An RPG by Weasel Overlord // Influenced by Ian Irvine
That place between worlds; that sacred, pure and silent place. The home of all portals, all the paths to worlds millions of miles apart. They are all joined here; in the Nexus.
No portal is unattainable, no world can be left alone for long, and the crystalline peace of the Nexus will soon be broken by desperate war.
For the creatures who lurk just beyond peripheral vision will not wait much longer. Starved between the worlds, in the chill emptiness of the Void, they wait. Hungering, fighting and above all, evolving, until they no longer resemble the races they once were. Each day is a struggle to stay alive as the rapidly evolving species fight each other for food.
These Varsha are merciless, for mercy is not something they remember. They are vicious in their hunger, utterly relentless in the pursuit of their prey; the ultimate, efficient hunter.
But each hunter has its weakness. And the Varsha are no exception. They covet the Nexus more than life itself. It glimmers like a sparkling jewel to them, calling and inviting, a safe haven away from the violence and horror of the Void.
And one with perfect access to each fresh, ripe world; full of the easiest prey they will ever find.
But they cannot be allowed to take the Nexus; but it is certain that they will try their utmost to do so. This is the deadly truth of the matter.
And silent as the Nexus is, its screams can still be heard. Deep in the souls of the few as its delicate fabric is torn by eager, rending claws.
It desperately flings out pleas for help, calling those it knows will answer. For although there are few who hear the call, those who do will fervently answer, searching, ever searching for the right portal into the Nexus, where the desperate battle will commence.
Varsha must be defeated; tears must be repaired, the silence of Nexus must be restored.
The Few are the chosen ones. Called and bound by the pain of the Nexus they come, one by one, joined by the soul-call resonating deep within. For if they choose not to come, they will live out the rest of their days in gleaming madness, the calls and screams of Nexus resonating in their hearts until they finally expire, gratefully and alone.
The Few are bestowed with the power to open portals, and some of the Few are imbued with a warlike spirit. These are warriors of the highest calibre, fighting the Varsha with weapon, hands or teeth until blood spills in deathly quantities. The Warriors will fight on, even near death; unable to live with the knowledge that Varsha still draw breath.
Some are filled with a light beyond understanding. These often have powers of precognition or teleportation, but the powers of the Light are varied and never the same in two of the Few.
And thus they come. Whether through a mirror, an open door or a mere reflection upon a puddle; the Few come.
For the Nexus calls… it screams in agony and need.
And they will answer.
-----
The Cast
Asufel Chirrar // Charon - Played by Weasel Overlord
Laura Aurum // Aachim - Played by darktyranitar
Ch’haki Raeeovl // Veeaul - Played by Hyperness is a Good Thing
Kira “Shikire” Granzon // Sinistrom - Played by Shadow Djinn
Half // Wanker - Played by Mega Horny
Iussrreh(clickclick)-izreas(clickclickclick) // No-name - Played by Vulpix.ck
Quaaii-aiek't'au and T'ee-eau // Oueh'ii - Played by River
Iryan Manasa Pondfoliss // Naga - Played by Emotional Faun Chiko-sai
Crysis // Siasan - Played by Crystal Tears
Siseau Arien Harieniie // Garuda - Played by EngiMatikul
That Thing // Tajstvar - Played by Plantae
Fukayna-Te Meskhenet // Kymeian-Thothite - Played by Fai D. Flowright
The Website
Hikki’s Eternal Sleep
Simply click on the “Nexus // -Open The Door” option in the sidebar, and enter in these details exactly how I’ve typed them here;
Username – TPM
Password – varsha
The Groups
Each RPer has been randomised into a group, to cut down confusion and what-have-you. Obviously these aren't forever, so later on groups will meet up and such.
Group One: Darktyranitar, Mega Horny, Hyperness and Shadow Djinn
Group Two: Emotional Faun, Engi, River and Weas
Group Three: Plantae, Crystal Tears, Vulpix and Fai if/when he arrives
Group One starts in the North End of the Nexus. North End is where the Church is, and there aren't many houses. More large buildings, like the Library and so on.
