Yes, that's right. Before your spark awakened and you ascended to become a Planeswalker, you lived upon the Plane of Zendikar, where you had been training to become a mage. As a result, many of the spells you possess are unique to that plane. That said, your recent travails took you to a rather fascinating pair of planes called Ravnica and Mirrodin, and you picked up several spells of interest there as well… None of those spells, however, have interested you so much as certain creatures you have encountered called Slivers. Their sense of community comforts you, their complexity and design intrigues you, their strength and insidiousness strengthens you, their intense ferocity emboldens you, and their virile growth and adaptation inspires you. There is little you can admire as much as they (Though, those "Myr" creatures….).
You decide to perform a quick once-over of your self and your surroundings… surroundings first. You're in a stone room, walls covered in peeling white paint. There are paneless windows, poorly boarded up, and there is a doorless frame leading into a dark hallway; you can't hear any activity in that direction or from below you. You can, however, hear activity just outside. A glance between the boards reveals an alleyway, where a handful of humans are… spraying paint onto the wall from some sort of canister. Their artwork is terrible, you're not certain what they're trying to draw. The humans themselves seem to have been doing a poor job taking care of themselves, judging by the state of their health. They're dressed in ragged clothing, though one of them has many brightly colored bands on his wrist. None of them seem to have noticed you. Looking through the other window, you can see what appears to be a city, though most of your view is blocked. You can also see a mountain in the distance.
Your mana sense, while greatly diminished, is barely sufficient enough to tell you that the land directly beneath your feet can serve as a source for black mana, and there is a potential source of blue mana nearby… though the sound of waves in the distance tells you that just as easily. You think… Yes, you could easily attune yourself to one of them, though attuning yourself to the source of blue mana would be somewhat difficult to do without moving closer. Either way, you don't think you'd be able to attune yourself to a second one right away.
You recall what you can of the attack that resulted in your arrival here, but those memories are as fragmented as you yourself seem to be. Yes, "fragmented" is indeed the right word -- it seems that you were literally shattered somehow.
You check upon your spells. They are indeed there, but you're certain that you should have far more than you currently do. You suppose that that's to be expected. You visualize as many of them as you can hold in your head.
As a last thing to check, you attempt to Planeswalk. You can do so, but it's a bit slower than it should be. It takes a full ten seconds to fully vanish from one plane and onto another, and…
You arrive in a landscape identical to the one you just left, minus the buildings. The identical mountain in the distance seems to indicate that, at least.
You quickly halt the transition before you can fall twenty feet, and find yourself instantly snapping back to the plane you started in. It seems that while a full transition is slow, canceling one is not. You suspect, however, that if you had not performed said cancellation a split-second before the transition occurred, it would have taken just as long to return.
A few more tests confirms your suspicions: the only planes you can Planeswalk to are mirrors of this one, and you cannot Planeswalk out of the planes entirely. Either you lack the capability, or something is blocking you.
In any case you decide for the time being to remain in this plane. You just need to decide what to do. At the very least though, you need to attune yourself to a land in order to have some mana at your disposal; you feel rather defenseless otherwise.
Attune yourself to:
[ ]The source of Black mana.
[ ]The source of Blue mana.
-[ ]but move closer to it first, to make it easier to attune to.
[ ]Neither; Planeswalk until you find a land with the color of mana you prefer, and attune yourself to that.
[ ]Write-in
Action:
[ ]Gather information...
-[ ]by talking to the locals
--[ ]locals who aren't the ones just outside.
[ ]Sort through your spells to find [insert type of spell/spell that has certain quality], then do one of the other options.
[ ]Explore this city, and work on blending in while you figure out what's going on.
[ ]Find a place to set up shop.
-[ ]Then hunker down until you can attune yourself to another source.
[ ]Cast Mindlash Sliver before performing one of the other options.
[ ]Write-in
~~~~~
Sorry for the delay, folks! Surprisingly, a lot of the delay stemmed from finding appropriate options to put under "action" at the end there; I may add some more later. I'll be adding this post to the index and creating a character sheet once I get back to my apartment.
