Conflux 2012: Soldier

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Soldier

The first thought that he had was that he was uncomfortable. That wasn’t a surprise considering sitting in a foxhole in the dead of winter on the northern front of Europe is not the most comfortable situations. He moved to see if he could find a more comfortable position before either the fighting started with the Nazies again or before his commander could wake him up to start it.

As he tried to go back to sleep something kept nagging him at the back of his mind. Then it dawned on him with light making a red glow through his eyelids. He wasn’t uncomfortable because of being cold he was uncomfortable because he was to warm, in fact he was sweating. His eyes shot open filled with light that was far to bright to be morning. The sounds of millions of insects availed his ears as he tried to orientate himself. Brian (because that was his name) looked around in utter astonishment this looked like the fox hole that he had fallen asleep in last night but everything else was wrong.

Over the top of Brian’s head he could see the canopy of thick jungle foliage. Now that he was awake he could no longer ignore the heat that came at him in waves. He ripped the front of his coat open and tried to concentrate on his surroundings instead of the damp heat that pressed almost gluing his cloths to his body. Franticly he checked to see if he had any of his gear. He felt all three of his knifes, something his mates had made fun of him for, and also his colt. All of this was on his person so he was not surprised it was still there. Luckily his backpack and M1 Garand were still resting beside him along with the two bags full of ammunition for his company. Brian felt a moment of relief that his commander was not there to yell at him for taking off with the company’s ammo.

Quickly Brian striped off his coat and shoved it into his backpack. Slinging the backpack and the two bags of ammunition onto his back he fixed one of his knifes, his bayonet, onto his rifle. He took a couple of quick breaths and then jumped up positioning his gun over the top of his fox whole and into the face of a possible enemy. All that he saw was a thick wall of very green jungle foliage. He started thinking fast maybe if he was here others of his company were as well.

“Jason.” He croaked barely addible. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Jason, Tubby, Phil is anyone there.”

No one responded the only sound that answered his cries were the buzzing of insects. He tried again this time calling out everyone’s name in the company a little louder. Nothing no other sounds came back besides those of the insects. He scrambled out of his fox whole turning to get a panoramic view of his surroundings. Even without his coat the heat was oppressive feeling like the middle of summer in his hometown in Utah. There was the crushing sound of breaking branches behind him and Brian turned around quickly to confront the noise.

On the other side of the fox hole from him was the biggest creature that he had ever seen. It looked like a giant lizard standing on two legs a thick tail stretched out in back of it. But right then the only thing that Brain was interested in was the things head. It looked big enough to swallow him whole and was full of what looked like extremely sharp teeth. Without realizing it he had set the butt of rifle in his shoulder and fired two quick shots. The shots sounded like thunder exploding the silence but were quickly drowned out by the roar of the giant lizard. It started swinging its head from side to side desperately trying to scratch at its face with two pitifully short arms. Taking the opportunity Brian turned and ran into the jungle.

For the moment he was alone followed only by the roar of the giant lizard he had left behind. That changed as the roar of the lizard subsided replaced by the sound of breaking foliage, the sure sound of pursuit. Brian ran desperately thinking, how this couldn’t be real it had to be a dream but being rapidly awakened to the fact of the very real leafs striking his face and the blood pounding in his ears. Brian burst into a clearing and started looping across the open field painfully aware of the sound of a much larger body following quickly gaining ground. He only had a moment of quick surprise as he realized that the space in front of him didn’t quit match up with its surroundings. It looked like a broken mirror cutting across the land everything behind it being somehow blurred.

That was all he had a moment and then he was hurtling through that broken space. He felt like every hair on his body was trying to stand on end everything in front of him blurred and shifted. Brian actually felt it shift, something tugged at his foot and he fell rolling across a wooden floor slamming hard into a wall. His vision blurred and for a moment he couldn’t see a thing his whole world was black. A loud crash and sound of breaking wood was barely audible to Brian followed by an earsplitting roar that Brian was vaguely aware happening nearby.

After a moment Brian lifted himself up onto his hands and knees and took in his surroundings. It looked like he was in a house the paint on the walls pilling and faded. The furniture was torn and everything was dust covered and dirty, no one had lived here in a very long time. He turned to look in back of him and quickly backed up to the wall, grabbing at his rifle and lifting it up to his shoulder. The giant lizard had followed him through the rift and impaled itself on one of crossbeams overhead. The large wooden beam had gone all the way through the lizard and been torn free from the ceiling. Its large head was near were Brian’s feet had most recently been the lizards eyes clouded by death.

Brian realized that he was lucky the same thing didn’t happen to him when had gone through that rift. Looking behind the lizard he saw the same ill fitting of space he had gone through. He made a mental note not to go anywhere near that jagged line of ill fitting space. Catching his breath he stood up and made his way carefully toward a door set in the wall. Reading his rifle and himself he pushed it open determined to find out what was going on.

