner where the noise was rapidly growing louder. The air around grew hazy as if from a heat wave. Prosopopoeiasys paused half-crouched, waiting to see what form the newcomer's expectation gave her as much as the form of the one approaching.

((What does the Dragon think he will find? Her form and appearance is shaped by the viewer's expectation.))

What was that below her... faultline? No, couldn't be. Not cracked enough. The warzone? Nope, no crashed ship. Most likely then.... Boomtown, of course. Figures if her home was gonna collide with something over Paragon it'd do it over somewhere worthless like Boomtown. ...hey wait, were those people down there?

If the dragon or his computerised sensors cared to look up, they'd see something. A winged woman about seven feet tall approaching the ground at what had to be near terminal velocity. She seemed to be freefalling rather than actually flying too, her wings folded tightly against her back. Until she got to maybe 50 feet height, at which point said wings abruptly flared out to pull her out of her dive and into a shallow glide, losing speed rapidly until she touched down surprisingly gently considering the speed she'd been going no more than a few seconds earlier. She ran a few paces after landing before coming to a stop and looking around. "...definitely Paragon, yup", she commented quietly to herself. "...so what the hell happened? I can't even GET to Paragon normally..."

Land amidst the sea felt the pull of threads.

"Somebody's trying to pull us in, captain!" a scrawny boy, wearing a plaid shirt, called to an older gentleman.

"Nothing we can do about that, Smith my boy. Nothing at all."

"Were you expecting this?" The boy's faced was screwed up in confusion and disbelief.

"Gramma Perkins may have mentioned something of the ilk. Ill winds and new horizons, boy. You can't have pleasure without a spot of pain."

This tract of land was, in a geographical sense, an island. It was far too small to be a continent and far too big to be a rock. It had hailed from a sunnier clime and so palm trees dotted the sandy beaches, which in turn led to thick undergrowth and a rocky outcrop at the centre of the island. Perched on the top of the rocks was formation which, to those of a certain persuasion, would be described as a skull. Albeit a large skull carved out of rock with tiki torches laid out all around it in a circle.

To others it may have looked like a cheesy, tourist trap of a desert island complete with pirates, voodoo priestesses, cannibal pygmies and talking parrots.

The truth was that both were correct. It was a living land, dictated at some point in the evolutionary cycle by the power of a story.

And it was travelling towards the growing patchwork of lands at a steady pace...


((Okay, I hope I haven't got the wrong end of the stick with this! As I'm not entirely sure of the 'geography' of everything at the minute, I await further instructions and help to decide where this 'island' might fit in.))

OOC:

Anywhere you like, pretty much. And it doesn't have to 'fit in'. Paragon's seaside zones just got drained of their 'seaside' element due to ending up on dry and. So your island can land just about anywhere. It could end up in a sea, in a lake, on a shore, on land, on top of a mountain, even right in the middle of a city - up to you. All I ask is that you don't squish anyone's characters with it.
__________________

BIC:

No response. That was generally bad. And it had grown quiet. That was generally worse. He sped up his step. He hoped no one was...

Alert. Incoming projectile.

Incoming wha-?

Before he even knew it, something whooshed by overhead and zipped off into the ruins toward the west. He blinked. The heck had that been? Well, at least it probably meant he wasn't where he thought he was, which brought a great wave of relief with it. In any case, he could figure that out later. Right now, he had someone (he really hoped it was a someone) to find.

Rounding a building corner, he saw his hopes fulfilled - and to a much greater degree than he'd reckoned. Half-crouched on a shallow mound of dirt was a sight against which paled even the majestic beauty of the setting sun's glorious colors.

And he stared.

Stared at the scintillating hide of the ruby-red Dragoness, the tiny, delicate scales of her skin carrying that barely-noticeable undertone of cuprous, rusty sand, her deep-green eyes sparkling with the turquoise of the Great Eastern Sea. The finest lavender silks wrapped about her wondrous form like the ethereal fingers of some protective deity, caressing even the ebony spikes of her back and tail with a wind-swept flow gentle as the softest down. The long horns that jutted back from her head, the lavish hair that flowed around them, even the golden sunrise that was the skins of her wings...

It was her!

And he stared.

Morpology - Unknown
Geoform 192 matches 76/93 parameters
Primary material content:_

He shook his head. What? That wasn't-? How the-?!

Overlay acquisition. Now!

The white outline that always flashed so briefly when his system first scanned something reappeared. He took a step back in shock. Its shape didn't match what he saw there. That was no Dragon! And it certainly wasn't Kida!

