Kobold King

For one odd moment, Lightwards felt the urge to laugh. He bit his tongue, hoping the odd feeling didn't show on his face. His sense of humor had gotten progressively stranger since his last accident, and he wasn't yet sure he liked where it seemed to be heading. He gave a pointed look at the two Epics as he tried to consider his options. They were obviously powerful people--nobody would treat an Epic so cavalierly unless they were either powerful Epics themselves or colossal idiots. The name 'Doctor Funtimes' suddenly rang a bell in his head, and something else clicked into place. "I've heard of an Epic by your name," he stated slowly, fixing the woman with a stare. "I am told you reside in a bouncy castle. I didn't believe it, but I'm beginning to think that's precisely the sort of idiocy I can expect from you."

Lightwards tried retorting to the petulant Epic's demands, but heard only static on the other end. Frowning, he peered out the window and saw the cocky Epic taking a bite out of the radio. Or... what seemed to be the radio. It looked much floppier than it had been. He handed his duffle bag back to Mr. Sadry. He gestured for Mrs. Sadry stand guard by the door, and sent the vulture back out the window with a command to circle the block. With a resigned sigh, he adjusted his coat, made sure he had a pistol on his hip, and headed out the threshold onto the porch. He walked cautiously off the porch and towards the sidewalk couple. Once there, he saw that Donald's shirt had been slightly stained by meat juices, and that the cocky male Epic was holding a bit of sirloin steak. There was an obvious implication about his radio's fate, but he wasn't ready to believe it just yet. That would defy what little logic he still believed in. Instead he scowled at the rainbow-dressed woman. "My name is Lightwards. I am the emperor of this land and the savior of civilization. I am the conqueror of death and the slayer of a thousand fools. What the Calamity did you do with my radio?"

Donald the zombie turned to leave the house in his sullen, mindless way. Just as his hand clutched the doorknob, however, Lightwards stopped him with a whistle. "What in Calamity's name...?" he muttered incredulously. The sidewalk in front of the house had been grey and empty, but it was suddenly inhabited by a pair of people and colors that made his eyes hurt. "Probably an Epic, but definitely an epic fashion fail," Lightwards said with a smirk, facing his Warrior. He sighed as Donald returned a typically blank look. "I'll teach you how to laugh later. But regardless, we're about to meet a new Epic. I'll guide you through it." He took his duffle bag from Mr. Sadry, who'd politely been holding it for him. He zipped it open and shuffled through its contents for a moment. It was mostly filled with spare ammo cartridges and cans of spam. Lightwards had found some very interesting uses for spam in his day, but now wasn't the time for that. Instead he pulled out a pair of hand-held radios, turning them both on and putting one in Donald's shirt pocket. ---- Nathan and Funtimes stood facing the house in silence for a moment before the front door swung open, revealing a young man in a utilitarian outfit. He began to slowly walk down the steps of the porch and towards the pair. As he drew nearer, Nathan noticed the odd way in which he carried himself--slowly but deliberately, with a facial expression that remained dull even in the face of Doctor Funtimes' outfit. He'd made the conclusion that this was man was in the same unpleasant situation as the vulture from before when the man abruptly stopped a few paces in front of them. A bulge in his shirt pocket crackled for a moment, and a voice came over what seemed to be a walkie-talkie of some kind. "Hello, Epics of Portland. I am called Lightwards. This is my assistant, Donald. Say hello, Donald." The man said "Hello" in a voice that did not carry much conviction. Or any emotion or volition at all, for that matter. "Welcome to the area hereby known as the Empire of Light," the radio-voice went on, sounding rather pleased with himself. "State your business."

I don't get it. Everybody has to open a jar every once in a while.

