Temple of Dothaz Nagaraarashk

[Mutant_Lorenor]

((Closed))

A return trip to Scara Brae was a venture started on a whim. The discovery of an ancient deity read within the pages of the first book of N'Jal triggered the trip back to Scara Brae. Considering the current state of things in Corone, any place was better than there. The former land of freedom and democracy had become an empire. Lorenor's power group, The Gol'bron, was just one of the many enemies of the Empire. With the Civil War reaching another full moon, Corone's ancient history was being ripped asunder. No heroes were rising to face this new threat.

Lorenor's heart was heavy as he ventured towards Scara Brae via ship from Jadet. Serenti had become too hot (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=11521) for him to stay at after a recent event. Thoughts of his run in with that bastard Dwarf planted the seed for a genocidal hatred of Dwarves. Lorenor would revenge himself upon the Dwarves of Xanthia. He'd learned these bits of information from a run in with a particularly nasty Dwarf from that Nation of idiots.

Stars shined brightly on the ocean's surface as the ghoul stared over the side of the ship. Preparing to start the venture towards the temple he'd discovered in his text, one of the three tomes of N'Jal. Lorenor had the book in his hand right now and felt the cool ocean breeze causing the page to flap slightly as he held the book. His eyes were able to translate the ancient scripture within the book written by Spider Cultists long ago. The Cult of N'Jal had many followers all over Althanas. Lorenor was but one of its many hidden members. The ghoul knew how to translate the ancient scripture because it was in his nature. The endless guided his eyes, and opened his mind to the secret teachings of the Dark Mother.

Words seem to fly out at him. Secret incantations, ancient rites, deadly verses of power. The neophyte was still new to the archaic teachings of N'Jal but they were quickly becoming secondhand nature. Lorenor noticed that the verse within the first book dealt with the daily life of a cultist. Verses and psalms dedicated to the correct following of N'Jal were located within the pages of the first book. The second book dealt primarily with some of the secret rites of that the neophyte was supposed to follow. People on the ship generally left the Salvarn Lord alone. He was dressed like a nobleman, but he gave off a vile aura and a tremendously dark energy.

A quick turn of the page revealed a passage dedicated to the interaction with non-cultists. Lorenor was particularly interested in the general way of life of the neophytes. There were texts dedicated tot he advanced cultist and lifelong devotee of N'Jal. But these texts still made only little sense to the ghoul. The endless was only translating texts that was relevant to the ghoul at that stage in his development. Lorenor quickly discovered, after much time reading the book of N'Jal that he'd already undergone much of the basic training for a cultist.

The mutant was marked with the tidings of N'Jal. No ears, no nose, no tongue, no eyes. The four great sacrifices. The hideous scar running down the middle of the ghoul's face was proof of his sacrifice to N'Jal. The ghoul had already given up much in his services of the Dark Mother. His eyes went from the book before him, to the water beneath him. A world of adventure awaited him now. The neophyte was grasping the destiny that awaited him as he prepared to become a fully fledged Spider Magi. He knew that the endless were his key. The key to solving the puzzle.

Once Lorenor was done reading the book, he took a drink of the wine that rested in a goblet at his side. He felt the warm substance going down his stomach and filling his body with a certain heat. It was welcome. Coldness usually was the ghoul's companion for there was no rest for the wicked. He placed the goblet back down in a fluid motion. After many hours of being alone, several of the passengers of the ship worked up the courage to actually go talk to the ghoul. Lorenor detected them coming close as soon as they were within range. Placing the sacred book inside his pack, the ghoul didn't bother facing the interlopers. Instead, he took another sip of his drink.

A male walked up towards him but kept a respectful distance away.

"Hey! You've been there all night reading from that book of yours. Yet we don't see you coming out in the daylight hours. What are you, daylight sensitive or perhaps, you're one of them vampires?" The man said, working up a chain of bravado. The others of the would-be mob worked up courage to taunt the Salvarn Lord. "You're well dressed but you're nothing but a freak!"

