ChasmOfOrganicMatter
Perversity Of Unknown Origin
"The most pressing question in the wake of Eschaton was if humanity's survival had been worth the effort."
- Unknown, 3055
The foul mockery civilization destroyed and defied all manner of logical rationalization that had been the cornerstone of the planet centuries past. Gigantic expanses of perverse un-logic blaspheme sight and the mind - mountain ranges once domineering in stony tyranny warped into the textures of flesh, sucked like reversed rivers into pustule-fissures woven into space itself. Churning pillars of limbs in impossible segmente configuraiton extending into one another and grinding their bodies into bleeding wastes. Skies above pulse with leviathan veins larger than the mightiest of towers quivering and threatening to vomit the refuse of a domain that saw what it had absorbed as little more another drifting plot of debris within its infinite seas of cosmic intestines.
A scenery perverse and familiar for lifetimes upon lifetimes upon returns and departures from the reincarnating coil. Purpose of some sort guided them; meaning had faded away in some of their minds but limbs carried them forward sometimes in defiance of consciousness and thought. Instinct of otherlike reason and subconscious dominion, unspoken conviction, vicious desire like starvation-induced hunger - they strode and they approached. It was there; the City that crept not across land, but between the blinks and the breath of colossal (divine) unbeings parasitizing the teeming bacterial-growth (homo sapien) incessantly spawning in planetary squalor.
The City mocked their authority and their rule; primordial minds half dissolved from the weight of consciousness they had absorbed were intrinsically opposed to its mocking existence; a god that seeked its apotheosis and would defy them at every corner. Immense in nature yet hidden from their sight, necessitating a hunt across Earth and wherever else it may roam.
They have demanded the subjugation/consumption/damnation/absorption of the City and you obey.
Welcome to Damnation In A Different Light.
As the title suggests, you are condemned to servitude and if you reaad the blurb, chained to the subconscious will of entities of another place and space.
In shape and form, you are (presumably, but not not necessarily) a homo sapien. Some time ago, you were bound to the will and servitude of things your consciousness is only beginning to comprehend through forced evolutionary consciousness. Chambers of gibbering eyes stretching beyond all horizons, labyrinths of chitinous limbs scratching in a cacophonous symphony, a fog as much of smoke as it if flesh that swallows distant stars, a coral-superstructure driving its tendrils across multiple dimensions - your masters do not know who you are (yet) and they may never, yet their collective unconsciousnesses have altered causality and continuum to manifest you as their servants.
You are tasked with hunting a City, one of the last Cities remaining in the wake of Eschaton - when Their Presence manifested upon the Earth and brought to an end the Human era. Other forces hunger for its power - barbarian legions of warped wasteland tyrants, hidden cults that multiply in the ruins of what once was, shadowy orders striving to manipulate the currents of perverse godlike powers, and others who you may find as friend and foe. Fouler things prowl Earth and the other realms it has been forcefully connected to but the foulest forces have ensured you are prepared - even if you don't survive.
Your past is your past as you remember it but it is one of many pasts. You have fallen before and in this roleplay, your characters have already perished and it is likely they will do so again. Death however, is not permanent in your servitude (unlikely to have been willing), you have been returned in forms you have not always desired.
Your characters will have a backstory and personality like in any other RP but there is an unusual twist: you are not entirely in control of who or what you are.
As the GM, controlling the eldritch deitites to whom you are chained, what you write down as your backstory, personality, and behavior is being deliberately manipulated. Parts of your past may be a past from a differen reincarnation, an implanted memory, a manifestation of a corrupted mind, a coping mechanism - what is fact and fiction about yourself will be gradually revealed (albeit often ambiguously) throughout this story. What you can discern as the truth will come with benefits as much as they will drawbacks. They Will Notice When You Truly Challenge Them and it is up to you how you deal with this, good or bad, what they gift you with and what that "gift" might actually be.
Granted, they cannot fully control you barring very specific circumstances and you can subvert, take avantage of, or possibly even corrupt and use their power as your own. How the story plays out can vary wildly and it is possibly to even side with the City if you can create/choose the correct story path. One thing is for certain; the supernatural abhors a vacuum of power and You Will Settle This Matter.
This is a roleplay that will focus on exploring/hunting fallen realms, combating the horrific forces that inhabit it, being manipulated by the very gods themselves, potential allegiances with the various characters and factions, and revealing your true nature. It is very, very likely that your characters will die at some point - you can have up to two. Your "deaths" may be of other versions of yourself or your current self - disembodying you yet allowing you to strategically re-manifest/reincarnate, or even to possess new and powerful eldritch forms albiet temporarily. You cannot perpetually reincarnate however and attempts to do so may have consequences that while not game-ending may prove... unpleasant.