In case your wondering, the seven spells shown there are just the ones you "drew;" I took the liberty of selecting ones with lower mana costs. This is because you can influence what spells you draw, albeit not perfectly. There's a slight randomness to what spells you get if you just pull them up instead of spending the time to sort through them; if you take your time, you can just get a specific spell. The only reason you aren't allowed to vote for a specific spell in the above vote is because I'm limiting your access to what spells you have at the moment and don't want people to waste their votes on asking for a Mox or something.
That said, you do have Swan Song. Swan Song is my favorite Counter Spell, if only because of how absolutely hilarious it is. Even if you've never actually been to Theros,I just had to include it.
Edit: whoops, that was not supposed to be there. Nobody noticed, right?Considering that the only thing you know about this city is that you ended up here after nearly being killed, you decide that some caution is warranted. You aren't planning to head out there without some sort of way to defend yourself, and wouldn't you know it? You've visualized a Sliver that you can shape with a single unit of Black Mana, and there is a source of Black Mana right under your feet.
Focusing, you send a spike of your will into the ground beneath you, feeling the land resonate with your mind. There. You'll be able to call upon that land now -- by visualizing it, you'll be able to link its mana directly to yourself, though that link will fade after less than an hour if you don't use it or focus on maintaining it. You immediately do the former.
Land Attuned: Swamp (Dockside Ghettos)
Extant Creature: Mindlash Sliver (Summoning Sickness)
You seize the memory in your head and tear it out, mingling it with the mana to give it form.The memory and the mana haven't fully integrated yet, so its biology will still be more mana than flesh… which is rather detrimental to it. It will be rather clumsy and lacking in capability beyond basic movement until the integration finishes. You could fling it between yourself and an attack you suppose, but not much else. Well,better to have that period over with sooner rather than later, at least.
The Sliver is, as always, a work of living art. It's one of the smaller ones, fortunately, being a little over twice the size of a housecat. You say fortunately, because that means it will be easier to hide. Slivers without stealth or subterfuge capabilities aren't the most inconspicuous of creatures at the best of times, and even though the people of this plane almost certainly don't know what Slivers are, now is not the time to be drawing attention to yourself.
Also luckily, your outfit has a backpack. You've noticed that the wizards of your homeland are, generally, much more practical than those of other planes, out of necessity if nothing else. You were, after all, expected to survive researching the various temples, herons, and landscapes of Zendikar, so your outfits are lightly armored, allow for good mobility, and have plenty of useful accouterments. It helps that you were on an expedition when your spark awakened. Most of your equipment is gone and what you do have is in poor shape, but…
You manage to fit the Sliver into your pack, though you can't help but wince as one of the seams starts to tear. And the head doesn't quite fit all the way in. Removing your jacket, you drape it over the pack before putting the strap over your shoulder. It's not perfect, but it'll hopefully work. So long as no one notices how oddly shaped your pack is and how it shifts and squirms a little from time to time.
You head out the door and down some stairs. The rooms below are just as run-down as the one you landed in, with the added bonus of having nonsensical or downright illegible slogans painted all over the walls. A man and a woman, obviously hoodlums of some sort, are passed out there as well. With a shrug, you head out into the city.
*****
A brief observation of passerby was enough to show you that your clothes don't really match what's worn around here, being far more ornate. With some reluctance, you head back to where you came from and relieve one of the unconscious hoodlums of a slightly grimy jacket made of soft black cloth. Luckily you don't see the need to cover up your lower body as well; the only part there that stands out are your leggings, which you remove and put in your pack's outer pockets.
A few hours later, you have a decent grasp of the layout of the city and what life is like for the citizens here. The city seems entirely human in population, and they have rather useful and rather ubiquitous machines that they use for transportation. You get more odd looks than you'd like, but it doesn't seem like anyone is suspicious of you or anything; to your chagrin, you realize that they probably assume from the poor state of your clothing that you are a vagrant of some kind. This is supported by how you receive those looks in some places and not others -- the city seems divided between squalor and the pristine, rather neatly in some places.
As for mana, it seems that there are sources of every color save green within or near the city; obtaining that color would require you to either planes walk or travel a bit farther afield.
