Completed (Flashback) An Ocean of Meditation

[Kuvarakh]

His daughter, crying for help, being dragged into an alley. Kuvarakh had not known how the Nuit had killed her, so his imagination wandered...

She was dragged to a ship, crying for help. Everyone ignored her, wrapped in their own concerns. What's a little life-and-death struggle where profit is concerned? Kuvarakh heard the water begin to roar beyond the rail. His daughter screamed. The Nuit held her against the railing, her screams were stifled as he put his hands to her throat and squeezed. It seemed to last an hour. She fought and twisted, she hit and kicked, but he held firm. people walked by, doing nothing. His perspective closed in on her as her face went slack and discolored, her neck horribly bruised. She was not breathing. The Nuit leaned over her, pulling the arms and legs of her clothes up to bare her limbs as he made strange marks on them. The sea was louder still. Kuvarakh could feel wisps of spray. Two people stood at the railing and did nothing, laughing over some funny thing their child did earlier that day. They walked away, unconcerned. The wind began to blow harder, the sky darkened.

The Professor began to hit a lower note still, an 'D'.

The Nuit opened his mouth and slowly allowed his ichor, disgusting white ooze, to 'bleed' into his daughter's mouth, She stared up unblinking, unaware, oblivious. His violation continued for hours. The deck of the ship began to buck, debris coming loose and rattling by to be whipped over the side by howling winds. Kuvarakh's hair was plastered across his forehead. He was screaming his daughter's name, but somehow could not reach for her. He was not truly there, but was, horribly, being made to watch. His daughter's head rolled limply to the side to stare at him, eyes accusing, though blank. A stranger knelt down and pointed it back face up, so the Nuit could continue, and walked on, his good deed for the day.

The Professor changed down one more note, an 'A'.

Barrels and boxes, ropes and canvas, spare planks and buckets of tar flew over the rail. The Nuit was done. Somehow the wind didn't affect him. He walked weakly, yet casually away. There was more then wind howling. A raging maelstrom had formed off the side, a hundred yards across. Spume and foam lashed Kuvarakh as he watched, screaming and helpless as the wind tugged his daughter over the side. Her body did not sink, but rode the current, face up. He tried to reach her, but, of course, could not, though his perspective seemed to have gained a point midway between ship and funnel. The surface roiled in coils of pummeling fury, thrashing and sucking everything in and spitting it out to pound on the surface again. His daughter was battered by debris from the ship, being beaten ragged. Soon she would be unrecognizable, nothing but smashed gore and pulped bones. He had to at least save the dignity of her corpse for a decent burial. Suddenly, her eyes became bright and she called to him to save her honor, to save her memory. She was dead but her death was in vain if there was no purpose. He begged her to explain, but she kept repeating, 'give my death purpose'. The water roared and carried her voice and body away. He tried to focus on her, to envision her remaining in place as he tried to move to her. She circled the outer perimeter and sank below the surface. Kuvarakh screamed 'NO' and fought to hold her image in his mind. He managed to visualize a water-rippled shadow moving in course with the maelstrom, growing nearer. It broke the surface within ten feet of him, a shadow with no substance. The wind scattered it like dust.

The Professor dropped another note, down to a 'F' string.

[Kuvarakh]

Her head broke the surface off to his left, in the path of a broken, ragged length of mast. Consumed with the grizzly image of what the impact would do to her, He screamed and tried to force his vision to reject the inevitable. The wind howled beyond deafening as a spiral of darkness lifted the spar from the water and whisked it into the center of the whirling madness, where it sank out of sight. An uncertain hope gripped him and he became aware of several other objects moving to imperil her body. He narrowed his determination on them, 'they will not strike her' he demanded of himself. The effect was slow, but sure. Some sank, some were turned aside to altered paths and a the remaining few were heaved into the center by fingers of his focused insistence.