At that point, Lorenor sensed the tension within the crowd. It was sending a vibration across his sensory array. One of his hands went to one of the many swords in his possession. It happened to be one of his damascus swords. He smiled as he began to slightly pull at the weapon revealing a sharp blade that extended from the scabbard. Another presence was drawn to the commotion caused by the angry passengers. Lorenor smelled the scent of one of the ship's many guards. "What's the meaning of this sir?" He asked the one who started the argument. Lorenor kept his hand on his weapon not wanting to award them with a response from his silver tongue.

Instead, he kept his back to them, but was against the rail so that they could not sneak up on him. He was prepared to move into fighting stance and dispatch any attackers that might come his way. "The thing is a vampire!" The leader of the mob responded. Anger in his voice. Lorenor licked his lips. "Are you certain of this? Has the man tried to bother you in anyway whatsoever?" There was a pause. "He's not a man. His mere presence is a bother!" And the potential vampire slayer drew a sword from his scabbard.

Lorenor heard the metallic ring of the weapon. In response, he turned quickly around to face the crowd and drew his own weapon. The particularly weighty ring of damascus metal vibrated through the air. The masterwork quality of his blade reflected moonlight with elegance. Lorenor fluidly drew the longsword and moved into a combat stance. His glowing purple eyes locked with the guards' eyes. Lorenor had a calm expression on his twisted face that was hidden beneath the shadow of a black hood. His cloak was made out of vlince and clearly was the attire of a lord.

"Wait." The guard said. "Let me handle them." Looking at Lorenor, the guard grinned slightly. "I been itching for a good scrap anyway." The ghoul nodded and lowered his guard for the briefest of moments. It was then that one of the individuals in the group threw an object at the ghoul. Time slowed down for Lorenor, his perception altered by the sudden attack. As soon as the throwing ball, red in color, and about four inches in circumference, touched the very edge of his sensory array, the ghoul was on the move. He slashed upwards with his weapon, striking at the ball and cutting it in half.

This act drew hushed whispers of fear from the gathered crowd.

The two cleanly sliced pieces of the attack ball fell down upon the ship's floor, harmlessly. Lorenor kept his eyes on the mob. There was at least five people gathered before him now. Great odds. The ghoul did not doubt his ability to cause bloodshed. He kept his weapon pointing upwards towards the night sky, but still, he did not speak. The crowd hesitated, but started to draw weapons.

"Stay back guards. This is a matter of Scara Brae law. If you attempt to stop us from slaying that devil, we will consider you a friend of the devil." He said, the warning quite clear. The guard simply shook his head and whistled loudly. Several more guards showed up. There was a mutiny on hand. The neophyte simply stared at the people gathered before him. Let the games begin. He thought to himself. The endless simply sang songs of chaos and destruction. Nearby to his person, a small black form was preparing itself to move against the crowd when Lorenor gave the word.

[Tzar]

Clouds floated by, like small grey whispers coasting on the nighttime sea of black. Nikoladze sat apart from the people milling about the deck, his thoughts drifting in and out, his mind grasping frantically, lethargically for something, anything to hold onto. Days faded to months to years, whole decades flowed by like some dark tar. Minutes seemed like a lifetime, and looking back there was no chronological distance from his birth. Too long had Nik drowned in his own thoughts, like a child dropped into a pool of dark water; he wandered how long it was since last he felt, slept, ate. Life was dissociative bliss that made his teeth gnash and his hands tremble. The world emerged from behind one of the clouds, rushing up and attacking him, salvation from his mind’s dark depths.

There was some sort of commotion aboard. People were standing up, congregating around an ignorant rube’s abominating tirade. The words came and filled Nik’s head, spinning and sticking and rearranging. They made sense in a way that he did not understand, and he arose from the bench along the ship’s gunwales, moving without covering distance. For a moment he realized he hadn’t the slightest where he was or what was happening, before catching a fleeting thought of reason, though it slipped back into the abyss like sand.

