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Interest post tho I be a fool
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Mar 20, 2019 15:59
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 11:57 |
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The Librarian I was once a man. And I was content. I traveled the under-roads, and I studied the ancient tablets, the dusty volumes, the brittle scrolls. Trinkets of an age long dead. It was important work, after all! We were preserving the past so that we might have a future, share our knowledge, and help rebuild the world. How naive we were. But then it came to me. The Sun Shard. The Orb. Recovered by some brain-addled Initiate, none of us knew what it was we had found. But when I touched that dark sphere, I felt it awaken under my fingertips. And suddenly I knew. It showed me so many things. From the depths of that sphere, the secrets of the universe poured into me, visions of past, present, and possible futures. Visions of a world born anew, the surface reclaimed. Visions of a world plunged into darkness, full of violence, war, and treachery. But more than this, it showed me... me. Who I was meant to be. Who I had been waiting to be. No longer hidden, but ascendant. And I knew which of those worlds would be mine. From that moment, who I had been was unimportant. I was the Watcher. The Near-and-Far. The Librarian. And my Library was in a truly dreadful state. As for my fellow... colleagues? How they marveled. I had been chosen by the Orb. I had unlocked its secrets. I had mastered its power! They did not understand; I was the power. But I let them believe. I gave them the occasional scrap of knowledge gleaned from the Orb, or from my new understanding of... everything. And I kept close those who wanted more. I rewarded their curiosity. I sated their hunger. I fed them my particular vision of the world, and they ate it up. How could we ever trust outsiders to use our knowledge responsibly? If the day came when we freely share our secrets with the world, how can we be sure they won't turn it against us? Or worse, plunge the world back into chaos and cataclysm? No, better that we keep them to ourselves. And who could disagree? I was the Chosen. I was venerated. Worshiped. With my knowledge and the power of the Orb, our scavengers were more successful than ever before. The more zealous insisted that I should be the one to lead our people. The natural choice. Some, however... disagreed. They said I had corrupted their mission. Perverted their purpose. Nonsense, of course. Still, they were obstinate. In the end, these dissenters conspired among themselves to steal treasured tomes from MY Library, and seek refuge among one of other settlements. They hoped to spread their stolen secrets to as many settlements as they could. But while they might have fooled their peers, they could not hide their plan from me. Their heresy would not be tolerated; the traitors' lives were forfeit, as were those of their sympathizers. We lost good people that day. I even liked some of them. More's the pity. [Secrets +2]: Things that are hidden. Things that are lost. A secret is just an exclusive kind of knowing; one which grows more powerful the less it is shared. [Orb of Sight +2]: A midnight blue sphere of crystal, the Orb is a Sun Shard that was used to gaze out across vast distances and into dark places. Over time, its power grew, allowing it to not only peer through space and flesh and stone, but into hearts and minds as well. More than this, it can send visions to others, showing them what the user wishes them to see. Or take sight away entirely. It is a versatile tool in the right hands  The Lost  A long time ago, the Lost were merely survivors. Refugees from the cataclysm that rocked the surface world, unleashing monsters and disasters upon the population. Chaotic magics ravaged the land, inflicting some sort of strange, metamorphic condition on them and driving them far underground to escape that danger. They delved deep in search of safety, until they came upon the Ancient Library; a storehouse of knowledge built by a culture long dead, its shelves filled with nothing but dust. Inspired by their discovery, they made their home in its empty halls, and began to collect what little knowledge could be salvaged from the surface. In the spirit of the library which sheltered them from the dangers around them, they intended to preserve this knowledge in the hope of a better future. Saving it so that those who would come after might be able to use it to pick up the pieces with the benefit of knowing what came before. To learn from the past, and avoid its mistakes. Though their curse progressed until they were no longer truly human, they clung to their last connection to the old world. So they gathered. They collected. And their new gift proved more useful than they could have hoped. Over the generations, they amassed a modest treasure trove of knowledge. They had become Scholars. At least, until the Orb was discovered. No one had ever seen anything like it. A perfect sphere of midnight blue crystal. The scavenger who returned with it could not say where he had found it. Could not remember when, or how he had recovered it. Still, it was clearly a relic of some kind or another, and thus worth preserving. By chance or by fate, one of the Scribes somehow succeeded in awakening the Orb. It showed him many things, places both near and far, and places between. The experience changed the Scribe, whose name is now lost. From that transformative moment onward, he was simply the Librarian. He knew things. Things no one could know. He saw things no one could see. Awe turned into admiration, which in turn became adulation. Those close to him were rewarded with information others weren't privy to; untouched ruins, where to find salvage, and even secrets regarding their peers. More concerning, however, was the Librarian's increasingly possessive attitude toward knowledge and the secrets they had collected. An attitude that infected his followers. Soon, he held sway over the majority of the Scholars, and was given ultimate authority over the sanctuary. This did not sit well with everyone, however. While the Librarian increasingly preached the Virtues of Secrecy to his growing Cult, some among the Scholars decided to things had reached a tipping point. It was in those dissenters that the seeds of conspiracy took root, and from them spread to others not yet convinced of the Librarian's wisdom and insight. Meeting in secret and communicating with one another in code, the members of the Conspiracy planned to leave the Library, taking with them as many records and relics as they each could carry. If the Librarian wanted to hoard knowledge, then they felt it was their duty to spread it as far and as widely as possible. They began to quietly remove what they considered to be key records and relics, setting them aside in preparation for the day they would flee the Library forever. Éxcept there was no keeping secrets from the Librarian. Their plot was as plain to him as if they had written it upon their faces. He had watched them. He had seen them. He knew each and every one of them, and all those who sympathized with their heresy. And so, the night before the Conspirators were set to flee, the Librarian gathered his most zealous and most trusted followers to him. He told them of their fellows plans, and of their sacrilege. How they stole from the Library. How they planned to flee and never return. And how this must not be allowed to happen. Then he swore them all to secrecy, never to speak of what had to be done. Before the night was over, two dozen people vanished from their beds, their bodies never to be found. In the morning, the congregation was told that the missing people had fled in the night, and that they had abandoned the Library's mission. Under the pretense of recovering the stolen records and relics and bringing the conspirators to justice, the Librarian began to guide his followers toward more aggressive acts of espionage against other settlements, all in the name of recovering what was lost. Such a betrayal could not be allowed to happen again, after all. [Mimics +2]: The Lost are the ultimate chameleon; capable of not only blending in with their surroundings, but of mimicking people in appearance, personality, and ability. [Uninventive -2]: The Lost have difficulty inventing new things, and rely on stealing and adapting ideas and devices rather than creating new things themselves. Rhjamiz fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Mar 30, 2019 |
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Mar 27, 2019 09:59
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Sandbox 1. Stealth 2. Protection 3. Supplies The Forgotten Library is well hidden and The Lost are deceptively capable, but we've got a lot of books and trinkets and not much else. Time to seek out new cultures and exploit them.
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Apr 1, 2019 16:08
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I am creating a Period between "The Rise of the City of Light" and "The Undead Empire Triumpherate Collapses" called The Shadow Wars, when dark forces, worshiping dark and secret gods, coveted the prosperity that the City of Light had created, and conspired to either destroy it or take it for themselves. The City of Light suffered many attacks from enemies both within and without during this period. This was a Dark period.
Rhjamiz fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Apr 24, 2019 |
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Apr 24, 2019 01:33
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