Mr. Thomas Sadry sipped a cup of weak tea as he rocked in his chair, keeping any eye out the house's only window as he waited for the long night to begin. He remembered a time when he and his wife would set up their rocking chairs on the front porch, sitting together as they watched the sun set. This had been a good neighborhood, back in the day. Back in the day, he thought with a chuckle. Listen to me. I sound like an old man. He was only forty-five; he didn't consider himself to be an old man, but maybe times had changed enough to make his view of the world old-fashioned. Suddenly the window shattered into a million fragments, scattering across the room. Mr. Sadry swore slightly as he stumbled out of his chair, trying to put some distance between himself and the now open window. There was a very dazed-looking vulture lying on the living room carpet, bleed profusely from shards of broken glass stuck in its body. "Calamity," he muttered, using a more modern curse. "I've never seen a buzzard fly through a window like that. You sick?" The vulture flopped over onto its side, slowly rising up and fixing him with an odd stare. "Don't look at me like that," Sadry said nervously. "I'm not dead. Shoo." It opened its beak and began flapping its wings, leaping off the carpet and colliding with his chest. "What the--" The sentence descended into a garbled scream as the creature's beak entered his chest cavity. ---- Mary Sadry heard the sound of shattering glass, quickly followed by her husband's screams. Grabbing a pistol from where it was conveniently stored, she rushed into the living room in alarm. "Tom!" Her husband was dead, lying on the ground with a gaping hole where his chest should have been. A blood-soaked vulture sat on the rocking chair, apparently preening itself. She continued to stare in horror as a man in a professor's attire knelt by her husband's corpse and put his hand on the forehead. Thomas Sadry opened his eyes with a gasp, settling into a blank expression not like her husband's usual thoughtfulness. "You're an Epic," Mrs. Sadry said weakly. She pointed the pistol firmly at the maniac's face. A man she hadn't seen fired his own pistol from the doorway, shooting her multiple times in the chest. The last thing she heard as she bled out was the casual voice of the Epic: "Thank you, Donald. I didn't see her there." ---- Lightwards raised the woman as well, looking appeased at the now vacantly staring Sadry couple. "Someone's going to notice if I keep doing this. I'm probably infringing on some other Epic's territory." Donald the zombie nodded. Lightwards had told him to do so whenever he was speaking--it made a more convincing illusion that Donald was an attentive listener. Casually, Lightwards shot the vulture, dealing a killing blow. He placed a hand back onto it, restoring it back to life. It seemed odd, killing in order to heal minor wounds, but he'd gotten used to it. Somehow, his miracle-working restored bodies to a peak health they hadn't been in when alive. He'd study how it happened, but one of his guiding philosophies was not to look gift horses in the mouth. "Smell anything?" he asked the newly re-reanimated buzzard. It looked somehow even more dazed than it had been earlier, but it bobbed its head absently. "Living people, then," Lightwards muttered. "Donald, I want you to check outside. If anyone approaches this house, or if you recognize an Epic, come back to me immediately." A little darker than I'd originally intended... when he meets Funtimes, these segments are either going to lighten up or get really creepy. EDIT: Added a touch more, it didn't copy and paste properly the first time. So there are a couple more lines at the end than when this was first posted a minute ago.

Having never been, I have no idea. That guy almost found out, though.