Now pushing, now a small circle opening in the crowd around the frazzled, confused looking man in black trench coat as Nik passed to very near the front of the throng. The motion of the waves rushed up to tell him he was at sea, a sudden feeling of unity with the water and desire for reuniting overwhelmed and consumed Nikoladze for only an instant before the shouting man cut through and grounded his mind. Now Nik could see the focus of the verbal attack: a figure, smouldering with wicked lusts and dark thoughts that emanated and forbid the eyes from grasping firmly the center of the people’s attention. A double image presented itself to Nikoladze, at first the man standing was small and dark, yet he grew half again his height, with great clouds of blighted existence folding and pouring.

Vampire the pious man cried! A guard approached, having his own circle of respect and fear from the onlookers, to see from what stemmed the commotion. The man continued shouting and flaunting his righteous intentions of exterminating a beast, an unnatural devil. To solidify his intention on making the world marginally cleaner, the rube drew a sword from his belt and held it like he expected to take on the legions of darkness aboard this ship.

Nikoladze stood in quiet investigation, feeling the air of the crowd tense as the moments crawled by. Vampire? That is a creature who… what? Where did that thought come from? The admonisher keep his ground before the guard unsure of whether the threat would come from the authority or from the villainous creature before him, who Nik noticed had too drawn his weapon and brandished it for all to see. More guards were arriving, all with a look of excitement at the possibility of squelching some fool’s head. The instigator only exacerbated the state of things by declaring that those who stood in the vampire’s defense were too devils, implying that all such peoples with derelict morals needed taken care of; the crowd shifted and it’s ideas flowed in accordance with the man’s decrees. Words echoed inside of Nikoladze, filling and tormenting with their nonsensical reverberations. He turned to the person nearest him, a woman who had lost notice of his disheveled appearance in her excitement over the events unfolding.

<<You! Stop that noise making doublequick! You noisome lummox!>>

The words came out in the tongue of Nikoladze’s ancestry, bellowing in harsh, slurred diphthongs unnatural to the woman; her face turned became terror, and trembling she fell back on the deck, people rushing out from around her as she fell and scrambled to get away from the new possessed man speaking tongues. He drew his blade, the crowd slowly taking notice of the new situation in their midst, and flipping it in his hand so the pommel touched his thumb, stabbed down through the woman’s middle and into the deck.

[Mutant_Lorenor]

"NO!"

He called out in the common tongue. Freshly spilled blood touched the air and saturated it with the metallic taste so loved by the ghoulish creature. All at once, the moment turned sour and dark. Another stranger, a fellow passenger of the ship, intervened turning a potentially controllable situation into complete disaster. Lorenor looked upon the unkempt, strange human, with a sense of familiarity. Looking upon him stirred up mysterious thoughts of recognition.

Eagerly waiting his command, the endless twitched in place once the fresh blood touched the air. Lorenor stole a glance at his strange pet. Without a host, the creature looked like a small blob of sentient oil. A large, awkwardly shape head was a few feet across making it look like a bizarre hammer. The creature stared up at Lorenor, eagerly awaiting the master's permission to join the fray. The ghoul knew that once the endless joined the party, things would undoubtedly get really ugly really fast. Not yet my old friend. Let me do things my way, you'll have your chance.

Conceding to the command of the ghoul, the endless seemed to have a look of disappointment upon its bland, featureless face. The creature could easily slide across the surface of the deck and capture whatever host it needed to effectively assist it in combat. Lorenor knew that from past experience since the creature had assisted him many times already. Holding his weapon tightly in his hand, Lorenor looked over towards the guard that decided to intervene on the ghoul's behalf. He was busy arguing with the big man that started this whole mess.

So it was up to him. A few of the people in the crowd were tending to the woman and attempting to remove the blade from the girl's body. It was probably already too late for her. Blood spilled freely on the deck of the ship, flowing from the serious injury. For a moment, people forgot about the ghoul as they turned their attention solely on the new arrival. "What's this?" One of the nearby men asked. "He got her!" A second commented. "No, that's my Lucy!" A third man yelled and broke down into sobs. A tragic affair indeed. Lorenor put his attention on the injured girl. She was dying, her life force rapidly slipping away.

