18th Shard

Like kenod noted, yes, it's at 90 (first ideal) + 45 (skilled melee combatant), but you get an automatic -5 for the first ideal and another approximately -5 for being broken enough to have a Nahel bond. That puts you at 125 without any real weaknesses besides the First Oath. Getting it down 5 more points shouldn't really be too much of a hindrance.

Emily made her rounds, checking on patients in the Cognitive Ward. She looked in on Vivica through a marshmallow-sauce coated window, who was chatting with her imaginary friend again, but otherwise seemed stable for tonight. A new patient seemed in perfect health, but was apparently catatonic - his charts had a short list of symptoms with no diagnoses and no history of anything like this occurring among family members. She checked his IV, which wouldn’t need changed for another hour or so. The next room over had a young mother and her daughter, who had inherited an odd effect from the Nightwatcher from her father. Apparently, the child was only capable of seeing through her peripheral vision, which was more acute than most people’s and also had a tendency to peek through into the Cognitive Realm. The little girl, Josie, was getting fitted for a pair of custom classes that were supposed to help refract more light towards the edges of her eyes. Emily smiled as the little girl talked about her favorite colors - it reminded her of her daughter, Jarah, when Jarah had had to get a new cast. Josie excitedly told Emily about the new glasses she was going to have - apparently, the rims were going to be bright pink and have a “really awesome pattern” on them. Suddenly, Emily winced with pain. She was getting a massive headache again. She rubbed her forehead and made a quick excuse to leave the room. She turned the corner and leaned against the wall. Something odd is happening again. I don’t have a daughter. Whatever this is, no matter how many tiny details I remember, it’s not real. She kept telling herself it, even as she remembered ‘her daughter’s’ third birthday party, and painting ‘her’ room. Sparks, she even remembered how painful childbirth had been with Jarah. I need to get checked out. I’ll finish my shift, then have one of the other nurses do an eval. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply for a few seconds, then checked her watch. Only two hours to go. Maybe one of the patients was unknowingly broadcasting memories. It wasn’t the oddest thing that had happened in the Cognitive Ward - they did tend to get the craziest people on this side of the hospital. She tucked some stray hair back into her ponytail, then started checking on the closest patient. She finished the near side of the hallway, then started making her way back up the other side. Most of the patients on this side were asleep, so the lights were dimmed. She stopped at Sanax’s room. Here’s a crazy shot in the dark. She rubbed hand sanitizer on her hands, then knocked. “You can let her in, door,” Sanax called out. Emily waited for a moment. “Door! You aren’t supposed to keep the nice nurse waiting. She has a bad headache, we don’t want her to start developing orthostatic hypotension. She’s probably already slightly dehydrated.” Emily could her Sanax moving around inside the room. He came to the window, waved, then opened the door. “Miss Emily, I am really sorry. The door is being really bad today. Wouldn’t let the nutritionist in earlier, either.” He glared at it, then gestured her inside. When they passed the curtain at the front of the room, he closed the curtain, then covered his mouth conspiratorially. “Now it can’t hear us.” He pointed at the door and whispered. “If I was you, I would fire that door. It’s not very nice. Earlier today, all I wanted was to get my special sword, but the door wouldn’t let me out. I think it locked itself and scared the other nurse away. I said, ‘Hi Nurse, can I get my sword back?’ and then the door made a creaking noise, like this, ‘Eeeeeh uuhh,’ and she just left. Then the door locked her out!” He frowned toward the doorway. “I think maybe the door is scared of my special sword. Maybe the door works for the light!” His eyes widened as he considered the new, terrifying possibility. Emily took in his tirade against the door with a small smile, then sat down on a couch. Sanax was definitely crazy, but he seemed pretty harmless. It was almost endearing how indignant he’d gotten about the door’s bad manners. He’d gotten more stable since the last time she’d seen him - he’d stopped going off on rhyming tangents at least, and usually gave her questions relatively coherent answers. In a lot of ways, dealing with him was like dealing with a four-year old, except with a far larger vocabulary. She took a sharp breath as another wave of pain swept her head. The floor spun just a little, as if she’d experienced a small earthquake. Sanax sat down on the bed in front of her and stared at her. “That’s a big owie. Do you want some water?” He took a drink of a water bottle, then offered her the rest. She shook her head. “Why is it hurting like this?” She felt like her ears were plugged, and the pressure was making her eyes teary. “I have been using our Chromium-fabrial to make sure to detox any residual investiture from patients, and even then I can feel this pressure, pushing on my head. It keeps getting worse. And I have all these memories of a daughter, so detailed and precise.” Emily looked up at Sanax. “I don’t have a daughter. I’m not even dating anyone right now. And yet, I know exactly what it’s like to love a child with all of your heart, and it hurts so bad because I know she won’t be at home tonight.” Sanax leaned forward and put a gloved hand on her head. He moved his other hand in front of her, a foot away. He watched her eyes as if checking if her eyes were tracking his finger. He shook his head seriously. “Miss Nurse, where does the pressure feel like it’s coming from?” His eyes were surprisingly lucid, staying