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The Cataclysm

In the year 2012, as predicted by the Mayan Calender, the sun disappeared. The stars ripped across the sky like streaks of fire, and the moon burned red and dripped boiling drops onto the earth. For three days the earth itself groaned and buckled with terrifying storms and earthquakes and tsunamis. Then, for seven long seconds, everything was lost in absolute darkness, silence, stillness. After the silence, people were greeted by a strange new world. A sun shone again in the sky, but it didn't seem the right size, and it took a little longer to make it's journey across the sky. Two moons orbit the earth, a small bright blue one and the older one now stained a dull bronze color. Stars in the sky now waver with watery light. The world itself was fractured, splintered. Strange creatures hunted the forests, and terrifying creatures haunted the edge of perception. In this new, post-apocalyptic world, you should know these things:

CHANGELINGS: At the beginning of the cataclysm three billion people disappeared all across the planet. Now some few millions of them reappear, at different times, and in different places than where they were. Sometimes they have no memory of who they were before. Sometimes they returned Changed in other ways- hair the blue color of the sky, an extra set of arms, cat-slit pupils, pointed ears, and stranger physical anomalies. Some of them seem to come from other time periods of the earths' history, and others don't seem to come from this planet at all.

FRACTURED SPACE: all around the world, strange, invisible cracks mark the place where space doesn't quite match up, like looking through a broken mirror, where the reflections don't fit together exactly right at the edges. A slice of cloud will be missing, or a doorway will lead to somewhere unexpected. Walking through these fractures, called Slicing, allows you to hop from one shard of reality to another. Sometimes a Slice goes only one way, and other times two Slices next to each other can trap you into a never-ending loop. Some Slices can trap you under thousands of feet of water or lead you into a poisonous atmosphere, or leave you thousands of feet above the earth. While these Slices are extremely rare, they still make Slicing extremely hazardous. You can never tell where a slice will actually lead to just by looking, because most fractures mirror the shard of reality that you are currently in. Most fractures stay put, but some drift slowly across the landscape. Others can lead to different places at different times. Each shard of reality is generally a couple of dozen miles, although some few cover hundreds of miles. Some are very small, only the size of a bedroom or closet.

FRACTURED TIME: Dotting the landscape are eddies of time called warps, places where time moves faster or slower than the world around it. They are barely visible, almost like a heat wave. The shards of reality themselves are from different time periods in earth history, although they now all share the same time line. You can have a shard of Victorian England that connects to a shard of world war 2. The latest time of any shard is 2012, and the earliest is the Triassic Period. The earth itself, because of these extra pieces from the past, has three times the surface area than it used to have, although gravity remains largely unchanged (sometimes a slice will lead you into another shard with reversed or omnidirectional gravity).

REMNANTS OF WORLDS: As well as our own world and its past, some rare shards seem to be from places and times completely unknown to earth. Inhabited by strange creatures, some completely alien and some strangely familiar, these other-world shards are unpredictable at best and present rare and unique challenges to explorers. While they largely seem to obey the same laws of physics that our world used to, it sometimes takes some research to find out exactly how some things, such as floating islands and giant flying monstrosities, can actually do the things they do. On the other hand, rare and valuable materials can often be found in these areas.

REMNANTS OF CIVILIZATION: While Nations have been ripped apart, technology seems largely to keep working. New power sources, such as blood-moon crystals, have been tapped. Bloodmoon crystals act like immensely powerful batteries (1000 times more powerful and longer lasting than anything we now have) and can be found several hundred feet below the surface of most shards. Bloodmoon crystals get their name from when the moon wept meteors onto the earth during the Cataclysm. Computer networks keep most of there functionality, although the internet is mostly broken apart by the shards. Modified vehicles can be used, although it is much harder now to get the parts to repair them. Rifles and guns are now limited by the remaining stockpiles of ammunition in each shard, and the ammunition that can be manufactured there. Anything that was manufactured elsewhere (read- almost everything) is now very valuable, and many things are again made by hand. Buildings that once housed business chains have been converted, and it is not uncommon to find a Golden Arches diner, or a thrift store in the remnants of an old JC Penny's.

ETHERA: Like shadows or mirages, ethereal forms wander the world, haunting the edges of reality. They are most visible near a fracture, but can be found anywhere. Some are human ghosts, some animal, and some are other things, things with teeth and claws, or with shining feathered wings, or others with twitching tentacles. These ethereal beings seep through the cracks of reality, possessing the bodies of living creatures and twisting them into strange new forms. If it is a human or animal spirit, or merely a remnant of one of the stranger creatures, the person touched may gain the ability to change form into that animal, or become stronger and faster than a regular human. They may even gain the rare and valued ability to see between the Slices to where the next shard is. These abilities come at a cost, for all beings of Ethera are bound by strange laws, called geise. One geise may prohibit the person from eating anything besides raw meat. Another may bind them to serve whoever knows their name, depending on the type of Ethera they are host to. If it is a stronger Ethera than the spirit of the living creature, it can take over the body completely, pushing the former occupant out. Once inside a host, the Ethera becomes immensely more powerful and terrifying, capable of directly affecting the world around them. While not all Ethera are monsters, and some could even be termed beneficent, it is wise to deal carefully with any of these strange entities. They are completely alien and many times do not understand human concepts such as kindness or the passage of time. Slicing is the time when these creatures have the most opportunity to capture a living body, although there must generally still be some sort of invitation from the host.

MAGIC: Some people have learned to manipulate this new, broken reality. They channel probability into new shapes, calling lightning from clear skies, enhancing their strength or speed, breaking or mending objects- manipulating reality. Doing so, however, has dangerous consequences, for changing reality too much in this way attracts the attention of the Ethera. Sometimes the backwash of energy is too much for a mortal form, and sometimes they lack the mental discipline necessary and go insane. Any who wish to survive long while using this ability would be wise to keep any changes to reality as small as possible.

Conflux 2012

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Soldier

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