Homestuck.XYZ 2.0

Underneath sunned Lorrum, the tunnels spread deep and far, like holes in a molding cottage, sick with filth. Your breath catches in your throat as you dash down them, molded bricks flying by your vision. Left and right, the tunnels gape and shrink, the dilating pupil of some vast stonework beast, swallowing your rays of light. You stop, for a bare moment, to catch your breath, to listen close for the thundering footsteps of your pursuers. This day was not always the travesty that it mutated into, a foul slime of a day running across the surface of the pond of your life. You've been training for this day for years now, your fifteenth birthday, the opportunity to find yourself under the command of a caring Knightfather, ready to train you in all of 18 arts of war, the 7 Sacred Precepts of the High Church, the schools of horsemanship and archery, smithing and flagbearing, song and dance.

There was nothing you could have wanted more.

They would not tell you the reason why. Was your half-lame, sinister arm unfit to wield a sword? Sure, the scarring is unsightly, but it's not... as if it was your fault! Men cannot control their childhood injuries, nor how they decide to make manifest. Or was it your long hair, posing a potential weakness to an opponent? Surely, you could have cut it clean with a sword given the opportunity. It's not as if you would have been the first girl to be apprenticed under a Knightfather. Sir Aurelia Highwinter occupied the highest station one of ignoble birth could achieve! Yet, something about you prompted not only repudiation, but expulsion. Having taken a moment to breathe, the blooming pain in your left side, the side marked by sin since childhood, reasserts itself to the forefront of your mind. The wraps you used to hide the appearance of femininity soaked in a layer of drying brick brown.

They came at you, lances drawn, blades at the ready, as if you were an enemy. You knew so little of the art of the lance, but you knew that they were wearing armor, and you were not, so you fled.

Today is your fifteenth birthday. Although it was fifteen years ago that you were given life and a name, it was only today that you will be given a purpose and meaning.

What is your name, young squire?

Jerry Mechon

SEDNA LASKA

Cornweld Leichtfertig

Goosewold Yorkeshire

(Art by Wolfgan) Your name is SEDNA LEICHTFERTIG, 15 years on this God-given land, in the kingdom of Lorrum. You've been told you haven't always been from this place, that your parents were foreigners, natives of the Duchy of Ebres, far to the South -- only an Ebresian would have a name like yours, of course, but you've always taken pride in your national identity as a Lorrumite. See where that's gotten you now.

The pain in your side is searing and dull at the same time, like the embers of a burnt out fire's dead husk. You pull the handwraps away from your lame arm, scalded years ago by boiling liquid, crisscrossed by rivulets of pale and red flesh in striking striation. You flex it and wince. It is still as strong as your right, but the pain is ceaseless, unending, a scar that never stops its aches. When you were young, you likened it to the Pale King's burning crown, until you were warned by your parents to avoid such sacrilegious things. And yet, the pain you carry with you all this time.

You stumble through the catacombs, your lungs searing with the intake of each breath. No injury there, just winded from the long travel. You fled and fled, scurrying about like a mouse, as quickly as your legs could take you. When escape seemed impossible, you fled into the sewers, the only option left. They gave chase, but you are younger, better built, lighter on your foot, and more used to pain. But now?

Now, you are hopelessly lost. You only dimly knew of the existence of the catacombs, that they were underneath the Capital, not that they were attached to the sewers, or the sheer scale of their sprawl. A small trickle of water crosses through the brick, dug out by erosion in a westward stream. You cross it twice for good luck, stepping gingerly over to avoid rousing any tired spirits.

What will you do?
>[Default Action: Say a small prayer to the Pale King and forge onward]

(Sedna is a willful girl and will usually perform the Default Action of her own accord unless there is overwhelming consensus against it. She will try to take all suggestions and questions from the head-voices into account and respond to them accordingly, at least, for now)

>Take inventory

>locate arms. see if they're okay for the time being

>Light torch/lantern.

>Attempt to find water. Water will lead to an exit, right?

warmwood wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 20, 2019 3:14 pm

>Take inventory

You brought a fair amount of assorted objects with you to the capital, goods and sundries and the like. It's not very often that a villager decides to become a squire of Lorrum, so you got a little bit from everyone. The baker, the tailor, even the smith.

But most of that is gone now. You had to drop it when you ran. Here's what you still have on you.

• A small parrying dagger, and a guard-less wooden training sword.

• Your clothes, with leather armor over top. Cloth wraps underneath to cover your limbs and chest. All three layers are torn in the same spot on your left flank.