focused on her for longer than a few seconds. Emily thought for a moment. “Just behind the ears.” Sanax nodded. “Temporal lobe. Memory bindpoint.” He pulled off a glove, then touched her with a cool finger just behind the ear. As his finger touched her, the world went black. She closed her eyes, and opened them in a room just like this one. She was sitting next to a little girl laying on the bed, her little Jarah. Jarah put her hand in Emily’s. “Mommy, I’m scared.” “I know, sweetheart. But these doctors will fix you right up, and then you’ll be able to play just like normal.” Jarah nodded, then sat still as the anesthesiologist put a mask over her mouth and began pumping oxygen and a sedative to the little girl. “Thanks, Emily. I didn’t want to have to hold her down to put her under.” Emily smiled, then left the room. There was no way she was going to stay in the room as they started the surgery. It was hard enough seeing her little girl in a hospital gown, but they should be able to correct her left leg’s growth, and then Jarah would be able to run and play with the other kids her age. The world faded around her, and she opened her eyes back in Sanax’s room. “What was that? It was so real. That was Jarah’s leg surgery.” She looked up at Sanax. His eyes were solid black. She pushed back on the couch, away from him. Her headache came back with a vengeance. Sanax watched her with his dark eyes. Any concentration he’d had before was gone. “Headache. Muffin bake. Sand rake.” He sat down on the bed and began to rock slightly. “Eyes awake. Angry shadows.” Emily tried to stand, to leave, but the couch was spinning. She stepped forward unevenly before tripping toward the door. She knelt, head pounding. There was high-pitched squealing, resonating in her skull like she was made of shattering glass. Her stomach churned with the ground’s movements. The room door was open and someone stepped in. The curtain opened, and a man with skin-like melting tar stepped through. His legs squished unnaturally, as if they were springs wrapped in tar-flavored jello. Emily rolled into a sitting position and grabbed the trash can. Where his face was supposed to be, there was just a drooping black liquid, running over the outline of a skull, with no eyes or mouth, or nose. Emily threw up. The tar man reached for her, and Emily scrambled into the corner of the room. She tried to stand, but her vision was still swimming before her, and she slipped back to the floor, hitting her head on the floor. The creature reached out an arm and a dark ooze seeped onto her arm. The room stopped spinning. Her headache stopped, and she could feel consciousness slipping away. There must have been some kind of sedative in the tar. Her kicks did nothing to dissuade the monster, and she could feel herself losing the battle with the sleep pushing in on her mind. Suddenly, the tar creature jerked backwards, all of its slime pulling away. It writhed as if in pain. The lights in the room flickered, and darkness seemed to envelop the monster, ripping at it like acid. The tile floor cracked, and as Emily watched the cracks filled with darkness, dropping away into nothing. As the tar man faded away, Emily could see Sanax standing behind it, ungloved had leaking darkness. His black eyes glared at the tar until it was entirely gone. He dropped his hand to his side, and the cracks in the tile came together, leaving behind only a few spiderweb cracks on one tile. Sanax frowned. “I don’t like ooze.” Emily tried to stand, but her legs were refusing to cooperate. Sanax gently picked her up and helped her sit on the couch. Sanax moved a metal drawer in front of the door, then sat back on the bed, staring. “Very bad door. Miss Emily is going to fire you. Ooze is non-sanitary.” He took some hand sanitizer and began to rub it in up and down his arms repeatedly. He finished rubbing in the first bit of sanitizer, then got some more and started over. Emily tried to remember what had happened. She’d had a headache, and Sanax had talked with her about the odd memories she was having, and then… she must have hallucinated something attacking. Emily felt at a bump on her head from when she’d fallen. I must have a concussion. She had a headache, was a bit dizzy, and… She yawned. She was really tired now. She’d have to get a bit more rest if she was really concussed. It would be best if she checked in with another nurse before... She yawned again. She closed her eyes for just a moment, and almost didn’t feel herself leaning down to lay on the couch. She slept. In her dreams, she watched a little girl, playing on a playground. Sanax kept whispering at the door. His eyes were gray now. He could see them in the shiny window. That was good. Black was bad, like ooze. Ooze was nasty. It got everywhere and you had to gets lots and lots of soap to clean it up. Sanax didn’t like cleaning. That’s why he liked the hospital. It was so clean and nice. And white. There wasn’t any ooze here, nope, cause that was bad. Sanax pulled his glove back on. His hands were kind of cold, probably from sucking all the light out of the ooze man. He looked over at the nice nurse. She was asleep. That was good. She had seemed really scared of the ooze man. She might even be in shock. Sanax pulled out the blanket he’d kicked off the bed earlier. He’d hidden it under the bed, where no one would look for it. Most people were too scared of the little monsters down there, waiting to eat them. Sanax wasn’t scared though. The blanket had just helped keep the monsters from getting out and scaring other people. He laid the blanket on top of Emily, then sat back down on the bed. Ooze was bad. He didn’t like it. He liked his white robe though, and his special sword, and the nice nurse, and his friend, even though his friend was missing, and he liked his white gloves and the white ceiling and the white floor, and the brown table, and the glassy-colored glass, and the metal doorknob, and...

