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 Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2016 12:44 pm
Starring: Esther OʼTriss & Shinobu YagyūChapter 1A New Dawn, An Obliterated Court BackgroundAfter the Gotei Thirteen (Thirteen Division Imperial Guards) reformed and began the long process of stabilizing the balancing souls an ambush by the Arrancar of Hueco Mundo managed to advantage of the situation. Earth bound patrol teams were regularly ambushed and even Seireitei, the Court of Pure Souls, had not been left unscathed by the ambitious attacks yet the Gotei Thirteen headed up by Division One managed to hold the line.
That was until priest of Earth began to see demons. Upon gaining a seat as a Cardinal of the Orthodox Ehbramic Faith, Cardinal Mark Sanjut proceeded through what had largely been recognized even within the faith as a purely ceremonial ritual a blessing of the gods to restore the spiritual power of an individual to serve the word of the Lord. The ceremony had immediate effects and he was almost immediately able to see what the Shinigami refer to as Hollow.
Knowing what he could see, Sanjut was shocked to learn that Shinigami were cleansing these demons and in his view undermining the role of the Lord and interfering with the Lord's divine will. He trawled high and low for information regarding these matters and even set up his own personal "holy peacekeepers" known as the Chariin (Shar-een) all to begin collecting information, all the while going undetected by the Gotei Thirteen.
The first time that the Gotei Thirteen learned about the Chariin was not at an opportune moment of their own choosing. Instead without the resources they needed, the Chariin had made a pact with the Arrancar, that in return for sparing the members of his own faith, Sanjut would assist with the Arrancar in the destruction of Seireitei once and for all.
Sanjut, studied ruthlessly proving himself not only to be a shrewd tactician but a keen experimenter in the spiritual arts before coming up with a method that he believed would "cleanse" Seireitei without them even knowing. The Chariin, once the preparations had been finished made their move and began to ambush the Gotei Thirteen whom had been on patrol proving their skills and greatly assisting the Arrancar.
The plan was discovered by the Gotei Thirteen and Division Zero whom launched a strike force against the Chariin but arrived after the completion of the so called "Lords Prayer". A door was opened into Seireitei and a Spiritual Nullifier was released thus leading to Hueco Mundo's complete destruction of the Seireitei realm and almost destabilizing the very essence of the realm itself.
Unfortunately the "Lords Prayer" turned out to be long lasting, infectious and also harmful to the Arrancar. Having double played the Arrancar the Chariin consolidated its position on Earth and cleansing the Souls of the Departed themselves. With the frequent thunderstorms caused by almost ripping the essence of the realm itself apart, beginning to subside Seireitei is finding itself becoming habitable by spirits once again. Few manage to accept their deaths graciously and even less are aware that Seireitei ever existed and yet a few stray souls have found their own way to Seireitei amongst the ruins of what used to be the shining beacon of hope for spirits.
But the clock is ticking and time is running out. The balance of souls is beginning to crumble and in all three realms, Seireitei, Hueco Mundo and Earth violent quakes are beginning to develop, threatening to once and for all end everything. Whether these souls can learn everything they need to know to go against the last Arrancar and the all powerful Chariin is as yet unknown but there is hope, a single stone column fallen from the Tower of Penance has rolled, tumbled and thrown all the way down to Rukongai the City of Spirits.
The Stone of Penance tells the tale of a criminal long since dead and his remorse for his crimes of which there were many. The stone as large as it is also attempts to explain his actions, thoughts and feelings but above all that he regretted not being able to help his friends in their time of need. The writings end with a warning that one day, Seireitei will shine again and to seek help, those that feel weak near the stone should touch it.
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Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2016 1:42 pm
Esther the FirstNumerous times she had walked past this stone, lying haphazardly in the near middle of the court yard of what used to be the South Gate to the Court of Pure souls, of course Esther knew nothing of that, only that the stone was half buried before her as if it had fallen from the sky. Each time she had passed this way she had been busy looking for supplies, food, clothing and such like.
She had found a rather beautiful Tsukesage in the rubble of one home and while she didn't know immediately how such things were to be worn it did not take long for her to figure out the very basics. Esther surveyed the stone from a distance, allowing herself the luxury of chewing on a wild carrot as she did so, savouring the sweetness.
Every time she had passed this rock she had felt a little drained shortly afterwards, as if she had been searching for an hour already, now she was purposely standing near it trying to figure out its secrets and that's when she saw the writing. The engravings were very fine indeed and small, she couldn't recognize the writing at all though. Yet she knew it was writing and she knew it carried a message, but what that message was required her to spend time close up with that energy sucking rock. Question was whether she wanted to.
Biting off a little more of the carrot Esther found herself fascinated, the last real remaining evidence that she was standing in what was a cultured civilization. Finally she came to a conclusion, she had a lot of time to spend she might as well figure out what this thing meant...and that meant getting closer. Esther stepped forwards, much closer, another step and another before she was standing only a few inches away from it.
This boulder wasn't cut to any particular design, in fact it was as if someone had hurled it from a high tower and let it find its own destination, the rubble amongst rubble. Yet it was of the purest white she had ever seen with the engravings of the purest black. Placing her hand, she felt the smoothness of the rock, the course writing and the occasional jagged edge. Then, abruptly her hand was seized, forced to press her palm against the stone by some invisible force, a blue tendril emerged from the writing and stabbed painlessly into the back of her hand. Esther opened her eyes having braced for the impact, but she had felt very little at all.
That was when the writing began to become clearer, now she was no longer reading it on the rock but she could see it all around her, dancing in the air weaving into patterns and the dissipating into chaos. For a moment she had thought herself dreaming but this felt too real to be a dream and the letters were becoming familiar. Letters eventually became words and words became sentences and sentences became stories.
Each had a message to tell her and she absorbed the knowledge without even questioning its authenticity. Reading and making up her own mind about the criminal, the traitor who had left these engravings she couldn't help but wonder how much of the story was true, that once this was a glorious and honourable civilization, that they once protected the earth from malevolent spirits. Earth. That certainly got her attention. Then images began to pour into her conscious thought. Of grotesque monsters, the Quincy, the Shinigami and finally the sketchy remnants of the Chariin or at least whatever could be gleaned.
Finally the stone relinquished its grip and the speed of the released combined with her own brace to try and get herself free sent her tumbling backwards. A cough and a splutter as she got to her feet, a glare at the rock from the corner of her eye. Yet she had been given something interesting in return, a story. Now she knew something about what went before, what this place was and no longer did she feel weak, in fact, she felt energized, something seemed to be flowing through her, crawling under her skin. Esther wasn't afraid of such a thing but it did cause her to shudder involuntarily as the goose bumps coursed through her body.
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Posted: Thu May 12, 2016 12:44 pm
Knowledge always comes with a priceEsther knew she had burned her fingers, like a child who is curious about what fire really feels like. The images were still whirring about in her mind and she lost focus of the world around her for a few moments until her knees gave way and she sank to the floor where she had been standing. The pedestal no longer seemed to affect her so strongly at least not as strongly as the concepts that were far beyond her understanding.
The first thing that Esther noticed when the world finally stopped spinning was that she was alone, a gentle wind blew against her and all around her was rubble. As if seeing things all anew, Esther blinked, she was in the middle of a town, perhaps even a city as unrecognizable as it was. Very few if any buildings remained standing, some were only recognizable by the foundations that marked where they used to be. This she knew now from the pedestal used to be a lively place, full of people who tilled nearby fields, tended to lakes and hunted in woodlands.
Behind her, she looked over her shoulder, Esther saw for a moment a gleaming white citadel, then it faded. Now a mound of earth stood, a few trace columns of things that used to be there. She shook her head, everything that was once present was gone, turned to dust by forgotten history.
'We must rebuild...' Esther thought without thinking, 'We? What we...there's no one but-', a soul floated above her head. Her eyes widened as a newly learned concept clicked into place. She was dead or at least, she was no longer human at least, she assumed she must be dead. Why? This was the afterlife, wasn't it? This was where the dearly departed came to rest. With an abruptness that jarred against her state of mind like a plunge from a warm relaxing sauna into icy cold waters, she had far more questions than she could ever have answers to.
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Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 12:50 pm
What you do with life everlasting?What seemed like hours had passed as she sat in a stunned stupor unable to comprehend what she had been given and she was no closer to being able to arrange the images in any kind of logical order either. Still there were now a few concepts that she had begun to grasp as the soft wind blew against her face. Her eyes drifted upwards to a rare blue sky, the first real clear sky she had seen since arriving.
Once such concept was that she was apparently dead and apparently in the afterlife, the more she thought about this the more 'right' it seemed. Perhaps she had also been a formless spirit for a time or maybe this was what her soul was. The answer to the question of why eluded her and nothing of what she had learned gave her any answers either, yet she knew she had been alive before. After all, alive people needed food, drink, she hadn't eaten ever since she she could remember, it just hadn't occurred to her before.
Another concept that she was beginning to grasp was a sense of Industria. There was something wrong here. All of the images she had acquired and what she was overlaying through mirages of her own mind's creation indicated that this place used to be busy it had a function, a purpose and at the moment it was failing that purpose. There were souls floating around aimlessly, why? Was she the only one? Could she help those souls to find some sort of stability, to provide a place to belong?
Maybe all of the extra information could be ignored, leaving her space to think for herself and focusing on things that she could do now. After all, this was the afterlife, it wasn't like she could die again... could she? Finally she looked straight ahead a sudden focus to her gaze and a sense of purpose. Rising slowly to her feet without the use of her arms Esther took a long look at the rock and began walking away. With each step she could feel strength returning to her. One thing was for certain. Standing near that pedestal like rock wasn't healthy and it would drain her but at least she now knew that it was unlikely to kill her.
"First things first then... ," her voice was low as she talked mostly to herself and in part to Soul Society, "...lets find a place to work." With much of the area rubble or wasteland she momentarily recalled where she had been staying for a while, a cave that was some distance from here. Could she make use of that place? However she had seen that more souls seemed to be congregating around this area as if those souls were drawn here by some force of nature. Then, did it not make sense to make this a focus point of her efforts.
Esther had only walked a short distance before she stopped and took stock of her area. The first thing that she wanted to do was clear some land to make it seem as if it were actually being used or to invite others to use it ready to build with perhaps? One such place was immediately apparent to her, a large flat area on the very outskirts, it had been left mostly untouched and the soil was mostly barren already. Making her way towards that space Esther rolled up her sleeves and began moving pieces of rubble from out of that area making sure to mark boundaries where she could.
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Posted: Fri May 20, 2016 9:48 am
As the light fades...Esther had found herself needing to take off one or two layers of clothing just so that she could move more easily. Clearing branches, plucking weeds and even fashioning a rudimentary sweep had been occupying her time and before she had realized, the light had begun to fade.
Standing straight, she looked back at what she had managed to complete in just one day. It wasn't a lot, but the ground was now level, clear of debris and a clear border made from trimmed branches lay around the perimeter. Her hands stung and looking at them she could see why. Esther had worn them out, they were dirty, sore and much like the rest of her, in need of a rest.
Gazing up at the horizon, she could see before her the remains of the citadel of a name she couldn't quite make out, behind her was wooded area of sorts although it too had suffered from whatever had happened here. To her left, plains as far as the eye could see and to the right, the hills and valleys that she had been spending her time in before visiting the rock that she had come to called a pedestal.
A diverse, if lonely landscape. Esther thought about returning to the cave, but found herself too tired to go that distance. Yesterday travelling any distance seemed but a question of her will, now something else sapped at her, fatigue? Perhaps it was the interaction with the rock. Instead she made a different decision, if she couldn't get back to the cave then she might as well rest here a little, in the darkness, illuminated only by the moon and the stars and wait for morning.
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Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2016 2:37 pm
The morning mist was clearing, slumped against a dying tree in a sparse glade encircled by a grove of long dead trees a woman. A long golden and black pipe hung from her mouth its embers burning gently. The woman's brow creased and she forced a stretch moving her shoulders before he eyes opened. Bright hazel eyes looked out and began to focus.
A momentary pain shot through her chest as she recalled just for a moment the final moment before- her eyes widened, "What the hell!?" Her voice was shaky as she clutched at her chest. She remembered being pierced by an arrow yet as much as she tried, nothing else was coming to her. Biting her pipe she inhaled a little before getting to her feet.
For the moment, she realized she was wearing a light furisode but she had no recollection of where she got it from or even putting it on. Something wasn't adding up for her.
"Okay~," A lilt in her voice as she turned around one hand on her hip, surveying her surroundings. She liked the surroundings only marginally less than the clothing she was currently wearing. Sparse grass, dead trees, low lying mist, cloudy skies it was like someone had tried to throw her into some kind of horror story. Aside from the dead trees she heard only the howling of the wind, no birds, no animals, never mind other people, "Where the hell am I?" Another inhale from the pipe and she raised an eyebrow. No stars to see, no moss on the trees, much of the grass was also dead, she couldn't tell. Well, she wasn't much good with directions at any rate.
The woman scratched the back of her neck, stretched out a few muscles and started walking. At the moment she didn't know what she was looking for only that staying at her current location wasn't going to do her any favours.
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Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2016 1:58 pm
Gathering FirewoodThis was the first night exposed in the open with very little shelter around her. No trees to insulate from the cold, no cave to shield from the icy winds, just her and the open sky. That was something she didn't want to experience again.
The concept of fire was something else that she had been forced to remember thanks to her interaction with that stone pillar as if it had given her everything she needed to survive in this new world she found herself in. Fire needed three things. Fuel, an Oxidizing Agent and a source of Exothermic energy. Fortunately for her things worked in a similar way to the living world. That was why she was now wandering around picking up any bits of dead wood she could find, whether that was parts of dead trees, timber from buildings or even dead shrubs.
From time to time she would return to her clearing and deposit the results of her scavenging attempts. Each time she would venture out further and further away from her clearing to find more and more wood until she realized that it was around midday. Although it wasn't really this that caused her to stop in mid pick up for she head a crack. The snap of a twig. A sound that she hadn't heard ever since she had arrived except when caused by her own footsteps. Another twig snapped and as the wind blew a faint waft of smoke passed her by. Its scent of burning noticeable.
That was when she spotted the first other person she had ever seen. Shorter than she, the figure that she saw was a woman like herself. Long black hair tied back into a ponytail wearing a furisode similar to her own. Esther stood straight, holding the sticks and twigs she had gathered so far to her chest and walked towards the woman making sure to stop a polite distance away.
"Hello," she voiced delicately as if unsure for a moment how to speak before the word of greeting came to her. Esther's voice seemed scratchy as if there were a lump in there, she cleared her throat.
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