• 8 copper Drachma and 1 silver Drachma (equal to 100 copper Drachma). What's left of your allowance money.

• A marble rosary necklace, with a holy talisman at the end. The symbol of the Pale King.

• A leather bag strapped to your waist. It has your coinage and some herbal medicine that you've already applied to your wound.

• A second leather bag with some hardtack. You're not in much of an eating mood.

Sylandrophol wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 20, 2019 3:46 pm

>locate arms. see if they're okay for the time being

Your arms are right here, heathen!

Still, you do a little check. You unwrap the bindings on both of them just enough to see. Your right arm is normal, unwounded, tan-olive skin looking back at you, marking you as a girl of Ebresian heritage. Your left arm is the same as it has been since your childhood, pale and red, skin warped and misshapen by ancient pains. While your left arm is "okay", for a given value of okay, since it can grip and hold and write the same as your other hand, if not better, your burn injuries cause a near constant pain that has since faded into background noise for you.

So, yeah. Your arms are okay. You wrap them back up.

Daz wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 20, 2019 4:13 pm

>Light torch/lantern.

You grab a disused, molded torch from the wall of the catacomb. It feels like nobody's been down here for aeons, with the only light filtering in through cracks in the walls and ceiling, and little chips of Shinestone embedded in the floor beneath you. Striking your dagger up against the wall, you scrape it until sparks, make a little prayer to the Queen in Red, and are rewarded for your piety with a caught fire.

There. Much better.

(Art by Cory Trego-Erdner)

Crpal wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 20, 2019 4:32 pm

>Attempt to find water. Water will lead to an exit, right?

>[Default Action: Say a small prayer to the Pale King and forge onward]

"Our King, deep beneath as He may be, may He rest easy and calm, so that His sacrifice be not in vain. Amen."

You draw a small circle in the air, to mark the Pale King's presence, and then point your torch down at the ground. That's not part of the prayer, you just need to see better. There are several rivulets of water traveling across the ground, from one end of the wall into the other. You keep track of them as you walk forward, but none of them seem to be running straight across this corridor. It eventually reaches a branch, with the water flowing down one of the two branches exclusively, so you decide to follow there. You seem to recall something about water leading to a possible exit, but the source of this knowledge is unknown to you. It flows freely, like water from a spring.

Your trek is lonesome and arduous. You follow the water where it leads, occasionally stopping to take a break and lean against the wall, occasionally lighting a new torch. You go through three torches, two pieces of hardtack, and a small dab of your medicine on your wound when it begins weeping.

(Art by Rusty001) Eventually, you come to a massive, sprawling interior. You had some mild suspicions when the tunnels began to drastically widen, the ceilings getting higher than ever before, but you're struck with a deep sense of reverence when you hit this chamber. Intricately sculpted temples caked with rusted, decaying metal, braziers left half-lit, long-since burnt out, and a deep, rumbling sound coming from within the bowels of the chamber, further in. Deeper.

You can see the sun, just a bit, if you look up. You have no idea where you are.

>[Default Action: Head towards the sound, sword at the ready.]

>search something to use as a shield before venturing forth

>Put the sword away - it's not gonna do you much in case you need to defend yourself. Wield your dagger and venture forward, staying as quiet as possible.

>Continue towards the noise, making sure to keep track of any escape routes.

>apply herbal medicine to arms before venturing forth

(RECOMMENDED LISTENING: LudoWic - Katana ZERO)

Sylandrophol wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 21, 2019 8:42 am

>apply herbal medicine to arms before venturing forth

You use some of your medicine on the palm of your left hand. It's a familiar, soothing feeling, making your normally hot skin wash over with cold.

Generalrabogolfo wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 20, 2019 4:53 pm

>search something to use as a shield before venturing forth

Daz wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 20, 2019 6:01 pm

>Put the sword away - it's not gonna do you much in case you need to defend yourself. Wield your dagger and venture forward, staying as quiet as possible.

You decide that it would be a better idea, if there's something out there, to have something with an actual cutting edge. Bludgeoning is all well and good, but your training sword is still made of wood, while your dagger is capable of putting sharp holes in a large rat should it come to that. Strapping your sword to your back, you find a metal panel, still rusted over from years of disuse, and pry it free from the wall, stumbling back a couple of feet in the process. You use some of your armwraps to strap it to your right hand, tying a knot to grip in your palm. It's tight, but it's better than having no shield. Your torch fits very snug, up against the knot, beneath your curled knuckles.