I'd add that if anyone really did start developing memories of the other timeline, it's not a natural progression for someone to realize it is a different timeline. I'd say 90% of people who have those memories come back would start thinking they were going crazy or hallucinating, etc. - not to mention most of them will shortly forget completely due to Aylitha's creatures anyways. So even if someone does start getting this sense that something is wrong, that's not a plus for your character, it's usually something negative (i.e. Sanax is entirely insane and has blackouts, or Lita having paranoia and almost compulsive behavior). Like Fatebreaker said, the changes are going to mess with a person's conception of reality. Either their mind or the world will unravel around them, and this early on in the Era, I'd bet on their mind going first.

So there isn't really a time shift involved - it's essentially a massive-universe scaled Forgery, made permanent by the re-Spiking. The altered past didn't actually occur, like in most Forgeries - the Forgery is just powerful enough to make it seem in almost every respect that it did.

Xanas stood in a large Alleyway filled with fog. Sterombeck stood next to him with a rangefinder, while another Denizen stood in line with them about twenty paces away. Several other Denizens stood about 100 meters away, holding signs with ever decreasing texts – like a magical ophthalmology exam. The Tineye spike Xanas had procured earlier was proving to be somewhat stronger than the Alleycity standard – outdistancing it in sight by a factor of almost 1.5. Xanas nodded to Sterombeck, who began signaling the testers to move farther back. The day had gone well so far – the new koloss bindpoint subject had lasted longer than their previous tests, surviving almost an hour before his heart gave out, and Xanas hadn’t suffered any blackouts with others nearby. So far, all of his tests on the blackouts had come back negative, but he was currently trying to allow any foreign investiture to completely be removed out of his system to determine if he was suffering some kind of allergy-like reaction to a particular source of investiture. As the Denizens began holding up their new signs at 125 meters, Xanas felt a tremor run through the Alley. He held his hand up, and Tsarik formed into a long, thin sword. Xanas wasn’t a combat specialist, but many of the abominations that leaked through from other Alleys were unintelligent. An Alleyway formed near the rear of the room, and a man with a bowler hat and a clean-shaven face stepped through. Sterombeck had looked up as Xanas had summoned Tsarik; now he carefully looked down. The Visitor handed a Denizen a small note, and gestured toward Xanas. The Denizen ran over, sweat dripping and hands trembling, and mumbled something about a day off and having the plague. Xanas nodded and unfolded the note. The note repeated itself twice more. Xanas sighed, then dismissed Tsarik as a Blade. He began to walk over to Cam. “You have a website now? That one’s new. Saves space on the notecard.” Cam nodded curtly. “We may need you to test some of the user interface software – we’ve lost a couple of potential customers when they tried to summon a representative to them.” “Is this what you decided to visit for? You could have sent a request through the system per our normal arrangement. I have work to do that is more efficient when I am not receiving frivolous –” “Xanas, please do not continue that statement. It is based on erroneous judgement and I want to deal with the actual Human Resource issue before requiring you to fill out a conflict mediation form.” That was odd. Cam usually looked for opportunities to give out conflict mediation forms. Cam extended a hand, and a piece of paper materialized into it. It looked like the standard DA stationery for internal requests that HR liked to request everyone use. No one really did. Cam held it out to Xanas. “I do not understand the purpose of this letter. Please explain it.” Xanas’s heart skipped a beat. I do everything correctly to avoid these kinds of encounters. He skimmed the letter, reading aloud under his breath. “Former experimental subject…infractions of general DA Hemalurgic standard practice… grafts without study, minor, sedation…remedied… Signed: Xanas Khaevarin?” His voice got slightly higher-pitched. Fortunately, Cam didn’t have perfect pitch. Probably. He looked up at Cam. “I never wrote this. I don’t even think we have a subject designated #A-139115.” His pulse quickened. “Where was this found?” “In a stack of papers delivered to me. My receptionist has no memory of it coming in with my other memorandums. As you noted, neither the subject number or nominal designation have any mention in our records. I decided to come to you directly with this before beginning internal reviews to ensure that we could eliminate you as the malfeasant. May I have your signature on this affidavit signifying that you are not its author?” Xanas nodded his thanks, signing the paperwork. “I appreciate that. I can assure you, I would never file an erroneous report. Would you give me a couple of months to conduct some investigations amongst my department before letting this out to the other departments? I’d like to keep this private if possible.” Cam’s gaze didn’t waver. “I will give you three weeks. If the perpetrator is not identified, HR will begin minimally-invasive inquiries, according to general policy, section 7, paragraph 12, approval date 1000 A.U.A.C.” Cam summoned a form on a clipboard, complete with a pen on the chain of little balls, and handed it to Xanas. “This is a statement of intent, stating you will fill out the requisite forms for this investigation within the next twenty four hours. I will need a formal notice of assumption of responsibility and a writ of forestallment for HR. The forms are the other pages on the clipboard.” Cam waited as Xanas skimmed the form, then signed it. Xanas always checked for the phrase, ‘Void where prohibited except where not prohibited.’ Because of an insurance claim within the early years of the disclaimer, HR had made it a policy that the validity of the disclaimer and terms and conditions of any form in the Alleys could be revoked upon consensus of at least 2 Denizens on the basis of this phrase; in matters between Denizens, a department head’s approval was required. Xanas had neglected to point out this meant he could negate an HR claim once - you only got one use out of any loophole with HR. Fortunately, he’d never had to use it. Taking back the statement of intent and his pen and clipboard, Cam turned away, and the Alley formed again in front of him. Xanas had always found it a shame that the Alley to DAHR was one of the more pliable ones. “If you need the conflict mediation form, you can send a request through the existing method or use our new support section of the website.” The Alley closed. Xanas folded the paper and set it in an inner pocket of his coat. He waited to be sure Cam was not returning, then looked at the Denizens in the Alleyway. Xanas breathed a soft sigh of relief. Every time he was forced to talk with Cam, he was sure it would be his last conversation. He breathed in just a little Stormlight to steady his hands, then called out that the department could take the rest of the day off. No one would be able to get any work done anyways, with how shaken up they all were. Xanas was made of sterner stuff, though. He checked to make sure he couldn’t feel any other nearby Alleys as the Denizens made their way to an established corridor. It would be fine. HR didn’t have any reason to expect Xanas was lying, so they shouldn’t have to make any other inquiries. He had three weeks to figure out what this letter was intended to do. That should be easy. No need at all to get HR involved again. Xanas shivered. Temperature controls must be dropping. Xanas began making his way back to his own lab. Tsarik reappeared from Xanas’s shadow. “This letter, it is not good, is that correct? This letter, it is from not Mac, the scary one?” Xanas handed him the letter, glad the spren had remembered not to say Cam’s name. “I don’t know what it is, Tsarik, but it most certainly is not good.” Xanas set the forms from Cam on his desk, then slipped his Alleycant pen out and began to twirl it deftly across his fingers. Determining the origin of this letter might require a level of finesse most of his operatives did not have. Fortunately, he knew someone who had had some training in intelligence gathering. He twisted the gemstone to a particular frequency, then began to spin the pen.

I like the idea of a new thread, particularly since I have a character who would be there right now!