With a click and a clack, a pair of nearly half-meter-long, savage-looking claws sprang from the upper wrist of the metal Dragon's right arm...

Standing in the middle of an otherwise deserted street, the demonic woman looked around at her surroundings with a seemingly bored stare. Welp, she wasn't going to find out anything at all around here. She shook her wings out, wincing at a brief twinge of pain from one of them. Really shouldn't be so reckless, not like she'd stop but really she should. Then one last look around before she quite abruptly vanished, as though she was never there.

Maybe that guy she'd seen on her way down knew something, she though. So she wandered back over in that direction, and given he wasn't exactly trying to hide he wasn't particularly hard to find. Didn't look like he knew any more than she did, though. And what was that he was staring at, another dragon? (What was it with dragons around here, she wondered.) No, not another dragon. Looked very much like one, to mundane senses anyway. To her, it seemed almost to have two forms, both existing in the same place. Which was weird, but no weirder than some of the things she'd run into over the years.

She could have been a waif. She could have been a sea cucumber. She could have been human - again - or a giraffe or a house cat or a swarm of bees. The possibilities swirled, then the one gazing gave her form.

A Dragoness.

Majestic. Compelling. Poised. Resplendent.

Prosopopoeiasys had not felt so whole, so alive since... well, since she was 'born'. If she had a frame of reference, the sensation would be described as intoxicating. She would never have imagined skin and scales could feel so wondrous.

The newly-made Dragoness stretched her wings experimentally. The shush of silk over muscles felt as good as waves lapping a beach. Such a grand gift! Eyes turned towards her beholder, sparkling with gratitude about to be conveyed.

Then it all came crashing down.

If being a Dragoness was intoxication, slammed into another form was a hangover.

The pure computer saw her form not that of a horned, winged reptile, but a horned, winged equine. Still, it was not for the computer to influence her. Rather it was the soul interpreting the information, a soul that had lived too long and seen too much treachery to discern an embodiment of purity and innocence.

She reeled under the conflict. Her sprawling in the dust almost symbolic of the rejection from her audience. Unable to obtain her true manifestation, she felt the half-human satyr form again imprison her. Nature's stilts for legs, human torso, decidedly horsy face, wild hair, a trio of stubby forehead horns, shredded wings, brown fur for modesty, and bright scars raking their multiple discolorations.

It was the one she had worn most of her 'life'. Close enough to the truth for there not to be a conflict between what the eye perceived and unbiased electronics reported. As far as the universe was concerned, it was her true form. Yet deep at her core beyond the keen of instrument measure she knew differently. No matter how long she wore this representation, the near-full form was as discomforting to wear as clothing backwards might be for another.

The claws made bare were incidental to the shock? distrust? betrayal? malice? coming from the one wielding it. She should know the emotional clime better than breathing, but the transformations had left all perceptions skewed. The message of distrust was clear enough. Prosopopoeiasys cringed. A whimper, then another. Her lion tail twitching around her pair of cloven hooves. Ears at their lowest, brow furrowed, body language the same as an abused dog cornered with a whip snapping in front of its nose.

Then a demon-looking arrival presented a calm in the emotional storm. Under its influence, something caught her eye.

The Dragon's headlong rush to this spot had crushed a human skull. A small grey stone, a pebble really, sheltered by the dome caught in the edge of the traveling boot. She didn't know its origin. She only thought she recognized the non-spherical rounded shape.

Could it be? Could it be that easy? Not that what she had just been through was a spring stroll, but to find it so immediately... it defied belief. Yet belief and hope is what she needed most, and that pebble represented it.

Stuck, her glance wavered between the two: Terror and submissiveness at the Dragon, hope-against-hope at the stone at his feet. Up in fear, down in longing.

Tafari grumbled as he crossed the desert. Grumbled and swore. He didn't NEED to cross the desert. He could have instantly traveled at the speed of light anywhere on the planet...If he had the slightest idea of where he needed or wanted to go. As it were, he did not know either. He had considered just using his league-stepping ability to cross the desert itself in a flash, but then realized that if he did that, he might accidentally miss something important, like a missile silo connected to the center of the planet or some such rubish. So he was walking.

It was slow.

"Damnit, deserts are supposed to be awesome and action-packed!" He complained to the air. "The ONE terrain type absent from the Rogue Isles and Saint [censored] City, and when I DO finally get to experience it, it's CRAP. No Molgera-Twinmoldesque dune worms, no storms, no lightning sand, no sand golems, no sand vortexes, no subterrainian burrowing insect things, no energy beings composed of fire, no djinn and certainly no damn signs of life except [censored] all flies and gnats."