Group Two will start in the East End of the Nexus. East End is where the majority of the houses and residences are, though of course they are all completely empty.
And finally, Group Three will start off in the South End of the Nexus. South End is a mixture of houses and larger buildings, but more dilapidated in its appearance. Because of this, Varsha attacks are often concentrated nearer the South End than anywhere else in the Nexus.
I'll do my best to draw a map, but for now, if you need any details on what the Nexus looks like, just send me a PM or poke me or something.
I don't want anyone going into battle in their first posts, please; so even those in South End, don't see any Varsha or anything yet, ok?
*
Name: Asufel Chirrar
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Species: Charon
Homeworld: Tennar
Appearance: Asufel is tall, standing at around six foot three, and his hair is perfectly straight and long; reaching down to about shoulder-blade length.
Asufel has strange hair for a Charon, in that instead of being dark and lustrous, it’s a faded, almost washed-out blonde instead, and it holds no shine to it whatsoever.
His eyes are the only out-of-the-ordinary part of Asufel, as his facial features are bland and unassuming, almost forgettable if it were not for those eyes staring so brightly from under an often-frowning brow. A beautiful, golden tawny hue flecked in parts with deep green, his eyes are a similar colour to that of the crystal he carries as a sign of his power. His gaze can often be piercing, as if he’s looking right through you, when in reality he’s usually simply daydreaming.
For his garb, he prefers to wear knee-high boots in sturdy brown leather, patterned with leaves embossed into the material. His boots are tight-fitting, and they show off a rather shapely calf which Asufel tends to keep hidden under his long and thick red pants. His pants have a number of pockets sewn into them where he keeps a motley collection of, well, stuff, really. From a chunk of flint, to a shiny stone; a short piece of wood to an old necklace with a lucky charm, a strange, three-pointed symbol, dangling from it.
On top, Asufel wears a flimsy white shirt which is dirtied in places and heavily darned at the elbows with brightly coloured darning wool. In parts, it seems to have been the victim of vicious decorating by someone, and the dark red, glimmeringly mirrored spangles which are dotted at seemingly random intervals catch any light that may be around and reflect it most dangerously into the eyes of any onlooker. It has no buttons, in a more over-the-head style, but it does have a v-shaped opening which comes to a point at his sternum, which has a length of rough cord strung between and knotted together at the base of his throat. This shirt is long-sleeved, but the left one is cut off raggedly about halfway up his forearm. As a result, he wears a single, long glove on this arm which reaches to his elbow joint. His glove is a faded purple in colour, with a stitched pattern in gold criss-crossing all the way up and coming to a stop at his wrist. It’s fingerless, so that he has maximum hand-usage too.
Asufel has a myriad of piercings in both of his ears, most of them dangling silver rings although he does have about three simple studs in his right ear. Dangling from the, well, dangling earrings there is a multitude of seemingly random objects; a feather which seems to have been dipped in silver, a tinkling golden bell, a delicate chain of tiny, beaten metal loops, a collection of brightly coloured wooden beads and what appears to be a miniature bottle made of clear glass, tied about the neck with a piece of string (which attaches it to the earring) and with a miniscule cork stuffed in the opening. If you look close enough, a pale blue liquid can be seen sloshing around inside, but the nature of this liquid is unknown, and never spoken of by Asufel.
Across his chest, diagonally from right to left he has a belt in a pale and faded blue, buckled at the hip with an ornate silver buckle, and it also loops around his waist, scrunching his pants up at the top. Through this belt, his short blade is thrust almost carelessly, with no scabbard to speak of. How he doesn’t injure himself is anyone’s business, lol!
Personality: Asufel is an extremely “outdoorsy” type of person. No longer comfortable being inside for any great length of time, he is certainly not averse to kipping on the floor, atop a blanket with naught but the stars above his head.
He’s always been a bit of a rebel has Asufel. Something within him just harboured a deep hatred for the restrictive society of the mountains, and as soon as he left, he stopped feeling enclosed and endangered, and instead became louder, more exuberant and almost outgoing. It was as if being cooped up in the mountains had held back his personality; before he moved away he was a quiet and subdued type who very much kept himself to himself.