The man in the white robe awoke. He was laying in a bed with soft, white cushions, almost like his robe. That was good, because the light didn’t like his robe. Maybe that meant it wouldn’t like this bed either. He sat up. The rest of the room was metal and white tile. That was also good. It reminded the man in the white robe of a place he liked. He didn’t remember that place but he remembered liking it. The metal and tile made it easy to clean up blood. A woman walked past the little window in the door. She saw him awake and came in. She was mostly wearing her own face, not like the other people he had seen. She was trying to subtly mask minute variations in skin color, but the man in the white robe remembered that was normal for a lot of people who still had their own faces. She shook his hand. “Hi, my name is Emily. I am one of the nurses here. What is your name?” the nurse asked happily. The man in the white robe thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I have a name. Is that important?” The nurse pursed her lips. “Well, amnesia is usually a sign of some kind of trauma, so it is a little worrying.” She pulled a clipboard off a hook on the wall and handed it to him with a marker. “Try writing your name without looking. Maybe your muscle memory will be able to recall what your conscious mind can’t.” The man in the white robe closed his eyes and began to write with his right hand. The marker smelled funny, kind of like paint but not. He opened his eyes. The nurse looked over his shoulder at the word on the page. “Good job!” “No, that is wrong. It is very bad. Not good. Very un-good.” Why did people make up big words for bad? Like awful and terrible and terrific and tyrannosaurus and tertiary and other ter- words. He swapped the marker to his left hand and began to write again below the other word. The lines were more straight, which was good. Bad lines made for bad Forgeries. The man in the white robe finished writing. The Thaylen glyphs spelled something. The man in the white robe tilted his head. It didn’t look like his name. Names were supposed to look like names, not like letters, he thought. Letters were like body parts - if they go together wrong, you just get a mess. The nurse read it aloud. “Sanax. Is that your name, dear?” “No. Maybe. I don’t think it is my name. Do I have to have a name? I just think me. I think that makes more sense than Sanax. Sanaz sounds like sanitary, and sanction and sandwich and sandbar and sandcastle. I don't like sandcastles. They fall apart too easy.” The woman shook her head. “I think you have some pretty severe cognitive damage. I wish we could get more indicators on you. It’s so hard to tell what is wrong with you when normal biological measurements don’t seem to work. No pulse, no blood pressure, ambient temperature - it’s similar to some kind of Lifeless, but then again, they don't have cognitive functions.” “Standard biochromatic nomenclature doesn’t include a designation on the kind of construct I am. Maybe note a Type 1.5 Biochromatic entity on the record - a sentient manifestation in a deceased host, though non-spontaneous and without a Biochromatic endowment.” Sanax started playing with the pen, doodling. He started drawing lines and circles, forming complex Rithmatic constructions. He liked the triangles - they had nice points, especially when the angles were right. Angles like that one were good for piercing things. The nurse was looking at him. Sanax felt a little self-conscious. It wasn’t his fault the triangles wanted to take the circle’s power. That was why it was a triangle. It wouldn’t do that if it were a square. He drew a hexagon around the circle to protect it. Maybe then she would stop looking at him? “What did you just say? A type one point five Biochromatic entity that what?” Sanax looked up. “I didn’t say that. I was just protecting the circles from the triangles. See?” He held up the clipboard to show her. The acute triangle and the isosceles were fighting now. They kept shooting the little squiggles at each other, though Xanas was having trouble drawing them shooting at the same time. She stared at the board for a second. “Follow me,” she finally said. "I want to test something." She opened the door and they walked to a nearby room. She unlocked a door with a shiny key that she took out of a pocket and opened the door partly. “What is wrong with this woman?” Sanax peeked in the window. Just cause the door was open didn’t mean you wanted to look in through one. Windows were for looking. Doors were for going places. Anybody would know that. A woman laid down on the bed in the room. Her fingers on one hand were a different color than the other. She looked very fancy. Probably a liar with fancy clothes like that. You only wear fancy clothes if you want someone distracted from your eyeballs. Her fingernails were a slate-grey, just like the veins in her legs. Her feet were black and crusty, which looked like it was probably really not good. Sanax didn’t know though. Some people liked their feet like that, probably. She was also dead. “I don’t know what is wrong with her. Dead people usually look less boring, maybe? Sometimes you can see their insides. She doesn’t look very nice on the outside, though. Her face looks cranky. Maybe that’s cause of all the rocks in her blood. That has to be really painful, almost as painful as waking up when you sat on your hands for a long time. Lots of pins and needles and spikes, and then you can feel the blood in your hands. Not very nice, except for other people. She is probably used to it though. Becoming a Soulcasting savant takes a really long time. Gangrene doesn’t take as long though, but I think,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “maybe she liked her feet a lot. Personally, I would have cut them off and used them as a doorstop.” He shivered. “Except maybe then the light would get in and I would have to throw the feet away.” The nurse looked at him with a mixture of amazement and disgust. “You could tell from here she was a Soulcaster?” Sanax thought her expression was funny. Soulcasting wasn’t that gross. Maybe she was just amazed she hadn’t thought of the doorstops. “I can get the doorstops for you if you want,” he said. She shook her head no, wrote something down, than walked with him back to the room he woke up in. That was good. Sanax liked that room. Maybe his friend would like the room too. He sat down on the bed. The nurse looked at him again, then shook her head and closed the door. ________________________________________________ Emily walked to the break room. Sanax, if that really was his name, had something very unusual going on upstairs. He alternated between incredibly perceptive and child-like extremely rapidly, and didn’t seem to have a concrete sense of self. And a sentient Lifeless? She saw a lot of weird things, but this one was definitely up there. She sat in the break room, pulling out her dinner. She’d packed chicken noodle soup. She'd made extra, since it was her daughter’s favorite meal. Wait, I don’t have a daughter. Emily could feel pressure in her forehead, like a migraine just starting to grow. She didn’t have a kid. Maybe she was thinking of one of her nieces? She rubbed her eyes and started eating. She needed to stop working late night shifts and get some decent sleep. How sleep deprived do you have to be to imagine you have a kid? She should put in a request for a day off. Maybe the next holiday, she shouldn't volunteer to work, even if she did need the money.