Pushing fellows out of the way, Lorenor knelt down towards the injured girl and looked up at Nikoladze with a sharp expression on his face. His hand quickly went towards the man's sword in an attempt to grab it. Should he be successful in his grab, he'd pull the blade out immediately. Lorenor leaned in towards the girl and stared deeply into her eyes.

"Do you want to live?" The ghoul asked.

"Y-yes." She replied in agony. Her skintone already growing pale and cold.

"What are you doing?" Asked a nearby man. Lorenor simply ignored the man's commentary. His face stretched and started to open up. He attempted to hold onto Nikoladze's sword, ensuring that the warrior did not try anything foolish. When Lorenor's maxilla mutated and opened up, people screamed in terror and stepped backwards and away from the scene at hand. With the lower part of his face opened up, the ghoul removed his hood. He revealed that terrifying face. Empty eye sockets burning with purple energy, his lower jaw was stretched downward and completely open to powerful flaps. Teeth on every portion of the flaps. The ghoul leaned downward and bit the girl upon the very injury that Nikoladze had caused.

Biting was done for a specific purpose. Instead of eating her flesh, he carefully drank of her blood, allowing his DNA to pass through the injury on her abdomen. Once the DNA passed, the next phase of Lorenor's plan would come into fruition. And the girl would belong to him.

[Tzar]

Terror blazed through the crowd gathered, the people shifted denser and denser as each tried to have a look at the dying woman nailed to the deck. The collective fervor found its center and as a whole directed all the ill feelings stirred up by the vampire discovery unto Nikoladze. He felt the force of their passion bear down upon him, crushing and asphyxiating; the air became thick and tight and burdensome to breathe and he soon felt completely overwhelmed.

Complexities swirled and offered brief distraction from the outrage, becoming mixed with tinges of fear when the devil lowered his hood, revealing a face inhuman with deep smoking pits for eyes; it stepped into the crowd, walking resolutely to the woman’s side. Cries of the woman’s friends rose above the din of general despair. Nik’s confusion grew as time sped by, and he became truly uncertain of the events leading up to the frantic state of the crowd, and from within the murky pool of his consciousness there arose an urgent desire to escape.

He told himself to take his other sword and run it through his face, then turned and pushed his way through the people. A strong hand shot through two bodies and grabbed onto his collar; panic overtook Nik, and he wrapped his right hand around the wrist, looking into the eyes of the hand’s owner. Nik pulled at the arm while he brought his free hand around to punch the burly man in the face. The man pulled Nikoladze in, their noses separated by just inches and fury flared in his eyes.

What a hotbed of ruffians I’ve fallen into. The girl must need help.

Nikoladze turned and started to walk back into the midst of the group, having forgotten the large man still attached to his coat, and was hoisted back to face the aggressor. “You’re business is finished with her! I’m where it’s at now”

The entire situation did not add up. Something flashed in the corner of Nik’s mind, something just out of his reach that if he could only obtain would spell out for him how he had landed himself here. This civilian latched onto him clearly was erratic, and those with unstable minds had no business touching Nikoladze.

The Emperor would not stand for such injustice, a peasant casting its filth on one of his elite guards. You should make an example of him for his countrymen, Nikoladze.

Some persecuting persona came from Nik’s shadows to lend his abilities to the demented Asvisidekian. His open palm flew into the man’s neck, impacting and lowering the recipient’s defenses such that Nikoladze brought him to the deck of the ship. A gust of wind pounded itself into the herd of people, and Nikoladze’s coat flew open and out, billowing while he stood there with his boot atop the man’s neck. Nik drew his second sword and touched it to the man’s neck. The frenzied crowd and the blast of air swallowed his words. The people pounced upon Nikoladze, hands straining to get a piece of their mutual enemy. He started cutting, the more cowardly unarmored travelers falling away by their own fear when they realized he brandished a second blade; those who tried to wrest it from his hands found themselves with gashes in whatever place the etched steel could reach.