Now that you can find your way around the city and know where the potential resources are, you
[ ]Investigate:
-[ ]a Library
-[ ]The city Ghettos
-[ ]The more pristine places (Boardwalk)
-[ ]A place of learning, in one of the better-kempt areas of the city
-[ ]A place of learning, in the more typical parts of the city
-[ ]The downtown areas
-[ ]A battle of some kind that seems to be occurring nearby
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]Obtain some better clothes by
-[ ]Stealing them
-[ ]Selling some of your remaining (Mostly useless now) research equipment for money to buy with
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]Find a place to use as a hideout, in
-[ ]the ghettos
-[ ]the area with the warehouses
-[ ]the boat graveyard
-[ ]The sewers (There's always some mysteriously spacious area in the sewers, right?)
-[ ]One of the mirror worlds
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]Casually converse with the locals to gather information
[ ]See if you can find one of the local Broadsheets (It seems they call them "Newspapers" around here)
[ ]Write-in
In case you're wondering, your outfit kind of looks like what these guys are wearing. Zendikarian wizards -- or at least, the human ones -- all seem to wear outfits similar to that one. Which makes sense, since your average Zendikarian Wizard has more in common with Indiana Jones then they do with Dumbledore.Interlude
Of course.
A blast of wind deflected a ball of flame.
Lung was here. Of course.
Blades of wind shot forward. Blades of wind were shot down, by a swipe of a hand and an explosive burst of fire.
Stormtiger growled. Members of the Empire picking a fight with members of the ABB while in ABB territory, while Stormtiger was the only Empire cape around. Of course it would end with a tiger fighting a dragon.
He frowned. There. The blades he'd launched hadn't been completely deflected after all -- made sense, he'd been gathering air for longer than Lung had been gathering strength. But now the power in his claws had reset. The power in Lung's body hadn't.
…But they were still there. A trio of gashes, two on Lung's arm, one on his chest. Relatively shallow, already closing, close to being covered in metal, but there.
Stormtiger sniffed the air. The foolish members of the 88 weren't gone yet. Two of them, helping an injured comrade, had only just gotten out of the alley. Twenty seconds. That was the period of time Stormtiger guessed he had before they were far enough away for him to stop attacking and start retreating.
Those gashes were still open. Potentially, they were an opening. If he could injure him badly enough right now, Lung would be disabled until his regeneration kicked up a few more notches. And if that happened, those morons would definitely be living long enough to learn from their mistake.
Wind at his back, Stormtiger rushed forward.
Interlude Out
*****
Well, this is certainly interesting. A pair of… well, one of them is using what appears to be an instinctive form of wind magic, the other seems to be slowly turning into… a dragon of all things, unless you miss your guess. Whatever their deal is, it seems that the two of them intervened in a small scale conflict between gangs, and presumably each was a member of one of the gangs involved. It seemed like the two were drawn here by the same thing you were -- a sound much like a cannon, only quieter. Whatever made the sound, it was gone by the time you got there.
If his transformation continues at its current rate -- and you don't see why it wouldn't -- then the Dragon is obviously the stronger of the two. He's slightly weaker now, but he'll soon outstrip the Aeromancer completely. The Aeromancer will lose. You see no reason to interfere with combat between gangs, so you stay where you are and do not intervene.
And the Dragon does as you predicted mere moments later, blasting back the Aeromancer mere moments later. Things don't get any better for him, the Dragon beating the Aeromancer back, until the Dragons claws rake across the Aeromancer's chest. Apparently realizing the battle to be lost, the Aeromancer leaps out of the alleyway with another explosion of air, running across the rooftops to escape.
He also runs past you, where you're watching from the cover of a metallic boxy thing on one of the rooftops near the alley, but he pays you no mind. You note idly that you don't seem to be the only spectator.
Several of the gang members move to run out of the alley, presumably after the members of the other gang, but the Dragon, who is looking more human by the moment, moves to stop them.
"They have already escaped. If the Empire" The amount of contempt he puts into that word is a bit greater than you were expecting, "knows anything, it is how to flee like cowards."
"But Lung, they--"
"Will answer for this in blood. But later." He growls. "If we chase them through the streets now, the only thing we will catch is the attention of the Protectorate. We will respond to this on our terms." With that, he turns away.
Well, that was informative.
You
[ ]Interrupt!
-[ ]Instead of letting him pass you, capture the Aeromancer.
-[ ]Interrupt write-in
[ ]Follow the Dragon, see what you can find out about his gang.
[ ]Attempt to follow the Aeromancer.
[ ]Don't get yourself involved in Gang warfare, and instead Look for information on this by
-[ ]Asking bystanders
-[ ]Looking for a broadsheet
-[ ]Looking for reading material at a library.