The man in the white robe grabbed at the aluminum gloves on the ground. These gloves were important. He didn’t know why, but they were important. He looked at the other gloves. There had been a boy. What was the boy’s name? The man in the white robe tried to think back. The boy, his name was… what was it? What was the name? He couldn’t remember. He looked around at the fruit trees. There was a sword hanging from a tree, a big, black blade in an aluminum sheath. This sword was special to him, he could feel it. He almost felt like it should talk to him. That was crazy though, and the man in the white robe wasn’t crazy. He knew he wasn’t. Insanity was being unable to function, having your mind deceive you. The man in the white robe knew his mind wasn’t tricking him. It was this world - something was wrong with the world. He couldn’t quite remember what the world had been like, but something was wrong. He looked in the sword. His eyes were gray and his hair was grey and his hands were gray, but his robe was white. Yes, very white, except where it wasn’t. The light didn’t like his robe, he knew that. The man in the white robe stood, and slung the sheath of the sword over his shoulder. The boy, he had been important, hadn’t he? He tried not to panic as he struggled again for his memory. Remember. The word reverberated through him, like a divine command. He fought the fog that seemed to cloud his memory. He couldn’t remember. All he knew was darkness. The gloves, they were important. As if by instinct, he put out his hand. The darkness liked him, wanted him to go on. He could feel it. Or was it his own mind, telling him to go on? Where was on? Was he in off right now? No, no, that was a diversion. It wasn’t important. He knew the darkness, and the darkness wouldn’t lie to him, would it? No, the darkness didn’t lie. The darkness would scream and reach for his soul, but it wouldn’t lie to him. The light, that was the lie. He could feel it. The light was full of liars. You couldn’t lie about what you couldn’t see. An Alleyway opened from the forest, opened into a whirl of darkness. The man in the white robe stepped into the darkness. The man in the white robe walked for minutes and minutes and seconds and seconds and hours and minutes until he came to the end of the darkness. There were walls on both sides of him, and darkness above him, and lights and explosions in the sky. And people. Was one of them the boy? Maybe they would know the boy. The man in the white robe grabbed one. This one looked like a coin, with a shiny side. “Have you seen the boy?” he asked. “I think the boy is my friend. He is important. Do you know him?” The person shoved him away, looking a little frightened. The man in the white robe stumbled into another person. This person had blond hair, and a mask with a silver eyepatch. “I am looking for the boy. Do you know him? You are not the person you look like. He has black hair, and his eye is the other side. That’s okay, though. I think he scares people like the boy. Do you know the boy?” The new person sucked in light. He looked nervous. The man in the white robe watched the light. The light was lying to the person. He grabbed it with his hands and watched the darkness eat the light. Now the person would be safe from the light. “You’re welcome. All the lights are liars, you know. They whisper like scratches in metal and like sparks in the sky. I don’t think the light likes me, though. Maybe the light likes the boy. Maybe that is why I don’t know where the boy is.” The man in the white robe could feel the darkness. It liked eating the light. Maybe if he ate all of the light, he could see where the boy was. Darkness wrapped around the person with the wrong eyeball and the bright hair. Then it wrapped around the man in the white robe. This darkness didn’t eat the light though. It just hid the light from getting inside his eyeballs. If the light got in his eyeballs, he would be in trouble probably. The darkness was soft and warm and it made him sleepy. The man in the white robe fell asleep in the darkness. ________________________________________________ Ned stepped forward quickly as the crazy guy fainted. His weirdly grey eyes rolled back into his head. Amisim grabbed the guy’s other arm and helped Ned prop him up against a lamp post. Amisim wiped his forehead, the gold paint there getting distorted by the motion. “Dude, this guy must have had way too many drinks tonight.” Ned shook his head. “I tried to use Regrowth on him, but it didn’t take. If he was just drunk, it should’ve burned all the alcohol right out of him.” Amisim shrugged. “Not my problem, man." He looked at Ned, the groaned when he saw the concern in Ned's eyes. "Come, on, let’s just stick him on the side of the street. He’ll be fine, he’ll wake up tomorrow with a killer hangover, and go on with his year. Nothing to worry about.” Ned looked back down at the man, passed out and slumping to the ground. “I don’t know, ‘Mis. You head on to the party, I’ll make sure he gets to the hospital and catch up.” Amisim shook his head in disappointment. “You and your tender heart. You know, not every crazy idiot in this city is worth spending time on. You gotta pick your battles. I’ll save you a piece of Marie’s pie if you get there before eight. One minute late, and you’ll have to get your own pie.” Ned’s stomach grumbled. Marie made the absolute best chocolate pie. He nodded. “Deal.” He pulled out his mobile and called an emergency service as Amisim started walking toward the east side of town. “Yeah, I got somebody who seems kinda sick. He just passed out, and he seemed like he might have had a blow to the head before then. He kept asking about somebody, but he wasn’t really lucid. Okay. I am on the corner of 5th and Hammond. Thanks!” He closed his mobile and waited for the hospital staff to arrive. He checked his watch. Hopefully they aren’t running behind tonight. Amisim better not eat that pie early.

@SingingMosaic So thinking over it, I had some ideas for how to incorporate your character's abilities into the cosmere, but I'll warn you it is jumping off the deep end into the weirdness of the Alleyverse. So the 3 abilities I picked out that were the most central/unique to your character were 1) the floating eyeball, 2) the sense of weird, and 3) the empathy (which as Sorana noted is a little bit difficult to implement). These were the thoughts of how to incorporate them. First, have your character by a Sleepless, a Dysian Aimian. This allows your character to have a specially-bred hordeling that can fly as an eyeball - there's your floating eyeball. Second, have this Sleepless have spent a lot of time on First of the Sun, and have bred hordelings that have symbiotically bonded with the worms from Patji. This allows you to have less crustacean hordleings and also to have developed abilities like animals from Patji. Some off the hordelings could have developed an Aviar-like ability to sense danger (like Sak). Others could have developed the ability to sense people by their Cognitive Aspects, similar to many of Patji's predators like nightmaws. A Sleepless is 45 points, the spiritual-warning Aviar is another 40, and I think the Cognitive sense would be comparable to life-sense and Allomantic copper (so 25-35 ish?). @Sorana might be able to say how much those ideas translate to your original character.