The riot began.

[Mutant_Lorenor]

Captain's Log.
April 5, 1806 C.P.
10:00 P.M.

"Naval Clearance Red. Commanding the S.S. Vorchak'Ka, out of Corone and into Scara Brae, our journey has met with a strange turn of events. Several of the passengers we picked up in Jadet have raised numerous suspicions from the ship's crew. Growing tensions with the civilians leading Jadet has lead me to believe a riot or mutiny of some sort may occur. My men are on full alert and I fear having to place the ship on lock down. One of the passengers in particular is a short man dressed like a lord. He gives off a mysterious vibration that makes me nervous. My men have talked to me that he keeps to himself but makes the passengers equally nervous. I will have to keep an eye on the situation but I feel the worst. If the passengers from Jadet grow too unnerved, I might not be able to protect the mysterious stranger."

Naval Seal,
Captain James Whitaker



Guards moved to intercept the rioters. After a moment of raw chaos, factions started to form within the mob that were fighting one another, as well as the guards. The witch hunt began. Lorenor was busy with the girl to care about the chaos all around him. His eyes were closed, but his senses were sharp, supernaturally sharp. Feeding from the girl, he felt sanguine substance pass from her body into his mouth. The DNA transference was absolute. With Lorenor's saliva came the inevitable passage of the nano machinery that was part of his genetic makeup into her bloodstream.

Within moments, the infection began. As Lorenor drank, he worked quickly to consciously control the transformation he knew might take place. Kneeling over her body and causing a tight seal to occur between his opened jaws and the wound on her stomach, Lorenor fed. A nearby individual was held back by several guards that attempted to keep the rioting at bay. "My Lucy! What is it doing to my Lucy!" A man was punched in the face. Hard. Another was stabbed in the stomach by a short blade. Lorenor was running out of time.

Like a snowball effect, one tiny orb of condensed snow began rolling down the mountain. Not having any clear objective or any set target, the insanity of the mob set in. Lorenor's hand held the girl close, it was placed underneath her and at the injury. He pressed tightly. Moans and other sounds from the gut filled the air from the girl's mouth. She'd lost a lot of precious blood, but the ghoul had acted just in the nick of time. His nano-machinery had obtained a foothold within the girl's body. Acting quickly within the foreign bloodstream, the nanobites moved like a colony of insects and went to work. Things were patched up. Injuries were repaired. Genetic disorders were corrected. All within a matter of microseconds.

But to the impatient ghoul, those precious seconds were moving far too slowly for the immortal. Finally, the moment he waited for was starting to take place. The nanomachines reached the injury that Nikoladze had caused and began to repair that injury. With haste, the tiny workers moved to repair the damage that would have normally felled anybody else. But something was amiss. Within the girl's bloodstream and tasting acrid, Lorenor detected a different body placed through external means into her vessel. Poison!

The ghoul immediately realized that he was drinking a rapidly saturated poison that affected the blood. He knew that the girl would be saved when her transformation into a derelict ghoul took place. She would become a beastling like Lorenor was. But at least she would have cheated death. Not once, but twice. First at the hands of Nikoladze's initial injuries, and then at the hands of the poisonous substance that threatened to infiltrate her nervous system. Lorenor rested comfortably knowing that he'd acted within his power to save the girl.

Dual conflicting belief system in the deity known as St. Denebriel, and the Thayne known as N'Jal forced the ghoul's hand. He never acted without thought of gaining something, but his once militant stance on everything was greatly altered by the teachings of St. Denebriel and his further instructions into the teachings of N'Jal thanks to the two books in his possession. Why was he going out of his way to save her? He didn't know. It was simply the right thing to do, and then it happened. The girl suddenly screamed in agony.

"Aaaaaaaieeeeeee!"

Lorenor was pushed quickly off her person and she stood up screaming like a banshee of her own volition. The transformation was complete. Her dark brown pupils were dilated and her skin tone became several shades darker to almost match her new master. Screaming wildly, the girl turned to look at the nearest victim that was closest to her. With the infection coursing through her system, Lorenor could take a few moments to gather himself.