But after the move, Asufel felt so much more at home, even though he wasn’t living in his actual home any more. In the safety of the forests he knew so well he could grow alone and untampered with, developing his powers carefully and with precision.
Even though he can often be prideful, Asufel knows when he is wrong and can freely admit it. He has no problem laughing at himself if he makes any mistakes, although it stings a little if anyone mentions his hair, or his unstriking features. These had always been a point of contention between him and his mother, who just couldn’t understand where he got his looks (or rather, lack of them) from as both herself and Asufel’s father were extremely handsome, as the majority of Charon usually are.
Abilities: Asufel can open and close portals, as all of the Few can, although he doesn’t have any knowledge of these abilities until the day the Nexus calls.
His main area of expertise lies in shadows, and the manipulation of them. If there is a shadow in the area, he can bend it, in a way, to suit his needs. If he needs to hide, Asufel almost seems to melt away into the darkness, leaving you wondering if he was ever there to begin with. And he can use the darkness and shadows as a weapon too, wielding them against enemies and turning their own fears back towards them. After all, not many people feel comfortable in the dark. But Asufel has preferred it since he was young, as it allowed him to feel unnoticed and anonymous, instead of people pointing at him in disgust.
He focuses on the chrysoberyl in his staff, channelling his powers to intensify them through the crystal. Then, the motion he makes with his staff results in the manifesting of his abilities. So, if he wants to hide, he swirls the staff as if wrapping himself up in a cloak, manipulating the shadows until they obscure him from sight.
As a direct relation to this control over shadows, Asufel is very light on his feet, making almost no noise at all when he walks.
Weapon(s): Asufel’s main weapon is a short blade, about eighteen inches long. [see included picture] The blade is blue-tinged metal, and gently curved, and the hilt is wrapped with deep brown leather strips, and it takes up a diagonal section of the blade itself.
However, he also carries a staff/stave/quarterstaff/pole with a knob crystal on the end.
[see other included picture]
The wood of this staff is hard cherry wood, and the part which holds the crystal is ornately carved to fit it in perfectly. Bound around the wood at various intervals are strips of leather dyed red, again for grip, and carved into the wood there is a series of swirling patterns.
The crystal held within is a prime sample of Chrysoberyl, or Alexandrite. It was hewn from its rocky home when Asufel’s powers first surfaced, polished and rounded and set within a silver casing, to dangle about his neck. However, when Asufel made the decision to leave the close-knit society of his birth, he chipped away the silver and carved a new home for his crystal – the staff he carries everywhere with him. He finds that the staff comes in more useful for directing and channelling his powers now that the Chrysoberyl is set into it.
Background: Asufel had never felt like he fitted in since being a child. Others made fun of him because of his total lack of looks, his odd blonde hair and his even odder striking eyes. Not only that, but his parents felt like they’d made some sort of mistake in bringing him into the world, so they treated him with a cruel indifference; the only reactions he would get out of his mother was disgust for the way he looked, and out of his father he received disappointment for all that he was.
His abilities showed themselves at around the age of twelve, but instead of provoking a positive reaction from his parents, they only served to ostracise him further. They were embarrassed by the complete lack of use they saw his abilities to have, and they grew only colder towards him as he grew up.
About five years after his abilities manifested, Asufel, growing utterly sick and tired of this treatment, made the drastic and unprecedented decision to leave the mountain and to make his own life in the valleys and forests.
He journeyed down the mountainside in pouring rain, clad only in the light and flimsy clothes favoured by Charon of his age, until, freezing and wet, he staggered into the huge basin valley at the foot of his mountain. Taking shelter from the rain in a nearby forest, he made certain that all the material and food he’d taken were safe before bedding down under the trees, exhausted, to sleep.
He discovered a latent talent for hunting and making clothes over the years; his abilities with shadows helping him to hunt, and the lightness of his touch helping him to sew.
Other: Even though he doesn’t have the typical looks of a Charon, he has all their grace, and his movements are never clumsy or unrefined.