Maybe for the "sense for the weird", you go with an Aviar like Sak? One of the "you see yourself dead from nearby danger" ones?

FYI, tags only work outside a spoiler. I got it though. @Sorana @I think I am here.

Dressed in a deep black robe embroidered with golden Thaylen letters around the hemline and sleeves, Xanas slipped his mask on. It was a dark gray mask, covering one eye with a silver patch, his other eye shining golden through the slit on the other side of the mask, with more glyphs embroidered in the same gold as his skin around its edges. He slipped a small steel spike into an inner pocket next to a few diamond broams. It was a good night for acquisitions for the Alleys. So many drunken, foolish targets to ply information or allegiance or other talents from. Of course, most Denizens in his department didn't get to enjoy the festivities, but no one would dare suggest that Xanas was incapable of maintaining a low profile. Tsarik, his inkspren, stood straight-backed, hands folded behind him, atop the table, and looked at the mask quizzically. “This face, Xanas, it is not yours. Why is it?” “It is a human story, Tsarik. They speak of a Wandering God, with one eye of flesh and one eye of silver- obviously a folk story invented about some early Hemalurgist among them who convinced the primitives he was divine. He probably just spiked some Rioter and Pulled everyone into worshipping him. People have been called gods for less.” "Why do you choose to be seen as what is not?” “Well, this Stranger is supposed to have been the god of Alleys – that, in all likelihood, means an early precursor to Denizens, even if we don’t have any records that go back that far. In wearing this mask, I am giving everyone the opportunity to know who I am.” He smiled. “It is a warning of sorts - even if most aren’t observant enough to see it.” Tsarik nodded, satisfied, then shrunk to a less conspicuous size, settling into a small patch in the shadows behind Xanas. Xanas opened the door of the small room and stepped into the narrow hallway. He gestured at the far end of the wall with a spread hand, pushing, and the Alley extended, stretching into the darkness. The darkness seemed to whisper to Xanas, harsh, guttural murmuring at the edge of consciousness. The whispers snarled in a language with no pattern and no rhyme. The Alleys had never enjoyed allowing others to bend them, though they seemed to give way before Xanas just a touch more readily than most of the others in his department. Mac had been the best at dealing with them, but it had been a long time since his touch had been felt on the Alleys. Even when he had still been in the Alleys, some of the more stubborn ones would ignore him. Xanas walked for what felt like a kilometer before the texture of the path beneath his feet changed. The walk seemed to get longer each time he twisted the Alley; at this rate, next year he would need to find a more compliant one. There were so few left these days that would allow him to travel quickly into the city. The dark slate floor became a quaint cobbled alleyway sandwiched between a bar and an inn. The sun was still settling above the horizon, turning the clouds ahead into a deep crimson. Red sky at night, Denizen’s delight, Xanas thought. Red sky in the morning, city’s warning. He stepped in front of the inn on his left, 'The Yellow Sea'. It was owned by an old Hallandren Drab, Llantess. Xanas walked into the raucous front room, carefully dodging the drunk Kertzian seated at the first table. It’s disgusting how out of control these masses get with their alcohol. Practically savages or animals with as much restraint as they display. The server was trying to explain to the Kertzian's tablemates that the inn was all out of the vintage they kept asking for, since Darkside wines were quite expensive. Sitting down at a table near the rear exit of the building, Xanas coughed as if to get the server’s attention. A young noble boy from Scadrial, he made his way over to Xanas, giving a couple of patrons refills of their drinks on his way. “Yes, sir, what can I get you?” “You are a descendant of Rashek, aren’t you, boy?” The server blinked in confusion. “Well, yes, that’s what my grandad said. Why?” “I have some friends who have been looking for someone like you. They have some, ah, opportunities for an individual of your bloodline. Could we perhaps step outside for a moment to discuss their offer?” “Um, sure, I mean, as long as it is just a moment. It’s a really busy night, what with all the celebrations…” “I’m sure this won’t take long.” Xanas stood and stepped out the back door into the alleyway. A couple of dumpsters sat there, filled with bottles and old food. Fireworks were going off in the distance like gunshots. The boy followed with a furtive glance over his shoulder. Xanas stood, his back towards the boy, and slid the spike out of his pocket. Tsarik stood in silence in the shadows behind the dumpster. Xanas spoke softly. “You are a Tineye, are you not? You seem to have exceptional hearing, hearing one little cough over all that chaos.” “Yes, sir, I am.” Xanas turned, holding the spike up to the light. The steel glinted in the lamplight. “Excellent. My friends have been looking for someone who can help them to see things a little more... clearly.” He gestured at the spike. “You’ve seen things like this before? Heard tale of what they can do, yes? Grant ordinary men the powers of the Mistborn of old. My friends would like to make it a gift, a sign of goodwill.” He could see a glint of excitement in the boy’s eyes. What young man could turn down the thrill of adventure, of power? Xanas stepped close to the youth, spike held out in front of him. He grabbed the young man’s shoulder. “This spike will turn a young Tineye like yourself…” Xanas stepped in, ramming the spike into the correct bindpoint in the aorta. The server’s white shirt began to turn a deep red, and the boy’s eyes widened with pain. “…into a corpse.” Xanas pulled the spike out again, sliding it into a metal tube Tsarik handed him. He held the tube beneath the hole in the boy’s chest, filling it with blood, then placed a stopper on top. He gently wiped off the tube and his hands in turn on the young man’s coat, then dropped the corpse to the ground. He dug in the boy's pockets, pulling out the tips he had gotten over the course of the night. It had to look like a mugging gone wrong. Satisfied, he looked out of the alley at the festivities, toward a statue dressed as a mustached man in a bowler hat and a monocle. Holding up the tube like a celebratory toast, Xanas gestured at the statue. “Just like old times.” He stepped back into the darkness of the Alleys as someone stumbled out of the inn. “Aredan!” Llantess dropped to the ground, grabbing the boy’s shoulders, checking for signs of life. “Happy Day of Rebirth,” Xanas whispered with a smirk as the darkness swallowed him, leaving only the stone alleyway behind. "Sorry about the mess."

