Cont’d from

PART ONE HERE. PLEASE GO TO THIS POST BEFORE CONTINUING HERE!!!

STORY J

…dispelling all the magic spat forth from your new found abilities, you drink in the broken creature before you, feeling the awakened powers within you emboldening your resolve, knowing that had the beast before you succeeded in its purpose, it would’ve flayed you to the bone and never even remembered your name. The more thought you give this, the more any semblance of pity you had for the foe before you falls away, shed like unwanted skin as you finish your metamorphosis into a creature birthed from the depths of revenge. Your skin prickles and you can feel the massive power you’ve harnessed pulsing out in waves as you begin to refocus all that incredible sorcery into the space between your hands, molding the very fabric of reality around you as you feel the energy building, the flames of your intent fed by your rage causing the orb to grow as you channel more and more foul magic in to it. Sorcery is not sparking from your eyes and as you spit the venomous words of power, they spew forth alongside splinters of blackest lightning, all of it surrounded with that mesmerizing glow. Your strength growing and growing until a storm of vengeance rages inside you and begs for release, promising you the violent retribution against this creature who has wronged you, a satisfaction you had almost denied yourself the pleasure of for the sake of this damned thing crumples before you. Finally, with all the ferocity you can muster, you let loose a scream that reach the lowest pits of hell and cause the demons there to tremble, as you’re filled to the brim with glorious wrath and let loose a violent cascade of tumbling… nothing. You try to remember the words, recall the signs, you begin to try and trace the patterns from memory but what had felt like second nature mere moments ago now was a fading memory, as not only did the spells and sigils escape you, but everything was beginning to get fuzzy. You started to panic as you felt like you were losing yourself. You panic and begin cursing, the questions spilling from your lips in rapid succession, “What madness is this, what’s happening to me. Why can’t I… why can’t… can’t… I… eye… can’t eye… eye… can’t… can’t… can’t…” Words have left you. Understanding escapes you. You know something’s wrong. Or something was wrong. Did someone do something wrong. What is wrong? What is… and you begin to loose focus as your vision grows fuzzy and you begin to feel like you’re falling. Falling in to a darkness and you don’t know if there’s an end or if you’re meant to be here. The falling is too much and you’re having trouble trying to keep your eyes open even the tiny bit they are now and just before the darkness consumes you entirely, you think you here a familiar voice saying something about a failure. And then the nothingness swallows you whole and you’re gone…

Continue immediately here:

In a sterile room in an underground facility in the middle of nowhere USA, a young scientist lets loose a stream of curses, exclaiming, “Another failure. Dammit!” From above him a group of onlookers stare down, their look of disappointment plainly showing across their faces. Military command, medical pioneers, technological moguls, the viewers of the experiment make up a powerful group of investors for the project, but the tension can be felt through the reinforced glass as the scientist disengages the simulation, silencing the alarm which seems to mock him with the repeated exclamation of ‘FAILURE’ blaring across the screen. The lab free of the alarm’s taunt, the scientist glances up to see the room emptying out, but not before he catches the glare of his director of the project, who’s anger is palpable even with a simple glance. He knows that without the funding of the people in that room, his work with the Reality Altering Oblivion Augmentation project is over. The newly discovered element has limitless possibilities he knows he can unlock given more time. But as his advisor has warned time and time again, investors wants results and their patience is wearing thin. Talks of pulling the project and shipping the research to a competitor has left the scientist feeling desperate. He’s seen results, these rapid mutations once the element is introduced in the simulation to the humanoid test subjects he’s designed. But a simulation will never be able to replicate the real thing perfectly, and as the last of the doubting group leave the observation room, the scientist prays to anything listening he’s right as he presses the injector full of the element to his neck and pull the trigger. The fire that rips through his body causes him to clench his jaw so tightly he feels a few of his teeth crack, and the Global Interlinked Facility Tracking System begins to sound a new alarm, tripped off by the scientists spike in vitals that the system monitors in case of contamination. As the observation deck quickly fills with security personal and members of the board again, unable to access the lab due to lockdown protocols. These fools who had rebuked his efforts at every turn to allow for human trials, despite his research promising results and his tireless efforts to explain that the failures in the simulation were due to variables within the human genome that couldn’t be accounted for by a program. But he would finally make believers out of the skeptics before him, he would no longer fall on deaf ears or be disregarded by these people in power who thought they knew better. And as the maelstrom raging inside him exploded into clarity within his mind, he knew he’d evolved in to something beyond his wildest hopes for the protect. And as their shocked wonder turned to cries of fear and disbelief, he caught sight of his reflection and drank it in with unending jubilation. His four arms wreathed in violent black energy, the wicked looking spines that had sprouted the length of his back and running to the tip of the tail that now whipped back and forth behind him. He couldn’t help but smile, the grin stretching to the corner of his lips from which formidable looking tusks now sprouted as he walked toward the laboratory door. He realized he would have to stoop down to clear it, having gained a considerable addition to his height and his smile grew into a thunderous laughter as the door before him crumpled like paper under the waves of energy cascading from around him. An invitation to a new day awaited before him, and he was only too happy to accept.