You grab your dagger and hold it in your left hand, reverse grip.

Notchine wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:50 am

>Continue towards the noise, making sure to keep track of any escape routes.

>[Default Action: Head towards the sound, sword at the ready.]

Deeper. Your footfalls pad heavy against the packed earth and stone, taking you deeper into this rumbling, grinding abyss. The sounds of gears upon metal make you wince and squirm with fearful anticipation, wondering what could possibly be within this space so deep underneath the earth. You travel deeper down, and each corner you round, assuming this must be the last, you find no such solace and peace. No, the noise can only grow louder, louder, until it is a cacophonous rumbling that shakes your bones and makes your cursed arm quake with pain, albeit a pain entirely familiar to you. By the time you reach the inner chamber, you can barely stand.



Your body trembles, too weak to hold onto the walls anymore, dropping to the floor with flesh seared by violent vibration. You look up at this figure and see within it the Devil. No human hands could sculpt a statue that tall, that intricately. You are unsure if you feel awe or despair -- or possibly both. As you look, you squeeze your dagger tighter and try to look around, despite the rattling in your skull.

There are stairs and pathways, intricately constructed and yet devilishly precarious. The only way forward is up.

You turn around, imagining the sound of horseback'd Knightfathers chasing you down, running you through. Your side aches. You squeeze your makeshift shield a little tighter to your knuckles, and cover your face from the invading sunbeams up above.

>[Default Action: Make your way to the top of the massive statue]

>Hit statue with training sword to test durability

>Steady your nerve and consider you may have well and lost the Knightfathers in pursuit. Surely this statue must be abandoned and forgotten down under in these catacombs, or else it would be maintained and waited on.

>Scale statue to assert dominance over it

Crpal wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 21, 2019 1:30 pm

>Hit statue with training sword to test durability

You get close enough to thump the statue a couple of times with your sword. It is most definitely made of metal.

Prime wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 22, 2019 12:58 am

>Steady your nerve and consider you may have well and lost the Knightfathers in pursuit. Surely this statue must be abandoned and forgotten down under in these catacombs, or else it would be maintained and waited on.

You take a deep breath and address your rationality. You feel as if you've entered a place untouched by mankind for quite some time. There's not even bones around to indicate the death of a worker or two. Just overgrown vines and weary stone walkways, built with skilled hands and then left to rot. They remain remarkably steady underneath your own unsteady footsteps.

Notchine wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 22, 2019 5:22 am

>Scale statue to assert dominance over it

>[Default Action: Make your way to the top of the massive statue]

That's right -- your name is Sedna Leichtfertig, and you have been training to become a Knightfather for 9 years. And if this be how your story ends, then so be it, but you will end it defiant to the last, and no big... dumb statue is going to stop you!

So you walk. And you walk, and you walk until your legs burn and your chest feels like it's about to cave in on itself, until the sun begins dipping below the horizon and all you have left to go on is torchlight, but eventually, you make it face to face with this stone-hewn Goliath, its red gemstone eyes twinkling in what little light is left in the sky.

You thump it with your sword. Twice.

And its mouth splits open, sliding down, ancient mechanisms grinding down. You haven't even noticed until now that all the rumbling had stopped about an hour ago. With little else to go off of, you swing your torch forward, once, twice, and then, satisfied, step inward, into the statue's maw.

You're not quite prepared for what's inside. You expected... Well. You're not sure what you expected, to be honest, but it's not quite this. There's a set of concentric stone circles in the center of a large, well-lit chamber, red lines awash in glow from some infernal light. While reminding you of the Queen in Red is always a comforting thing, you can't help but imagine a spot of devilry to this glow. Or perhaps there is fire between the stones? You were never one to think too hard about the mysteries of the world. Standing on the concentric circles, you feel them shift and turn freely underneath your feet, loose from the rest of the stone. Two large, metallic handles sit on opposite ends of the chamber's interior, framing you like the ends of a crucifix.

The mouth of the statue slides shut, and yet, when it clicks to a halt, you can see through just fine. Oh yes, you can see as if looking through the giant statue's eyes, and you know for a fact that devilry must be afoot. There are all manners of stone-hewn panels and tablets pressed into the edges of this small, spherical edifice, and the more you stare, the more they light themselves with color.

One particular inscription catches your eye. "Cast in the name of the King, ye Not Guilty."

Curious.

>[Default Action: Pull on the handles until something happens.]