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]Don't get yourself involved in Gang warfare, and instead Find a place to use as a hideout, in
-[ ]the ghettos
-[ ]the area with the warehouses
-[ ]the boat graveyard
-[ ]The sewers (There's always some mysteriously spacious area in the sewers, right?)
-[ ]One of the mirror worldsYou recall there being these boxes on sticks in the better parts of town that were filled with free broadsheets. You decide to head over and look at one -- you'll likely get a better grasp of this place if you know what they consider to be news.
By the time you find one of the things, the sun has already gone down, and even you are starting to feel the cold. On the plus side, your Sliver is fully functional. You feel a lot more comfortable, knowing that you have a means to defend yourself other than placing a small animal between yourself and an attack.
You flip open a box and take a look at the broadsheet -- well, it's not a "sheet" really, since there's far more pages. The top of the first page proclaims the date to be "December 28, 2010," but that doesn't really mean anything to you so you skip on past it. The first article on the page is about a group called the Slaughterhouse Nine, who…
You frown as you read more. The article skirts around the details, but you get the picture well enough. Apparently this group has been slaughtering unchecked for well over a decade now… Looking through the other articles, you get the impression that theory are simply the most prominent example of a trend. Spellcasting is largely (If not completely) unknown in this plane, it would seem -- Either you are instinctively able to use magic in some form, or you cannot and are unable to defend yourself from those who can. One of the articles seems to indicate that people are not born with these abilities, but how they gain them isn't really alluded to very clearly.
In any case, "Capes" as they are called appear to be divided into "heroes" and "villains" -- villains being ones like these Slaughterhouse Nine, heroes being Capes who protect non-Capes from the villains.
"So, the majority of the people here both live and die upon the mercy of those who found power." You mutter. You don't really like it, that clear divide. Those who matter, and those who don't.
Well, that's the impression this broadsheet gives you, anyway. You aren't quite so naive as to take its opinion as fact. This "PRT," for example, seems like it's a completely non-powered organization, and it also seems important despite how the broadsheet glosses over them. They appear to be some sort of regulatory body for heroes, which is good. You don't feel like you're getting an accurate picture of them from this broadsheet's articles. There's also a brief mention of something called a "Rogue," and something about a city that was laid to waste by something called an "Endbringer" about two months ago, but there's no further explanation of those terms. Either they're commonplace enough that everyone can be expected to know what they mean, or whoever wrote these articles is a jackass.
It's probably the first one, but given the broadsheet's apparent biases and the fact that it was free while the ones next to it were not…
Anyway, there's also a "local" section of it, so you take a look at that. It seems that there are three major gangs in the city, two of which seem to define themselves by things like skin and hair color of all things. Well, given that there don't seem to be any non-human sapients on this plane, you suppose that something like that was inevitable, but still. At least this "ABB" has the justification of all being from the same few countries, so it might be nationalism. This Empire 88, on the other hand, just seems arbitrary to you.
As for the third major group, well… You would compare them to the Rakdos from that plane you recently visited, but that would be an insult to them. These merchants are far more pathetic than the Rakdos even at their worst. You can guess who the gangs from earlier were; they certainly weren't these "Merchants."
Other than that, there are mentions of a pair named "Uber and Leet," as well as someone named "Circus" and another named "Coil." Apparently this Uber and Leet duo were somehow professional performers while also being villains…?
You can't help but be reminded of Rakdos again. You push the thought aside.
In any case, there's very little information on the other two, and nothing else of use in the broadsheet, so you fold up the broadsheet and put it back. That was… informative.
You check your mana sources. It hasn't refreshed, and you don't think you'll be able to attune yourself to a land right now, but you feel that both of those should change in a few hours.
You
[ ]Look for more information on the world you're in
-[ ]At a library
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]Investigate
-[ ]The PRT
-[ ]The Protectorate
-[ ]The ABB
-[ ]The Empire 88
-[ ]The Merchants
-[ ]Uber and Leet
-[ ]Circus
-[ ]Coil
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]Set up a base of operations in
-[ ]the ghettos
-[ ]the area with the warehouses
-[ ]the boat graveyard
-[ ]The sewers (There's always some mysteriously spacious area in the sewers, right?)