STORY K

…feeling an overwhelming sense of melancholy for this pathetic thing before you, obviously at your mercy. You feel like if it had the capacity to grovel, it would be doing so at this very moment, begging for its… life? What would it even beg for? Sparing it to continue its meaningless existence. As you let these emotions simmer, staring at a broken form of metal before you, you begin to seethe with mercy. You are all the sudden feeling so very merciful that it’s causing your breathing to rapidly increase, and putting your hand to your chest, you feel your heartbeat pace increasing by the moment. The more you stare at the heap of metal plates and wires assembled before you in to a mindless drone, capable of thoughts no more advance then attack or kill or obey. After everything you’ve gone through, to have so narrowly escaped your end at the hands of this useless, hollow, afront to all that you hold dear, you mercy is boiling over, reshaping, transforming from unquestionable mercy toward this simple drone to righteous indignation toward this murderer on autopilot. In fact, you consider for a moment (suddenly from nowhere, there’s a hoarse whisper of mercy in execution that seems almost to quiet to hear and is lost on the wind just as quickly, so you spare it no mind and attribute it to some sound caught on the wind) and decide that you’d actually be acting more mercifully by snuffing out the embers of whatever ties this monstrosity to sentience. You imagine that if the machine has a soul, that right now it would actually be dropped to its knees, groveling at your feet for you to show them the kindness of releasing their soul, trapped within the metallic prison before you for so long, praying that a benevolent hero such as yourself would come along to finally present it the gift of deliverance unto it’s finally slumber, one which it had been denied for far to long already. You stare down as the slow churn of your initial emotions have now coalesced in to a maelstrom of incorruptible redemption, delivering it lasting salvation provided by your blessed hands, proving to the cosmos that your gifts guide you with purpose, having lead you to this first of many sheep, wandering lost without a shepherd, waiting for you to come along and reap this outcast so that you may set it on the path of atonement, instilling in it the virtues of penance and remorse if it is to seek forgiveness in the eyes of the voices that haunt it. Fortunate (another whisper like nails on a chalkboard of divine right, of your absolute purpose, and the need for one like you to collect the faithless and bless them with forgiveness in the peace of unending rest and the words seem to find purchase within you) for the road that lay ahead that you had been steered toward these first steps in your penitent campaign, encountering all deemed fated to cross your path, and if reading true sorrow upon their soul, bearing witness to their confession and blessing them with the chance for attrition through the deeds you’ve been given the privilege of compelling them toward completing. Or if you encounter one of the heretical wicked, hearing their confession only after the poison and malevolence festering upon their soul is excised, like a cancer, through the punishing trials of absolute torture and contrite suffering, for only then will absolution and contrition be gifted without hesitation. And you begin to call out, your tense grip tightening ever still as you feel the metal plates resisting your divine embrace, (the voice emerges from the silence again and praises your resolve, applauding your unwavering faith and in your mind you feel inflated, appreciated, and without realizing it, you nod in silent agreement with the grating voice), exclaiming, “And I shall press forward to gift all the wandering, lost sheep the beacon through the darkness that they should lament no longer, for I shall guide them mind, body, and soul, and once judgement and justice have been meted out, shepherd them, shelter them, and save them from themselves. I promise the old gods and the new, the gates of serenity no longer remain closed to the forgotten, for I alone have been untrusted with the keys, that all who falter in their faith should feel their resolve imbued with strength again. That all who’ve lost sight of hope, shall have their eyes reopened to visions of glorious paradise. That the broken and the bloody and the blubbering fools see themselves resurrected even more whole than they had ever been, given gifts beyond their wildest dreams, imbued with the strength, constitution, and knowledge becoming of those who’ve walked in to the light!” You shout these finals words, your hands still holding tight