He has a particular fondness for wild fruit.
*
Asufel Chirrar
from one world into a new
*
It was dark. It had been dark for some hours now, but Asufel was restless deep in his soul, and he had a feeling that it was nothing to do with the time of day.
In fact, he had spent much of that day looking around himself, as if he had lost something precious to him. Glancing behind him as if he had dropped something and heard the faint noise as it hit the floor.
It was like something lurked at the corner of his vision, of his understanding. An itch he couldn’t find to scratch. And it was starting to drive him just a little bit crazy.
So of course, he had sat and he had closed his eyes, focused on his shadows, melted into the tree-trunk against which he rested. But it had done nothing. Still he was agitated. And becoming even more so, at the mysterious nature of this agitation and the fact that no matter how long he looked at the problem, he still could not find the source.
If he was still at home; his treacherous thoughts chimed in, he would not have to simply put up with this disturbance. No, he could go visit the Elders, they would examine him, and all would be set right.
But instead, he lay, restless, beneath the starry sky; watching as the moon gained height in the darkening sky.
He shuddered at, well, something. It was like that old saying which Terinar had so long pounded into his brain; something calls beyond our petty lives on this mountain. And when it does, we who are endowed with power, we feel it stirring in our very souls.
Young as he had been at the time, Asufel had simply dismissed the teacher’s words as the ravings of the old, or sometimes even the mad. But now.
Now it was almost disconcerting how much he agreed with Terinar. It did feel like something was calling him. Right now, it was faint, but at times it was a scream so loud Asufel felt his skull was going to be torn apart with the pain of hearing it.
It was all he could do to stop himself shouting at whatever it was that he couldn’t do anything, cos he didn’t know what to do, or where it should be done, or even whether he should do anything at all.
He heaved a great sigh and leant back against the rough bark of the tree, enjoying the feeling of it scraping through the thin shirt material and against his skin.
But wait a minute…why was there a square shape in the bark? Asufel was sure that he’d not made his bad-weather marks in this tree. And even if he had, they wouldn’t be so low down. So what the hell was it?
He got to his knees and turned about-face to examine the mysterious tree-bark-shape which had dug into his back. He reached out a hand to touch the square and then promptly pulled away again as something stung at his outstretched fingers.
He stuffed them into his mouth, sucking sharply. It hurt! But wait, maybe it didn’t hurt after all. He brought his left hand up to his eyes to examine the damage, and was surprised to find that there was none. None at all, in fact. No burns, no stings, no lumps of missing flesh hanging drippingly from his white white bones, no nothing.
How bizarre.
He reached out once more, never one to be dissuaded by a jolt to the pain receptors, and felt around the tree bark.
Yup, there was definitely something odd there. And it was square-shaped.
Asufel ran his hands around the raised bark, leaning forward to have a closer look.
Well, it was raised. And it was bark. Wow. Oh, and it was also brown, and barky-feeling. Can’t forget that.
Asufel sighed. So okay, there was a bizarrely-door-shaped square which was apparently growing out of the tree he had been leaning against.
If he squinted and tilted his head to one side, he could even make out a funny knot which could be a handle, in the right light.
He half expected there to be a brass plate with the door number sticking out of it.
He scratched his head in puzzlement. He was fairly certain that he’d never found a door in a tree before, and he wasn’t exactly sure what to do, now that he had found one.
Perhaps he should knock? No, that’d graze his knuckles, bark was rough after all. And there didn’t appear to be a bell-rope hanging from the nearest branch.
Brushing the staff lain carefully at his side, Asufel pondered for a second before picking it up firmly and placing the wood-bound crystal against the door-ridge. Tracing the shape, he concentrated on the chrysoberyl as he ran it along the ridge, focusing his shadow-powers into the crystal tip.
As he pressed the crystal against each part of the door, as he was now starting to think of it, a line of shimmer followed his pressure, lighting up the bark with a pale yellow glow. Completing the square, Asufel sat back on his feet, crouched in front of his glowing handiwork, wondering what the hell he had to do next.