Calamity shines bright over this world, and the empires of Man rise and fall and squabble below its warm red light. The impossible star was faintly beginning to make its first appearance, a faint orange outline barely perceptible in the waning sunlight. Slightly more obvious in its path across the evening sky, a vulture struggled to maintain flight in the drizzling atmosphere of Portland, Oregon. The vulture was not the beginning. But it was a beginning. The vulture flew over the city streets, passing over the heads of a couple on a motorcycle as part of its long sweep over the city. It eventually left the city entirely, settling by the side of a road just outside the city limits. There was a man waiting for it--an average-sized man with a scholarly look about him, wearing rather ragged professor's attire stained with blood and marked with a prominent bullet hole in the chest. His expression was a curious mixture of confidence and confusion, marked with a hint of satisfaction as his servant clumsily swooped in to perch on a car hood beside him. "I trust you've enjoyed your flight," the man said, giving the vulture a stroke on the top of its bald red head. "Nobody shot you down this time. It's always a pain having to find you and wake you up again." The vulture, as always, merely fixed him with a blank stare. The man called Lightwards sighed, giving the undead buzzard a thorough examination. "Blood on your beak," he exclaimed happily. "Let's not wait. There's not much daylight left to waste. Take me to it." The vulture hopped off of the battered old car and began strutting and haphazardly flying down the road, leading him along. Lightwards picked up a duffle bag and followed the bird. They soon came within the outskirts of the city. It was quiet and serene--Lightwards guessed that the inhabitants of Portland were waiting out the night in their homes, staying out of any roaming Epic's way. It was a clever decision on their part. If they were outside, he would have killed several by now. The vulture stopped on the outside of a parking garage. Lightwards nodded, touching the bird's head as he entered the dark environment. It hopped onto his wrist and used its own sense of smell to guide him through the darkness. It was tricky, navigating through a dim room via a dead vulture. But Lightwards prided himself on working with what he had. Occasionally it even provided an advantage over those who relied on flashlights and lanterns. He already knew what he was being led to. The body of what seemed to be a young man, heavily bled out on the concrete ground. No doubt the man had been engaged in some covert activity when the vulture had attacked. A substantial part of his stomach had been opened up by the vulture's beak, and he was clutching a pistol from when he'd presumably attempted to fight back against his avian assailant. It hadn't worked. Even the most weary of street thugs were prone to being caught off guard by a lethally aggressive undead buzzard. Lightwards gingerly placed his hand on the corpse's forehead, performing his miracle. The man opened his eyes and let out a brief gasp, his more serious wounds closing themselves as death was reverted across his body. There was a brief look of confusion over the man's face before it settled into the dull expression of servitude that was worn by all of his Warriors of Light. "Good morning," Lightwards said with a smile. "I will be the emperor of your afterlife. Your name?" "Donald," said Donald the zombie without any trace of emotion. "I'd like to ask you a few questions, Donald," the professor went on. "Tell me about the other Epics in this city. Donald the zombie gave what information he could. What information he had possessed while alive was likely incomplete, and Lightwards' servants always lost quite a lot of memory after he brought them back. He got the general impression that there were multiple Epics engaged in some sort of turf war across the city. While Donald the zombie had difficulty expressing what powers they possessed, he was able to give a few names. Corpsemaker, Funtimes, Scorch, Voidgaze... only names, but perhaps some use could be extracted from them. Lightwards was certain a great deal of the info had been corrupted, though. Donald the zombie didn't know much, but he seemed fairly confident that one of the Epics lived or had lived in some kind of bouncy castle. With a shake of his head, he gestured for his newest creation to rise off the ground, handing him the duffle bag to carry. "Take me to where there are people," he commanded. "I want a little extra protection by the time the sun rises. And brace yourself, Donald--it's probably going to be a busy night." So there you go. My first post here. This is also the first time I've done something like this, so feel free to criticize or complain about it being too long. Subsequent posts will likely be shorter and not contain such blatant Wheel of Time rip-offs. By the way, if anyone wants to claim "Donald the zombie" as a former henchman of theirs, I'd be only too happy to have annoyed a fellow Epic so early into my career.

I refuse to believe "Awesome" isn't a title, somewhere.

Great, thanks.

By the way, does anyone know what the time of day is in the game right now? Daylight hours? Midnight?

Achievement unlocked: "People to Avoid at Parties."

It all depends on how annoyed the fish was with people who poke it in the mouth with hooks.

I've created a character, and after running him past TwiLyght, I'm posting his description here as a general reference. Full Description (Sans weakness): His name is Lightwards, formerly known as Thomas Cardinal. He was a thirty-four year old professor of ecology in a Californian university before gaining his powers. His powers are similar to that of a necromancer--he is capable of restoring corpses or body fragments into whole, living beings. These living beings, of course, experience varying levels of intellectual decay. Most of them retain a decent portion of their former memories and intelligence, but become extremely susceptible to his voice and commands. He can repeat the process on a subject however much he wants, though eventually their minds will have decayed to the point of uselessness and he'll find new bodies. As a general rule, less intelligent entities are easier for him to maintain control over, so he usually travels around with an escort composed of various pieces of roadkill rather than control many human corpses at a time. Theoretically he could probably maintain a hold over around twenty dead humans at a time, although it would take a lot of focus. This is his primary power. His secondary power is the ability to resurrect himself after being killed, though the same intellectual decay still takes effect. He's been killed twice before, once by a lucky student with a gun and once by another Epic. This has knocked his sanity down a few notches--while once he was a semi-rational if immoral teacher, now he's become a delusional man who believes himself to be part a "guiding light" for civilization. In his educated mind, he is a unique opportunity for humanity to defeat death and become the dominant force of the universe. His original goal was to simply carve out a small chunk of territory for himself, but his intellectual decay has brought him a far loftier ambition: the universe itself. And he has just enough cleverness left to make this insanity a dreadful possibility. His weakness is [DATA EXPUNGED]. Summary For Those Bored by the Rambling Above: His name is Lightwards--a delusional title based on the idea of the dead moving towards a light. He's basically a necromancer, reanimating corpses into healthy living entities under his control. The stronger the original mind was, the harder it is for him to control the reanimated corpse--the extent of his power is probably controlling around twenty human corpses, with focus. Zombies he creates tend to experience mental decay. He can resurrect himself, but with the same mental decay handicap. He's died twice before, turning him from a fairly rational if immoral man to a delusional psychopath who sees himself as the savior of civilization.