against either side of the mechanical blasphemy’s head, and with the final exclamation of the word light, you bring your hands together in a joyous clap of acknowledgment, for you’ve just given the highest imaginable honor to the wretched heap before you, allowing it the be the first of your flock to be saved and find peace. As you let out that long breath you had been holding while allowing the rush to wash over you, you turn your palms up so you may inspect the remnants of the miracle, bent and broken metal plates and wires torn ragged, the exploded and shattered fuses and diodes a testament to the beautiful act performed here. Your hands, thought slightly trembling, feel as if somehow they have never been more your own. The clarity with which you are able to see things now, seeing beyond normal sight, understanding the way of things and how you fit among all the pieces of the great puzzle. Fortunate to have been chosen as the first, the unassailable, the faith shielded, knowing that you not only have been elevated to bear witness to, but that you shall personally personally perform the miracles your pantheon of true gods have placed within your now capable hands so that they all can be saved. “I beseech you mine gods, old, ancient, and new, your faithful and humble servant stands here humbled, placing this offering at your alter so that you may be sated knowing it’s wretched soul shall no longer plague this world. For I act on your will, I speak at your behest, and I offer forgiveness by your grace, offering admittance within your holy kingdom. Thy flock swells. Thy message resonates. Thy faith flourishes. Thy influence grows. Thy justice, executes.” As you mutter this last word aloud, you realize that you and the voice like gravel had been reciting it in harmony, as the *S in executes lingers in the air, and the voice whispers to you promises for your blessed service, offering you gifts befitting the favored acolyte of the benevolent pantheon of gods, in gratitude for service to he and his 3 siblings, and a figure garbed in shadow atop a steed of ghost white flashes in your mind and disappears just as quickly. And the voice fades away, whispering more gifts for your continued carrying of the faith. And you smile in satisfaction, knowing they finally for your worship, you shall finally reap them rewards you’ve known you were deserving and worthy of. And with this you trace the sigils through the air before you, and crackling black energy spins before you as a portal to a village not far from you opens and you step through, only allowing the escape from within that void of a few of the grotesque denizens who reside within the paradise of your blessed Godmasters. And as you cross the threshold into this next realm in need of salvation, already feeling the pull of your purpose toward the village before you, sensing the animosity radiating out from what’s certainly an infestation of betrayers to the faith, promising the need for purification without prejudice to save these lost souls. And as you begin the steps toward the expansion of your crusade, behind you flows forth a stream of serpents, many horned, goat like things with many eyes and spouting clouds of toxin from its fanged maw, and the massive arm of a behemoth, skin like obsidian with a river of lava flowing through its veins, escaping at spots to rain down to the ground below, setting it ablaze in a hellfire inferno. And behind this all, sitting above massive, terrible looking stallions, the four gods sit motionless, vigilant, as this latest mortal to be swayed by their influence and promises, marches without question to begin the intoxicating symphony of slaughter. The largest of the riders spurs it’s pale horse forward, pulling its black cloak tighter around its skeletal form as The Ghast lets forth a rumbling, malicious laughter. The remaining 3 horsemen, the visages of Infection, Fury, and Terror join in hideous harmony falling in line behind the eldest brother and his ghostly horse, Spectre, as the four spur forward from a trot to a full blown charge, with Hell following right behind them.

Thank you for reading and playing! In the comments below, just let me know what you thought?

So I’d love to hear what you all thought! So any thoughts, criticisms, suggestions, all are welcome. And if you could do me one last favor and just comment the Influence and d100 portions of your player from your previous comments, that would be a huge help. So:

• Influence:
• D100:

And in case you need to look them up again, here’s the link to the previous post one last time:

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Thanks again so much for taking this ride with me and you’re all amazing!!!