-[ ]One of the mirror worlds
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]Test the limits of your current capabilities
[ ]Try to figure out what could have happened to you
[ ]Write-in
~~~~~
A/N: It's funny, but the hardest part of writing these is making the options at the end. I always finish thinking that I could have provided much better ones and that the ones listed don't actually represent all or the best options available to you.
That's why I like Write-ins so much, and why I tend to give a write-in that's received multiple votes more weight than I give a vote for a vanilla option.
On another note, a thing that I'm considering doing is having the "cool-down" between using the mana in a land and that mana being usable again, be shorter if you used the mana for an instant or sorcery than if you used it for a Permanent (If I do this, I'd be shortening the refresh time for lands used to cast instants and sorceries, rather than increasing the time for permanents). What do you guys think?While a broadsheet may be the most easily accessible source of information, what with being able to grab one off the street, it really isn't the best, since unlike research materials it doesn't bother with being comprehensive or providing background. A library would be better, and you saw several earlier, in the better parts of town.
It takes you about twenty minutes to get to one, and a glance at the numbers on the door and the hands on the clock inside tells you that there's less than an hour until it closes.
It takes you a while to find the non-fiction sections -- apparently the first floor only has fiction and references. Presumably this library's materials are used more often for entertainment than research. A little more time searching finds you the history section.
A brief perusal of history books shows that magic is a very recent occurrence on this plane, first appearing almost thirty years ago. Anything of relevance likely happened after that, so after a bit more searching you find an appropriate book, one discussing the history of Capes.
Apparently the first signs of magic were when a man -- or at least, something man-shaped -- appeared and, over time, began saving people. Over time he revealed his name to be Scion -- Scion of what potentially bears investigating, as it seems no one really knows…
In any case, Capes only began appearing after he did, so chances are he's either the source, or of similar origin in some way or another.
Then you get to the Endbringers. A trio of immensely powerful creatures, destroying and depopulating an entire plane, grinding it away to nothing...
...Yes, that sounds very familiar to you, even if the specifics are different. Was it really a coincidence that you ended up here of all places? You--
"Excuse me?"
You close the book and turn to the woman who just spoke to you. It's one of the librarians. "Yes?"
"We're closing in five minutes."
You nod. "Ah, thank you."
She turns to walk away, then stops, giving you an odd look.
"Something wrong?" You ask.
"I thought I saw..." She shakes her head. "No, nothing. Just be sure that you're at the checkout desk by the time we close."
Hm... Did she see the Mindlash Sliver? It's possible that your pack tore and a piece of it was sticking out, or she took note of the odd shape of your pack or something. You idly check your spells and mana, and are pleased to find that the mana source you tapped earlier is ready to be used again, and you are ready to attune to another land as well.
[ ]"Wait."
-[ ]Talk to her, make sure she's dismissed what she might have seen
-[ ]Make Small Talk. That should be enough to figure out if she's just pretending to be calm or something.
-[ ]Converse with her to discretely gather more information about the plane
-[ ]Converse with her to gather more information about the local groups
--[ ]About a specific group, which you will investigate for yourself immediately afterward
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]No need for any of that. Leave and attune yourself to
-[ ]A local source of White mana
-[ ]A local source of Blue mana
-[ ]A local source of Black mana
-[ ]The one local source of red mana
-[ ]A mana source in a mirror world
-[ ]Write-in
And then
[ ]Find a place to stay for the night in
-[ ]the ghettos
-[ ]the area with the warehouses
-[ ]the boat graveyard
-[ ]The sewers (There's always some mysteriously spacious area in the sewers, right?)
-[ ]One of the mirror worlds
-[ ]Write-in
--[ ](Addendum to any of the above) and set up a place of operations there as well
[ ]The night is still young! Investigate
-[ ]The PRT
-[ ]The Protectorate
-[ ]The ABB
-[ ]The Empire 88
-[ ]The Merchants
-[ ]Uber and Leet
-[ ]Circus
-[ ]Coil
-[ ]Write-in
[ ]Test the limits of your current capabilities
[ ]Try to figure out what could have happened to you
[ ]Interlude (Write-in name)
[ ]Write-in
Incidentally, "Interlude [Name]" will (almost) always be a valid vote.
Can you tell I'm still having a bit of trouble properly doing vote options? Because I am.:oops: