Karvis
The Rebel Alliance => Independants => Topic started by: GM Craig on May 13, 2014, 12:46:01 PM
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Days have turned into weeks and weeks have blended together. The ceaseless howling of the wind during the day robs you of sleep, and the walking at night is filled with waking dreams and hallucinations.
In your lucid moments, you have noticed a pattern. The dreams while you not-sleep during the day are often of the old man in the Bladesea, or Jon and a happy life together, with encouragement and support, often asking searching questions you do not want to answer. Night time, the visions are of death, blood and horror, filled with accusations. Things you could have done differently.
Somewhere, you lost your datapad and your pack. You don't know how it happened, you just looked down in the middle of the night and your hand was empty. At the time, you though Jon had taken it to tease you. A day later, it didn't matter anymore. You just kept on walking.
As Khaliss suggested, you have occasionally found supplies on your road - dried meat, sturdy vegetables. Even once, about half a litre of water. You drank that immediately, as if you were dehydrated. Something told you you needed to do that, though you cannot remember. Those supplies ran out a week ago, and every day there is less and less water in the catch pockets of the suit.
The days and nights start to flow together, so that only the type of visions and hallucinations you are having at the moment give you a sense of night or day. Still, you get up with the dawn and keep walking, though you don't even know where you are going anymore. You no longer remember why you are out here walking. The whole world is a sea of rocks and dunes, and your sole purpose is to walk them.
Then, one night you hear a voice. This one seems different, but you are so tired you ignore it. No visions today. Just rest.
But the voice is insistent. "Wake up! You must wake up!"
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I groan softly, and use a tiny bit of the energy that I can muster to weakly slap in the direction the voice is coming from. The black space had almost begun to encompass me.. and the voice pushes it back and lets in the light.
Insistent .. almost gnat like.. buzzing.. bothering.. irritating ...
"Go... " my throat is so dry the word escapes like grit on glass.
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"You must listen to me! You are heading into danger! Turn back now before it is too late!"
That word twigs something. Danger.
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A tiny spark ignites in the haze..
Danger..
No danger in sand, in rock, in heat.
I shake my head, the movement almost too minute to see.
"Go... way"
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"The path you are treading leads only to death. Turn back now."
The insistence props an eye open. A vision stands before you, but this one is different. Translucent, and glowing blue. A young face you do not recognize. Not someone from yuor past, but someone new, and ghostly, not real.
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The tiniest sip of water from the catch pocket does little to moisten my throat, or my burnt, split lips.
Hallucinations are not new. But i didn't think I had the energy to muster a yet unseen, unknown person.
'No.. must.. finish... "
my eye slips closed
"Ari.. "
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The figure shakes his ghostly head. "Only death lies this way. Turn back now." Then the figure slowly vanishes.
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I stare blankly at the space where the.. figure.. was.
My consciousness surfaces briefly to consider what I saw.
Hallucinations of glowy blue people? Too much new information to process.
Turn back.
I wonder what it means.. turn back.
And go where, exactly.
Sand before me. Sand behind me. Rocks.. sand.. more sand..
I rock myself up to my hands and knees, my body protesting with every shift.. there is no sun.. it is not the dawn.. now we rest..
It feels like minutes pass as i rock slowly back and forth on my hands and knees. Or hours? I have not had awareness of the passing of time for so long, I could not even guess.
Slowly, achingly, I pull myself up to a kneeling position, and forcing my self to focus, take notice of my surroundings. My eyes burn, so dry... even blinking feels like i am pulling sandpaper across them.
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It is still night, but under the moonlight, you see a structure far off in the distance. It is probably a day or more away, but it is hard to judge distance in the desert.
You guess that it is still several hours to dawn. The moaning of the wind on the rocks and sand continues to shatter your concentration.
Then, you realize that when the blue figure was speaking, the sound of the wind had faded, for the first time in many weeks. You hadn't realized what an effect it had been having on you, but now that the blue man is gone, the moaning of the wind makes your brain vibrate with annoyance.
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As I try to prune the wandering branches of my thoughts, I find the damn wind to be making it extremely difficult. My thoughts seem to be running away on tangents of their very own, and I can barely keep a singular thought path in mind. I try to focus on something.. anything, but I keep going back to the echo of the words of the ghostly blue man.
I look once more towards the building, and wonder, if that is the direction that the blue man says holds death.. or is it turning back where the end lies?? Or was he being more metaphoric? My mind stumbles along in an endless loop, and before too long, I find my feet moving, stumbling, almost of their own volition, towards the building in the distance.
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You come back to your senses sometime in the early evening. The buildings are much closer now. - you covered some good ground last night, and somehow still managed to find decent shelter without being consciously aware of it. Visions kept you company, the usual kind of poisoned memories involving people telling you how worthless you are, and recounting all the bad things you've ever done. At least you had some peace, as there is a chunk of time you do not remember, which is a relief in a way. The howling of the daytime wind seems to have abated somewhat.
You groan to your feet, and when you stand, the blue glowy man is there.
"Please, go no further. Only death awaits you there. Please! Turn around and go back. Do not throw your life away!" He seems legitimately concerned for you. And unlike the other visions, you do not recognize him at all. You've never seen him before - you are certain of that - yet he seems somehow familiar.