New resolve empowered him. He took hold of the wind and, rather than working it against the spinning funnel, which would have torn the surface to near-explosive chaos, he brought it to follow the maelstrom's direction. His ears felt ripped from his head as the wind screamed in hurricane compliance. More bits of flotsam vanished or collided with others to shatter into irrelevance. Faster and faster the wind whirled, planks and barrels becoming weightless in its grip, all thrown unerringly into the roiling center of the whirlpool. His vision of the sky began to bend, distorting to a concave appearance as the presence of clouds and debris began to wane and the fury grew 'smoother'. The 'field' of this effect descended to the water's surface. The wind no longer howled, but rather, hummed, filling not just his ears, but his whole body with a thrumming vibration. Faster and faster his determination commanded. The pitch of the humming steadily rose, both in pitch and volume.

The field of aerodynamic distortion touched the water and there was a brief instant of exploding geysers of conflict, rising, whirling and blowing away. When that sudden noise abated, He became aware of the pitch of the wind's humming. It was the note 'C'.

The professor was on the second-to-last string.

[Kuvarakh]

Then the spray and crashing hiss abated to their former level and Kuvarakh saw that the 'field' of wind was pressed to the surface of the whirlpool. The spinning air effect slowed to match the revolution of the water. His jaw clenched unconsciously and he urged it to accelerate.

His daughter's hand rose from the water as if to grab the wind. Water streamed down his face with the effort, but slowly he forced his vision upon the image, and the wind began to overtake the maelstrom's velocity. The overlaying of the wind's higher rotation began to smooth the surface of the water as it allowed his daughter to rise out of it.

But instead of being hurled headlong into the center, she began to speak, and her voice was Andrik's, reciting the mantra he spoke as he reinforced his entranced presence in the effort. She had her eyes closed as he had when they had begun the acceleration. The surface of the water continued to smooth, as occasional bits of debris found their way to the center.

Kuvarakh was hovering on the edge of exhaustion and control as the water began to take on the look of glass, so smooth it had become. "Give me the lute." his daughter suddenly said, breaking from the chant Andrik continued. Kuvarakh could now hear them both. He was unsure whose subconscious his daughter now embodied, but he tried to implant the image of the lute in her hands.

The water grew rough again as he lost focus, and he quickly resumed his visualization of the glassy smooth surface. Once again the water became a featureless spiral. "Father, give me the lute. I can do this for you."

"I...can't...maintain.....both" he rasped through numb lips.

"I am the balance, but I need the lute to be complete. I am the alignment of what has been displaced. I have regained what you have lost, but I still need what Andrik needs. Give me the lute."

"But....I...will....lose....I will.....lose.....I...." he stammered as dizzy disorientation set his perception off balance. Exhaustion took hold and he could not breathe or move. His entire body seemed cramped and it seemed the entire vision began to tip on its side.

"It MUST be now, father. Trust me. I will always be here to see you through." Her face was both commanding and gentle, understanding, yet uncompromising. 'Trust me' she said 'I will always be here'.

He gasped a last strangled breath and pulled his image back to his own disembodied hands. A shimmering, translucent image of the lute filled his hand for a second before the wind whipped it from him. He screamed in desperate realization of catastrophe as his failure taunted him with the vision of the lute flying free, torn from his control when he needed it most.

A note somehow rang out over all the noise. His thumb must have caught the string as it was jerked free. A single note, lower than any previous one. A low 'G'. The signal note. The professor had triggered the completion of the activation. 'Too early!' he was about to scream when he saw the image of the whirlpool implode on itself in a pillar of frothy gel, engulfing his daughter, with the lute held in her hand!

[Kuvarakh]

He felt as if he was in the whirlpool now, exhaustion and dizziness the primary conditions of his existence. The water truly like glass...hard against his back as the maelstrom spun....silently? Where was the noise? 'Oh no...that's right...it is gone.' he thought to himself as recriminations of failure poured across his mind.