Can we have a legal course taught by Professor Darkness?

Much student gossip is centered around who is or isn't Headmaster Hoid in disguise. (Sometimes he is himself one of the students gossiping on the subject.)

Frankly I'd rather install a giant mechanical respirator a la Darth Vader into my chest than stop petting cats. They're sweet and friendly, but give out an aura of being independent creatures, unlike dogs which tend to strike me as rather clingy. Don't get me wrong, dogs are awesome, but I love the distinctive personality cats have.

I believe I've mentioned my love of Funtimes before. If I end up joining, I'll definitely be seeking her out. (Proof that I have no common sense or self-preservation.)

I left out the small kittens who may be going to live with neighbors. I love cats, but unfortunately cats have a tendency of loving each other and making a whole lot more cats. All of the cats I listed besides Julian are descended from Momotaro and Jade Dingle. Ha. Pugs always look awesome in pictures, though I've never had the joy of meeting any in person. Allow me to virtually pet Mollie and Bruno. I suppose I should also mention my dogs, Fang Gripsnarl and Samwise. I didn't mention them from the outset because I'm more of a cat person. They're delightful creatures though, always looking for love. My cat Nekko is a very large, heavily muscled cat, and is also one of the sweetest felines I've ever seen. He makes friends with pretty much every other animal on the farm, including goats and the big dogs. When pet, he has a tendency of crawling into people's laps and rubbing up against their faces. Is my love of cats still coming through? Watch yourself, or I'll go into detailed behavioral analyses of every one of them...

I'm a little confused about the general construction of this... is there a moderator for the game? How precisely does one go about joining it?

It's not called "Awesome" Pets, but hey, awesomeness is certainly appreciated.

I've been wondering how many Sharders keep pets in their households, and if so, what kind of pets, the pets' names, what kinds of behavior the pets engage in, and a number of other pet-related queries. I like pets. I live on a farm, and on top of that I have somewhere over a dozen cats named Momotaro, Jade Dingle, Julian, Oreo, Rory, Sergeant Zimmykins, Raggedy, Loki, Nekko, Oni, Shadow, Splotches, and my personal favorite of the names, The Blackthorn. Anyone else have too many cats pets that they love to talk about?

Or let someone kill him/her off. Thanks for replying. If there's any room (looks crowded already), I might try to come up with a decent character idea.

So, um, quick question... How much time, on average, would you say this game takes up? Is it as simple as writing a brief little action description every day?

Elantris spoilers ahead. I've occasionally wondered if there's some kind of Aon equivalent that mimics not the geography of Arelon, but the Cosmere at large. I could imagine using such a "super-Aon" to worldhop, though it can't be easy--you'd need a knowledge of cosmic layout that you'd be hard-pressed to gain without radio telescopes. On Scadrial, the best I can think of is to politely ask a local deity to sling you into another solar system. Nalthis? Aside from Awakening a sword to "Bring me to other worlds", it's hard to imagine using the manipulation of Spiritual aspects to cross vast distances of space. On Roshar, I bet that's what the Surge of Transportation is for. Perhaps Elsecallers and Willshapers can use Shadesmar like a sort of warp space, allowing them to leap across cosmic distances.

We should have an "Awesome Pets" thread.