Closing his eyes, he realised with a jolt that the tenseness he’d been feeling for so long had dissipated, as if this bark door was the source of the call. He opened one eye to regard it warily.
There didn’t seem to be anything dangerous about this door at all. It was just a door, albeit a glowing one, but still. And even though it was glowing, it showed no signs of opening any time soon.
With a sigh, Asufel grasped his staff once more and hefted it towards the door at the spot where a handle would normally be found. Exerting pressure, he twisted the staff clockwise, once, expelling a breath of surprise at the sheer amount of effort it took him just to turn the staff.
click
Something gave, and Asufel toppled forward, attempting to shield his face with his hands, but forgetting that he had his staff clutched tight and battering himself across the head with the sturdy wood.
“Oof!” He exclaimed, as he fell not into the bark, but through it, eyes wide in shock.
He flailed wildly, once more smacking himself in the face with his staff before he landed with a resounding “thump” which knocked all the wind out of him.
Squeezing his eyes tight shut, Asufel shook his head as he grasped at the floor. There was a definite lack of grass, which was odd, since before he fell, he’d been sat on grass, underneath a large tree in an even larger forest at the foot of Mount Rirrut on Tennar.
Something wasn’t right about this.
Cautiously opening his eyes, Asufel gaped at the hard, white floor he now knelt on. He lifted his head in shock, staring round at the unfamiliar scenery and grasping his staff so tightly it was a wonder it didn’t start to meld into his skin.
“Where the hell am I?” He demanded of nothing in particular, getting shakily to his feet, staff gripped tight in one hand, and the other reaching for the short blade at his waist.
He glared at the scenery around him; it seemed to be a collection of buildings set out in an orderly fashion, most of them the same dreary off-white as the floor, but the occasional one shone a marbled white, dotted with opalescent stone sections.
They all had windows, too, something which was a rare sight on Tennar, since most of the Charon dwelled deep in the mountains. Only the council had windowed rooms which looked out over the mountainsides and onto the forests where no-one but Asufel had ever lived.
Asufel wandered over to one of the buildings and reached out to touch the square glass set into its wooden frame in wonder. It felt just like his bark-door, which was strange, considering that they were both made of completely different materials.
He ran his hands across the glass, feeling out the edges of this new door carefully when a commotion off somewhere behind him drew his attention away from the glass-door.
It looked like someone else had arrived. Asufel blinked at the strange appearance of this person, if it could even be called a person, and tightened his grip on his staff, ready to fade into the shadows at a moments notice if the creature turned violent.
At that moment, it turned its face towards Asufel and he gasped, groping against the building with one hand and twirling his staff with the other as if he was throwing a cloak about his shoulders.
The shadows wrapped themselves around Asufel, and he promptly melted into the side of the building as if he was never there to begin with.
It wasn’t a good start, but he was afraid of this foreign-looking beast stood so close to him, snuffing around at the air like a wild animal.
And then it looked directly at him, almost as if it knew exactly where he was, shadows or no.
Asufel let out a little cry, short blade in his hand before he even realised he’d drawn it, holding it out straight before him, the tip quivering only slightly as the creature stepped towards him, wings fluttering slightly in the mild breeze.
With a whimper, Asufel slumped to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head as the creature bared white, white teeth at him.
He noticed with a strange detachment that they gleamed in the light, before blacking out as his head smacked into a particularly sharp stone which was just lying around on the floor, being inconvenient.
He had a vision of the creature’s face looming towards his, and then the full force of a sharp corner to the head hit him, and he passed out spectacularly.
*
Okay! Now, a few points.
-The creature Asufel saw was Quaaii, hope I did it ok, River!
-I didn’t have him seeing Siseau and Iryan arriving, cos I didn’t know if you two wanted to arrive together, or through the same portal or what.
-The point of the first post is that you end up in the Nexus world, in some way. I don’t mind how long it takes you, just that you have to get there at the end of your post.
Each group, urm, well, meet each other, do whatever. S’up to you! Instructions shall be issued shortly! ^_^
Nexus // - Open The Door [It Starts] No LSUs
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