'But...if it is gone....where am I?' He heard himself mutter this last as he began to realize it was not the glassy surface of the water he was lying on. That was just his meditative vision. He was on some other hard surface. The spinning began to slow and he dared to open his eyes. He was lying on his back on the cement floor of the lab.

"Kuvarakh? Are you alright? Do you hear me?" The Professor was kneeling beside him, putting some sort of cushion behind his head. He tilted his head to the side - whether by intent or exhaustion he was not sure - to see Andrik weaving in his chair, lute in hand, equally spent.

"What happened? Did we do it?" He asked weakly. Now the professor became quite animated, pacing back and forth, hands clenching and unclenching, gesticulating wildly with enthusiasm as he described the magnitude of size and acceleration they had achieved.

"Over my head, it was! going so fast it was humming! I thought you were going to pull paint in from the ceiling and dye yourselves!" He turned serious then, "But that's only MY success, as for you, we have yet to see. it's not as though there was any obvious outer change we can see to suggest your success, I'm sorry to say."

Kuvarakh struggled to prop himself on his elbows, "Ohhh...I'm trying to remember what we were even doing...gods...my head....Oh yes, that's right, we were trying to rebalance the natural innate talents possessed by Andrik and I to their proper personal proportions prior to the uncoordinated activation release from the other day."

The Professor clapped his hands merrily, "Well said, Kuvarakh! And I call THAT a very good sign. You would have stumbled over that description last night!"

Kuvarakh felt reinvigorated, "My Focus! Yes...I feel more able to concentrate! But it's difficult to be sure, I'm so tired...and hungry...I need...-"

He was interrupted by music, lute music, slightly out of tune. Andrik reached for the tuning heads, selecting the one that adjusts the 'C' string. "It's a little flat still, needs to stretch some more." He cranked it little by little as he plucked the string until it rang harmonically with the rest of them. Then he started to play!

Swarms of exuberant arpeggios danced around the ears of the three men, broken by trios of chord substitutions and parallel harmonies. Staccato patterns of strumming breaking and bracing the melodies of a dozen songs, underscoring the joy of the man's laughter as he indulged his musical talents. After a few minutes, Andrik sagged back in his seat, sweating and beaming.

"Oh yes, I AM BACK!" he called triumphantly.

We both were.

[Arcane]

Rewards and Treasure! Experience Points +3 Alchemy +3 Hypnotism +2 Meditation +1 Wrestling +1 Musical Instrument: Lute +1 Investigation Lores Daydreaming in Class Story of Kuvarakh's Daughter Involvement in the Innate Personality Restoration Experiment Traditionalist/Conservative University Politics Unconscious Use of Hypnotism Personality Switching due to Experimental Side Effect Exposure to Djed Radiation Miscellaneous n/a Comments I enjoy pseudoscientific stuff, I really do. Your pseudoscientific interpretation of Alchemy is quite pleasing, and it would be great to see more advanced stuff (when Kuv is capable of it, of course) in the context of your interpretation. Good job on the pseudoscience/drama/politics parts in the thread, they tickle my fancy If it is possible that you expanded on that traditionalist/conservative politics-thing in the future it would be great... in fact if you developed the plot well enough it could even balloon into a larger -scale thing in the future. Who knows? I enjoyed the pace and the content of the thread. The sheer amount of backstory is awesome - it is obvious that you are writing for the story and to develop Kuvarakh rather than just trying to go for XP. Your writing is eloquent and smooth, and it kept me reading. Your innovation for Alchemy is astounding, and I can't wait to see what you can do in the future with it. However, there are a few stuff to take note. Hypnotism does not work this way, you need to supply a djed push using your own body - and it must be a conscious, meditative effort - in order to use it. Your interpretation of it did not work. In this context, I will instead just accept the alchemical explanation you gave. If you wish to edit the Hypnotism parts to conform to the Lore, edit the thread and PM me with details on where and what you edited and I will consider awarding Hypnotism XP. UPDATE: In light of the PM discussions/clarifications and various edits in the thread, I have revised XP and Lore awards.