Xanas Khaevarin opened his eyes. A wave of vertigo passed through him as fluorescent lights shone in his eyes. The concrete beneath him was cool to the touch. Xanas pushed himself into an upright position. Sterombeck was kneeling at his side. The eldritch abomination waved a grasshopper-like appendage at him. “Sir, you fell and blacked out. We tried to wake you, but nothing was successful, so we just had to wait it out.” Xanas rubbed his eyes as if he could clear the darkness hovering like saa in his vision. What a headache this was growing to be. “How long was it this time?” “Almost 30 minutes, sir, though we are in a bendalloy bubble, so I am not sure of the time outside.” Xanas stood, dusting off his dark cloak. He’d once used a white one, before he’d realized how easily blood spread. The darker one had lasted him quite a while – you could only see a few of the bloodstains near the hemline. “Sir, if you need, I can collect the subject tonight…” “No need, Sterombeck. I am perfectly fine. We will discuss this issue another time. This subject is important – his bloodline is significantly purer than many of those who’ve recently made their way to this forsaken planet. We wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to acquire him. Besides,” he smiled darkly, “it wouldn’t be right to miss a Day of Rebirth, now would it? Mac was a dear friend. I must honor him correctly if no one else will.” ________________________________________________ In a dark forest in the middle of a forgotten Alley, a man in a white robe stirred. A pair of metallic gloves lay on the ground next to him. Another pair of gloves sat in the dirt a few meters away. He was alone in the darkness, except for the ancient trees and a dead sword. He opened his eyes. They were black.

Aredan stopped in the road. An old man with a short white beard stood on the street corner. He set a large glass bowl filled with water on a pedestal in front of him. Calling out, he began his story. “It is said that in the beginning, there was a Void, and into this void came many cosmoses. Every possible cosmos existed separate and apart from the others. Nothing stretched in the space between except for the primordial Void from which they were born. It is impossible for the minds of mortals to understand this Void as it is, but perhaps an analogy may serve. The Void is like the city alleyway between the buildings of each universe, stretching and twisting among all that is.” The storyteller dropped a black ink into the water, swirling it slightly with a thin metal rod. The water became a murky black until the ink diffused to the bottom of the bowl. “There was a solitary being who resided inside of the Void, Voidus, the Lonely God. I know no stories of his creation, if indeed he was created. Like the Void which he inhabited, his true form is unknowable, even among the other gods. A sage of another world, a reptilian king, once tried to describe him thus, ‘The Lonely God authors reality, pages upon pages of demigods springing from his words; his gaze is like a slow stabbing from behind, in an Alley without light. The ancients saw the Lonely God in the parasites of a forbidden world, preying on others, but that is too simplistic. The Lonely God is, to put it simply... the void that is in all of us.’” The man dropped more ink into the still water, and it pooled in the bottom as if in a bubble. As Aredan watched the ink, he saw movement inside the cluster of ink. He burnt tin but couldn’t seem to make out what was going on inside. "The Solitary One entered the worlds and sought allies among the other gods. Some he slew; from others, he stole their souls; and in still others, he found those who would uphold his work: The Stranger, the Mother of Monsters, the Counter of Time - the gods of Alleys and abominations and lives.” Black sand fell onto the ink, piling on either side of it. The right side seemed to gleam with a metallic glow, like sparks. The left side started moving, and a tiny cremling poked its head out of the sand. Where did that come from? I don’t think he ever put one of those into the water. The cremling crawled into the mass of ink, vanishing. “After many eons of time, the Lonely God took the Stranger to a disobedient world, doomed to destruction, and they fashioned from it a world anew.” More black sand fell, piling onto the orb of ink this time, coating it like a miniature world. “They took Alleyways and folded them like steel into a Damascan blade; they took the light of other worlds and cast it into the darkness of this new creation. They took the very soul of a cosmos and stabbed it into the blood of the world, a spike cast up like a mountain from a cosmic forge.” The storyteller dropped a thin metal spike into the water. As its point touched the little sand world, the black sand flashed brightly, a wave of energy rippling out, turning the sand white. The sand settled into a layer on the bottom of the bowl. The old man scattered glowing diamond chips onto the sand, illuminating the water. “The Void parted for the Separate Being and the One-eyed God, and a sun beamed brilliant in the sky. This was the first birth of the world.” "Coursing in the veins of this new world were the Alleys. The Alleys wove through reality like an endless plane of alleys cutting through a city of empty buildings. Truly infinite, they followed no logical order, shifting and moving themselves as the gods decreed. Within their depths lived demons and devils, eldritch abominations who feasted upon fear, the children of the Lady of Monsters.” The white sand rippled, as if tiny creatures crept beneath it. “Upon these Alleys grew a city, a city of convergence and of power. Men and women sought the Solitary God within the Alleys, but in vain, for he dwelt not in them, and those who entered the Alleys rarely emerged unchanged. Their wrathful spirits haunted the city, possessed by the creatures whose homes they disturbed, searching for blood to spill. The monsters devoured the unworthy before disappearing back into the Alleys which birthed them.” Ink tendrils peeked through the sand. As they brushed the chips, the diamonds went dun. The bowl dimmed. "Some say those whose souls were taken live in the Alleys still, Denizens with dreadful eyes of spikes and twisting limbs warped by time and their pride. As the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer, sometimes you can see them, standing in the darkness of street endings, holding cursed pastries and fey desserts, cookies with spikes of death within them. One bite, and the Denizen condemns you, stealing your soul, never to be released. And so the ages passed in darkness and death, in chaos and disruption.” As chip after chip dimmed in the bowl, the sand began to fade back to a dark black. The storyteller spun the contents of the bowl with his rod, stirring up a thin whirlpool of dark sand. "The time finally came when the dwellers of the Alleycity could no longer live in fear, and one among them, Mac Thorstensen, the Spymaster, was chosen to seek out the gods.” A thin glass monocle fell onto the whirlpool. The sand in the whirlpool fell to the base of the bowl, burying the monocle. “Delving deep within the Alleys at the heart of the world, tempted not by Denizens for he was of pure heart, he found the path which led to the gods. He could not be kept from entering within, for the gods had willed him there. He pleaded that the city might be spared from the desolation, that the gods would protect them from the horrors of the world below them. The Lonely God heard his plea, and gave to Mac a Coin, which would protect their city, sealing the Alleys away forever. On that day, the city was again reborn, darkness giving way to the light of the modern days.” The thin metal rod stirred the bowl, sand bleeding back to white, and in the middle sat the monocle, no longer glass, but gold – a coin with a masked face. How did it…? The storyteller deftly spun the coin in the water, and as it spun, it began to glow. "Today is the Day of Rebirth, a day to celebrate, to commemorate that glorious illumination. We wear masks - of the gods who formed the world, of the creatures that once hunted us, and of the man who saved us - as a reminder that we will never again live in the fear of the Dark Alleys. We have these festivities of chaos, to remind ourselves of the chaos that once was our daily life. May the Lonely God send that it never be so again!" Brightly colored smoke began to billow from the top of the bowl. Aredan coughed, rubbing his eyes to get rid of the smoke’s tickle. As the smoke cleared, he could see that the street corner was empty save for the golden coin. Aredan bent and picked it up. Coming to this city had been a fantastic decision. The wonders of storytelling alone made it far more worth it than living in Elendel. I’ll have to tell Llantess about this – Llantess! Rusts, I’m going to be late! Aredan spun and ran down the street. Llantess would skin him alive if he was late for the Day of Rebirth festivities – there was no way the old man could staff the whole inn by himself.