He looked up and glared angrily at the sky.

"I WANT ADVENTURE, DAMNIT!" He shouted furiously. "NO SELF RESPECTING PERSON-DISPLACING GEOFORM HAS EVEN ONE UNINTERESTING SPOT!"

Very suddenly, a shadow was cast over a very large area of space just ahead...

"I never seen the likes of that before!" exclaimed the Captain, pointing to skyscrapers that were fast approaching.

"Looks like a bit o' dry land, more's the pity, up ahead." He called to Smith.

"Is there any way to stop the island, Captain?!" Smith's voice was teetering on the brink of sanity: It had been a long day.

"Stop 'er? Why, no. Don't think there's much chance of that! Sea currents are curiously missin' from these parts an' I never had cause to try and steer a whole island before in my life! Don't look much like we got a chance of hittin' that dry chunk o' land without losin' a few teeth!"

Smith looked at the grinning Captain in horror: The old salt apparently enjoyed the thought of crashing headlong into the landmass ahead.

"Maybe..err..we should ask Gramma Perkins to cast a spell? Or something?"

The land got closer.

"Well, run along then Smithy boy. I wouldn't miss this for the World!"

Smith hesitated. In the last mile or so the two had exchanged places with the Captain now standing very close to where the western beach had been and Smith was on marginally higher ground, near a palm tree. A crab was hanging onto the remnants of sand and pebbles at the edge of the island for dear life, its mad little crab legs scrabbling in the air.

"'Ang on, boy! Looks like we got a friend to 'elp us out!" The Captain pointed to a swirl of ever-decreasing circles, joined by really big bubbles on the surface of the water.

Smith clapped a hand to his face. The Captain laughed. Then a gigantic, white whale emerged from the depths of the sea, spouting salt water everywhere and making an un-whale-like roar.

"Ah, good 'ole Scampi! Couldn't bear to be parted from yer Arch Nemesis could ya?! Ahahaha!"

Scampi was the name given to the great white beast of a whale, now thrashing about between the island and the encroaching desert, by the Captain. The two had fought like...well a really big whale and a pirate captain for years.

The Captain, despite having lost a leg to the dreaded thing, often treated it like some kind of overzealous, pet dog. Smith half-expected the Captain to pat its water spout and throw it a bucket of spicy chum.

"Land ahoy!" a frail, elderly female voice called from the entrance to the jungle. Emerging from the undergrowth was a woman in her mid-eighties, wearing a white cotton blouse, a long corsetted skirt, sensible court shoes and thick, horn-rimmed glasses. She walked with the aid of a cane which had a retractable blade at one end (handy for strolling in thick jungle) and a skull motif top (where she kept the sugar for her afternoon tea).

Oh yes! And she also wore a lot of 'occult' jewellery: Skull rings, onyx necklaces with ivory and silver detailing - that sort of thing.

"Been looking at the situation from the Skull Rock Cave and it doesn't bode well for us. Not at all."

Smith sighed inwardly. Although Gramma Perkins was the island's voodoo priestess, she often proclaimed things that were about to happen that had already happened some time ago. But she was old and so it was rude to question her. Besides, sometimes she got things incredibly correct.

"Looks like we're going to crash in precisely four minutes and twenty-three seconds." Gramma Perkins held a wet finger up in the air, nodded to herself and waddled back into the jungle.

Precisely four minutes and twenty-three seconds later, the small island collided with desert. A monolith depicting a giant man with horns stood out in the distance, hills rose steeply across the horizon to the West where the gleaming skyscrapers stood and a few miserable-looking boats stuck out of the dry sands where there had once been water.

Sadly the great white beast, Scampi, who was caught between a rock and a hard place, had opened its mouth as if it were about to bite down on the desert and tear a chunk of it off. Instead, and for reasons unknown to anyone in the immediate vicinity, the shock of impact locked Scampi's jaws into their wide-open state and he now acted as an impromptu and very bumpy bridge between the island and the mainland. Mounds of sand had poured into his gaping maw. For extra effect a shool of fish flew out and lay on the baking desert floor, flapping their tails until Nature took its course.

"Bit o' luck there, Smith." The Captain called out, a lone tear rolling down his cheek.

"I spent many a long year brawlin' with Scampi. I shall be sad for a while..."

Smith waited for it.

"Now where's me pipe? I fancies a smoke!"

Confusion.

That one single word summed it all up. First someone next to him speaking calmly, casually, then the being that he'd thought trying to trick him warp and crumple to the dusty ground. He didn't know how to react. Half a second ago, he was ready to tear the supposed impostor limb from limb with every last drop of the pain she'd brought to him distilled into boundless, unrelenting hate...

...and now it was just gone.

For several seconds, he lost sight of the world around him. Even the booming thunder of the dark clouds above, their haze giving the desert an eerie, bluish tint didn't even register. All that existed was her, were her eyes. Those fearful, longing eyes.

Why? What was going on here?

The claws retracted. The rest of him, however, moved not a millimeter, and the 'pebble' thus remained right by the heavy boot of his left foot. Only then did he turn his head to the stranger beside him, his eyes filled with questions...

Prosopopoeiasys visibly gulped. She saw the equivalent of stars dancing before her vision, the roller-coaster of climate change still in flux. Everything from logic to self-preservation says she should retreat, disappear, hide, and otherwise make herself scarce in this probably-momentary reprieve.

But she couldn't. She couldn't possibly leave now. Not with it so close.

The temptation was too great. With slow, deliberate movements she started to crawl forward. Incapable of duplicity, her muscles were only tense enough to shift forward, not flee or fight. Amber eyes still shifted between the points of fear and longing. If the slightest hint of disapproval appeared she would pause and remain still save the see-sawing gaze.

Tafari sat down on a dune and, for four minutes and twenty-three seconds, watched what looked like the world's most obvious tourist trap fall out of the sky and embed itself at the far edge of the desert, which ajoined some sort of city. He got up, dusted the sand of his pants, and then exploded in a burst of golden-orange energy.

The giant whale connecting the strange island to Talos, if it was even still alive, may or may not have seen an explosion of golden-orange energy that glassed the sand on the beach, heralding the sudden appearance of Tafari dozens of miles away from where he had vanished. A wide grin was present on his face. Even though he was hopelessly lost on an alien world with no friends, no clues and no direction, at least the opprotunity to be awesome always presented itself eventually.

'No place would EVER look THAT cheesy unless it was entirely legitimate.' Tafari thought to himself as he performed a small jump onto the whale's head, and started walking down its body to the newly appeared island with its massive skull-cut formation while entirely ignoring the fact that he was walking on a giant whale. 'And even if it's not legitimate, that means that it's an eldritch mind screw disguised as a practical joke! Either way, I predict good times...' As Tafari walked down the whale toward the island, he narrowed his eyes and used his focused vision to see further than should have been possible, trying to discern if anybody was on the other side of the whale-bridge, seeing the opposing shore almost as if he was already there.

The booming thunder of the dark cloud were noticed even from another patch of land on the edge of the desert zone. A vast forest the trees were larger then the famed Giant Red Woods of California. The forest was sitting on top of a plateau of gray stone. The only part of the forest land that isn't above the other connecting patches was the Desert area.

This was where the people living in the forest have build up a deffensive wall and guard towers. Looking out from one of the towers was three Elven looking figures. The tallest was a woman with flowing blond hair standing 7 feet tall. She looked to a older male elf with a spy glass. "What can you see Cerelassion?"

"The heat makes it hard to see but a new realm has landed. From my guess it's some kind of City" said Cerelassion. "I have no idea why the sky is growing so dark around it? Must be disturbance from the realm itself M'lady."

She looked out at the darkening sky where paragon rest under. "Any sign the Gre'shil?" The man lowered the spy glass "None M'lady Aineruda" She turned to the other man standing there a younger elven man with black hair and lavender eyes. "Lazardarus Malethdal you have traveled the farthest from our boarders. I want you to venture to this... city and warn them about the Gre'shil"

Laz bows "Your wish is always my command M'lady. I shall leave as soon as my things are prepared."

"Be off with all haste Lazardarus the lives of those in that city may depend on you." Laz bows "And if I find them uncivilized?" "Then we will not raise a finger to stop the Gre'shil from attacking them"

Lazardarus nodded then left the watch tower and headed for his home among the branches of the Great forest.

In the next patch of land...

In the shade of the forest plateau a bundle of brown scaled creatures shift one rose it's triangle shaped head it's clawled toe taping as it sniffed the air. Then it rose fully on it's two legs and ventured to the boarder of the grass plane and the desert. "Sent on air... strange..." It's large eyes looking for any hint of prey in view.

The creature was a Gre'shil a being very lizard like in appearance but wasn't. In truth they were more related to birds the Gre'shil were in truth descendants from Earth Raptors. Having been taken from another reality where the asteroid missed earth mammals never evolved and the Raptors became the dominant life form.

A second Gre'shil came up next to the first. "Bad storm in air... Yes?" The first clicked it's teeth "yes bad storm... odd new scent..." Turning it's triangle shape head it called out in a high pitch bird like call.

The others rose from there sleep 15 in all in this hunting pack "We go.... Desert seek strange scents..." A number hissed there disapproval the desert wasn't a good place to hunt. The first Gre'shil Roared a battle cry and started bobbing it's head in the pose of a challenge. The others submitted the Pack leader was such for a very bloody reason... He or she simply killed anyone who disapproved.

By the time the Pack ventured into the desert Lazardarus was already one hour ahead heading for Paragon.

OOC:

Just a note: the Desert is not a desert because it's hot and sandy. It's a desert because it's a devastated, dusty, lifeless landscape. About like this. As for the ion storm, that goes on almost constantly in the Desert (it only breaks for short periods of time), so anyone who's been there for an extended time would see it as normal by now.
__________________

BIC:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rebel_Scum "Well don't look at me", she told him, heading off the most obvious of the inevitable questions. "I was hoping you could tell me what was going on, but obviously not."

"Oh." slipped out of him self-consciously, the metal Dragon feeling rather sheepish now.

"I..." he set on to apologize, but the woman turned and walked off before he could say anything further to her, directing her attention instead to the...shapeshifter? He wasn't really sure. What he was fairly sure of by now was that she hadn't tried to fool him with malicious intent (in fact, he was getting doubts that it had been on purpose at all) and that he'd scared her. He didn't like that. So he slowly approached as well.

Giving his lips a reflexive lick before he spoke, the metal Dragon said softly as she was offered a hand, "I'm...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I just thought...I thought you were trying to hurt me..."
__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by RottenLuck By the time the Pack ventured into the desert Lazardarus was already one hour ahead heading for Paragon.

...which made him the first to encounter the Harvester.

He wasn't the first of his people to run across one of the building-sized machines that spent most of their time floating listlessly a few meters in the air, spotlights lazily probing the area to see if they could stir up any noticeable motion. Of course, only certain motions would cause it to respond. The first was that of its prey, so it could fulfill its nightmarish purpose - as if the thing didn't already look frightening enough! A large container formed the centerpiece of the almost beetle-like monstrosity, the many crimson lenses on both its 'head' and capture legs casting truly vicious glances all about them, and the swaths of caked blood that mingled with stains of both battle damage and mundane wear upon its presently-closed entry ports gave even the most oblivious onlooker a good idea of just what at least one part of that purpose was.

Lazardarus, however, was in no immediate danger. Despite Harvesters usually prowling only the streets of the old cities, which made encountering one this far out in the Desert highly unusual, they tended to simply ignore his people unless attacked. Their programming was simple, set out for little more than the basic tasks related to hunting their prey. If it wasn't on the prey list, it tended not to matter to a Harvester, and Lazardarus was not on the list.

The hiding human it spooked up from below an old and rotted slab of metal, on the other hand, most definitely was. The Harvester called it in. From the east, Lazardarus heard the wail of turbines. One of the smaller machines that rained fire from the sky had changed course and was headed this way...

Lazardarus had very little fear of the harvester, but he learned on his travels that things can change so he was still moving carefully. Spotting the human up ahead and hearing the turbines he cursed.

Moving fast he ran for what was once a sewer manhole and with all his might he pulled it off the hole. "HEY! WHO EVER YOU ARE OVER HERE!" He didn't truthfully care if the human died but not trying would haunt him for the rest of his life. "QUICK BEFORE IT GETS HERE!"

He climbed down into the sewer he made the attempt that would sooth his soul. There was now a chance that person will survive, true a small chance but still a chance.

The incoming fire however wouldn't be a selective as the Harvesters. He had to move to get out of the blast zone. Racing as fast as he could bent over he ran down the abandoned tunnel.

The Gre'shil pack weren't as careful. Running slightly faster then a human could they moved with deadly grace as they dodge around the burnt out husks of buildings.

The Pack leader stopped making a hand signal to the others to do as well as it watched the smaller machine change course. "Fire bringer... Burnt human meat..." The Pack started to follow the Machine. Perhaps after it killed the target they will feed on the corpse if not then the pack will continue on it's hunt.