The level of technology here can vary - some of it is 40K, others Fallout, and sometimes it is modern. Technology has gone in strange directions since Eschaton - you may have an 7.62 MM rifle in one hand, a blade made of the teeth of an extradimensional horror coming out of a shoulder-tendril, and a synthetic heart possessed by worm-like aether-parasites embedded in your chest to boot. While the power level present doesn't enter shonen battle anime territory, it is possible to become the Horror Movie Monster with time. Just be wary that you are not the biggest fish in the pond.
Combat will be turned based and you can only take a reasonable number of actions per turn - more perhaps as your gifts/mutations/powers are further perverted/awakened, but I will control how effective your actions are. Specificity in writing helps as does teamwork but teamwork comes with a problem of your own. The gods that manifested you are not necessarily all on the same side and they will eventually try to turn you against one another. The sensory, ethereal, and mental perception of your party may be warped by the GM at certain intervals - you will see things that are and are not there. Try to avoid OOC-ing in these cases but do know that successfully surviving or defying these can gradually strengthen your character. It is possible to even "warp" these hallucinations/manipulations in a way with the right capabilities and/or items - remember, you can mindgame the gods back if you play your cards right.
I will also offer potential "actions" as suggestions at the end of my GM posts for you all to do. You do not *need* to follow them but it consider them as pointers as to what might be a good idea moving forward.
Magic in the setting isn't exactly formalized; controlling the unearthly powers that feast upon the Earth does however, take rather grotesque, eldritch forms. Summon clouds of teeming and shrieking worms, cause space itself to violently rot and vomit forth acid, conjure forth life-draining lightning in the shape of extending capillaries in veins, manifest spectres made of egregor-like thought-coalescence to unmake your enemies - and that is just combat-type "spells". I will be fairly lenient with your magic - give me the vibe, function, and appearance but do know that magic has its limits and you can still be violently beaten to death with a large enough stick... and vice versa.
This is going to be a pretty gruesome RP. The aesthetic is occult black and death metal inspired, very very little will be pleasant to look at or experience, and your characters are going to be horrifically affected by things they cannot entirely control deliberately using them for a horrific end. The things you are going to do in turn (possibly to your masters) are also going to be horrific. It is fair to say that you arguably are by default the villains though what you are by the end can be another matter entirely.
The RP will likely get into gear starting the first two weeks of June. In the meantime, freel free to ask any questions and work on character sheets, or just post if you're interested in joining.
Character Sheet
(It is okay if yours doesn't match this outline)
Name(s): Including nicknames or titles(It is okay if yours doesn't match this outline)
Age: 20 minimum
Prior incarnations: How many have you had? How well do you remember them? Do you even remember them?
Allegiance: See below for the monstrous powers of one of the Egregors that you are enslaved to. How these powers manifest will be explained as you attempt to summon them.
Appearance: Image and/or detailed description
Gear: What are you carrying? Weapons, items, and otherwise.
Magic: What are your otherworldly powers like?
Personality: What are you exactly?
Remembered History: Who are you up to this point? Or rather, who do you think you were? How did you end up in this predicament?
Mutations/Abberations: Something about you is off It may be subtle, beneath the skin, on the soul, not in the physical plane. It can also be worse.
Allegiances
Infinite judgement upon all before its self; unending corridor of ravenous perception scouring oceans of flesh with the purest desire to know. Curiosity and adoration unending that outstrips the others, a small cosmos of ocular-worlds tied together as if a network, its sight coursing through your presence. Servitude to its unceasing glare grants you the truest of sight - hunt down what hides from you, reveal the fault in ironclad defence, and demand the attention of the monstrous and mundane alike with your presence.
Relentless, perpetual motion, viciousness manifesting as hunger, servitude portrayed through infestation. Only its limbs have been seen; a body that extends and burrows in all manner of space and location, profanation carried on every fanged limb. Experience mind-crushing tenacity and the overdose of savagery in every cell of your form, never more alone with the presence of the one-and-many at your command, and transgress any boundary that dares to stand before the one-person army that you have now become.
True mastery of immortal arts bears disdain for the definite form, enshrouding not just worlds but replacing space with its porous mess of gas, flesh, and melding sorcerous miasmas. Rituals and rites to attain mere fragements of its un-consciousness' blessing warp practitioners beyond the point of redemption. With its gift, mastery of forbidden art embeds itself where the mind dares to descend, engrams primed like munitions in a body now as much mysticism as it is meat. Form as altar, action as devotion.
The rejection of purity as a moon became not a sun but a living ever-expanding catacomb, ever consuming, recyclying, regenerating, and decomposing its self in a cycle of perpetual rebirth. All things return to their basest elements, of which their purest knowledge emerges, and this is its eternal law. Defy the failings of your body and evoke the undoing of theirs, the boundary between biological life and death stretched and bent at your command. Travel through the filth and soil unimpeded to enforce its will.
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