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I blink several times, to clear my eyes of the film that blurs my vision.
My voice rasps, and is so foreign even to my own ear....
"Who............... are............. you.....why............do you...... follow me... "
I reach out a hand as if to touch him, some how to assure my self that he is really there.. or that he is not - and simply another delusion of my fragmented mind.
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He looks at your grasping hand, then looks back to you. "You delirious, and dehydrated. Come with me, I will show you to some water." The voice is kind, and his forceful tone has softened.
"I am called Jinn-Tu. Jinn-Tu Klakk."
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The name means nothing to me... at least in my present state of mind. I eye him suspiciously.
"Why... " I swallow dryly, my mouth puckering at the thought of water.
"Why.. would you.. help... me" the 'me' trails off in a rasp.
My mind is screaming at me to just follow him.
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"I do not want you to die. Please, come with me. I can show you to water. But I cannot stay long - coming to you like this weakens me."
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Not dying seems like a pretty good idea, all things considered.
I struggle slowly to my feet, with each dehydrated muscle and joint screaming in agony as I do.
I look around slowly, trying to get a clear image of my surroundings.. but it is hard to focus.
I do not know if this blue man truly has my survival in mind, or if he means to lead me to my death. But much more of this endless sand sand and more sand will be the death of me, regardless.
"Please... water... " I rasp.
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He turns and starts to walk away. You stumble on behind him, not entirely sure where you are going. It seems to go on a long time, but somehow you find yourself underground. It is cold here - colder even that outside, but through your suit's rebreather you can smell it - water. Your pace quickens and he matches you, as you round a bend in a cave and see a glorious pool of water about a foot across, shimmering in the reflected light of your blue glowing friend.
You drop to your knees in front of the pool and rip off your mask, drawing deep the tangy taste of high-mineral content water. It tastes terrible, but it is water. You can almost feel it soaking into your tissues and cells.
You hear a voice say, "I must rest, but I will return when I can."
The blue figure vanishes.
You don't remember much after that. Just water, and blessed silence with no wind howling over the rocks. You wake some time later, feeling much refreshed, and with a clear head.
Your blue friend is back, clearly no delusion this time.
"You look better. Now, take what water you can carry and leave. Only death waits for you at the shrine."
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"Leave??? and go where? "
I don't understand. All I have seen for days.. weeks it seems, is sand, sand and more sand. I don't think I could survive the trek back. And even if I did survive.. what would there be for me to return to.
Ari will not want me while my demons still haunt me. My old life in the cell seems so distant.. so unreal.
It seems like forever ago that I set out on this quest..
I have already violated the admonition to speak to no one.. altho.. does speaking to a blue apparition count?
"Am I to come to where you are? Where do you keep disappearing to? " I blink at the absurdity of my own question. "Nevermind that. You have told me WHO you are. .but WHAT are you?? And why must I not go to the Shrine?? The quest...."
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He shakes his head. "I am a Jedi Sage who came to the shrine long ago to investigate rumours of a vergence in the Force."
She pauses. "The shrine was infested by a Sarlaac over two centuries ago. It has consumed every pilgrim that came to the shrine in that time. If you go there, you will feed it as well. You must turn back."
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I shake my head, confused. Surely Cali would not have sent me on this route if none had ever returned.
A sliver of a conversation with Ari pierces my thought..
"When I came back from it, I was a very different person than when I left" Ari returned from it.
Khaliss knew noone personally.. but he knew OF someone.. but would he not have known that Ari had completed it? Or perhaps that is not something that is spoken of..
I am so very very confused..
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[OOC: Some meta info for you. many pilgrims that takes this journey never make it to the shrine. Ari undertook the journey, but never made it all the way. Such things are not failures exactly, as the journey in the important part, rather than the destination. Hope that clears things up. The goal of this thing is self-discovery. The shrine is just a physical goal to work towards while you discover yourself. You've made it farther than most pilgrims.
Dawson doesn't know any of that though.]
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My eyes sting with rising frustration, but tears do not come.
If I do not proceed.. where will I go.
I do not believe I can survive a journey back. I have barely survived to this point. But if the shrine is home to a Sarlaac, I could never hope to defeat it. Even were I in top condition, such as when I was part of the rebel cell, I know that I would just be counted among its victims.
"You dont understand.. I ... I can't go back. And if I can't go forward.. then what? Do I just sit down here in the sand and wait to die? "
Something strikes my mind..
"You say you came to the shrine long ago.. and yet.. here you are.. sort of.. "
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He stops and sighs. "Yes. The Sarlaac... takes a thousand years to digests it's victims. The creature is able to keep victims alive as it digests them, even to the point of extending life. There are hundreds of victims in here with me, many far older than I am."
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I swallow hard
"In there.. with ... you?"
I cannot even begin to process the horror of that idea. It is the very definition of a living death. My mind tries to somehow focus itself.. trying to recall something.. anything.. about Sarlaac's. All that springs to mind is the old tales told to frighten children.
"Can I.. is there anything.. " my mouth stumbles over the words, trying to find the right thing to say..
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He shrugs. "Unless you can kill a sarlaac... No, there is nothing to be done. Go from this place, and spread the word. Let others know the shrine has become infested. That will at least give us some peace, knowing that there will be no more joining us. It will ease our suffering."
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[ooc: Bump.]