A hot substance coursed through his vessel, increasing the pressure on his heart to pump more of his black blood. Lorenor had come in contact with Nikoladze's deadly poison. Was this the end? Upon his knees, nothing was louder on the ocean, than a man's agony as he screamed out to his fiance.

The girl turned towards her former lover, and proceeded to attack him viciously. She had little control over her hunger at this point and would require significant training to obtain it. By the time that the girl bit into her former lover's neck, the injury had closed itself completely becoming naught more than an elaborate scar on both sides of her body. And even this was rapidly being taken care of by the nanobites.

Lorenor felt his maxilla close and revert back to normal. Attacking the poison at its genetic level, the carrier of the deadly nanovirus was saved by the machines once more. Coming in contact at the genetic level with the poisonous substance, the nanomachinery moved from its default setting and accessed higher functions. Working in tandem with the nanobites in the girl's body, the poison was quickly analyzed, converted, and morphed into a new sort of weapon for use by the ghoul. The nanobites fused with the genetic substance lurking within the poison vessel and developed a sort of harmonious relationship with the dangerous liquid. Lorenor's body ran fever pitch levels of heat but soon cooled down. He screamed as he felt that his body was going to explode with the pain.

A few moments later, the pain subsided and Lorenor found something interesting about himself. He'd bonded with the poison somehow and become one with it. In much the same way that the carrier had become one with the endless, the nanobites revealed an entirely new purpose as an antibody for foreign particles. Lorenor suddenly stood up. The poison in his blood was a dangerous substance of acidic quality. Lorenor DNA was altered and mutated with the interaction with Nikoladze's poison. He would have to thank the mysterious stranger later.

Now!?

Asked the endless. You may indulge yourself. Lorenor called back via the strange empathic link he had with his mysterious companions. Lorenor looked in the general direction of Figment and saw that the tiny bugger had quickly sped off into the fray. It had hundreds of cattle to choose from and it would attempt to find the best possible host within that crowd.

Leaving his offspring to do the dirty work for him, Lorenor moved through the gathered to find Nikoladze. He quickly spotted the stranger, but the man was moving away from his general direction and was confronted by a big burly individual that seemed like one of the guards. Nikoladze would have to wait because a new problem confronted Lorenor. Two men with steel swords were upon the ghoul. He cursed. Lorenor wanted to avoid violence as much as possible, but it was already too late. These bastards were intent on spilling the small warrior's blood. Fine. Let's do this their way. The ghoul drew one of his pair of damascus long swords and moved into his fighting position. He allowed them to take the initiative of the attack when something else happened.

A sharp kick to the small of his back sent the ghoul sprawling across the deck of the ship. How did someone sneak upon me?! Lorenor rolled several paced and allowed his sharp claws to grab the deck. His claws left scratching marks against the ship's surface causing the ghoul to stop moving. Turning to look at the individual, he saw a newcomer within the crowd wearing a strange glowing amulet. Perhaps that is the secret! Lorenor wanted to get his claws on that amulet. Rising from the ground, he saw several individuals fighting against his newly created spawnling, and he turned his attention to the trio that attacked. The endless at his possession wrapped itself around the epidermis of the ghoul. He felt the familiar second skin solidify as armor about his person. This is more like it now. The ghoul pointed his weapon at the trio. "Sneak attack. Well done, I'll give you that one. Now let's do this!" The ghoul yelled. In the meantime, a stranger ran towards Lorenor. He stepped backwards and punched the man in the back of the head causing him to loose balance. One the man fell to the floor, Lorenor lunged at the individuals before him.

O yes. There will be blood. Lorenor thought as he engaged the trio of passengers.

[Taskmienster]

This thread has been sitting for a full year. Since no response has been made to create activity I am going to be moving this. If you would like it to be reopened please feel free to PM myself or another staff member and they will be able to move it for you back to Scara Brae.