Perhaps at this point in the discussion, we can all read Wit's epilogue in Oathbringer. "All great art is hated ... It is obscenely difficult - if not impossible - to make something that nobody hates. ...The only way to create something nobody hates is to ensure that it can't be loved either. ...The question becomes, how many people need to love a piece of art to make it worthwhile? ... I think it only takes one." Someone loves the Shallan portions of all the books; someone loves the Kaladin parts; someone loves Dalinar's. There is someone out there who identifies with Kaladin's depression, Shallan's abuse, and Dalinar's past. I personally enjoy the entire book with every POV we get. And that is what makes it great art.

We could have it be adapted from the Roman republic government - in Rome, there was a pair of elected consuls, and some legislative/judicial bodies like tribunals and appointed magistrates. However, there was also a Senate, which had very little official power, but could give "recommendations", and usually came from powerful groups/families in Rome. Spoiler has the Wikipedia on the Senate, which I think would match how guilds would act if they couldn't officially be in charge. That way, the real government could be NPCs, but still have PCs and guilds trying to influence them.

I always forget which thread I am in between those two. That sounds good - what kind of essence mark do you think he would make?

I'm not sure how Essence marks go with score, but maybe you could give him an essence mark that allows him to adapt to another circumstance (if you want to - looking at his backstory, I don't know if you want him to have that much Forging skill).

Agreed! (Although I feel contractually obligated to say they deserve at least as many spiked cookies as well).

So Era 5 Xanas will actually get split into two separate people, and the one in the DA will not be able to Voidmake personally. However, I can totally see him snapping Deteca up if she came to the Dark Alley, and as Head of Testing & Analysis he would probably be equipped to help train her, just not from personal experience. However, he would definitely be familiar with any mythology and/or stories of things like Voidmaking existing, and could help with that side of things. Maybe she started training with Mac (with Xanas on the analysis side of things), and then when he departed, Xanas helped her continue. That could be really interesting for when Xanas comes in contact with Sanax (the Xanas version we currently know). @AonEne @Voidus Thoughts?

The Dark Alley is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural. On a less joking side of things, I think he could just use some handwavium here and say due to some Epic attack from his Earth or an Epic-like ability, it accelerated the effects of his aluminum burning, causing savanthood without the aforementioned feeding tube of aluminum. Plus, in a team of Epics, I would definitely be burning aluminum all the time if possible. As for how it works, you could just say that part of being an aluminum savant is the ability to extend the "burst" time of the aluminum being burned - and Nullblade is far enough gone down that path that he burns it at a rate more like a normal metal. Or you could just have him look like Bane and have feeding tubes constantly pumping aluminum into him, but I don't think that was the route mathiau was planning on.

This was the impression I got from the plans and discussion I'd seen and been in: It is a secret organization, but to almost anyone in the Alleycity, it's more of a legend, a story from myth. Not the gods or the heroes - think of something like the Seelie/Unseelie Court in Celtic mythology or aliens today - how likely would you think it is to find the fairies or the aliens? If you do decide to look into it, you are probably going to end up finding some groups of crazy people who claim to have had contact with them, with some flimsy 'proof'. There are tons of stories intertwined with 'actual' history some hundreds of years ago, but nobody believes that stuff really happened unless you are a conspiracy theorist. And I would think the Dark Alley supports that view since it allows them to do things less hindered. In other words, in the Stranger's [Soviet?] Alleyverse, you don't find the Dark Alley, the Dark Alley finds you.