#Potentially perfectly peaceful afterlife | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pathfinderunlocked · 8 months ago

Text

Lesser Hakkari Kami - CR11 Kami

There is a guardian spirit for all things. Even blood.

Artwork by T SWCK on Artstation.

A weaker version of the CR 15 Hakkari Kami, a monster I previously posted. In an adventure that ends with the CR 15 version the Hakkari Adherents would be lower level minions that the PCs mow through six at a time, but in an adventure that ends with this CR 11 version, the Hakkari Adherents would be pretty powerful leiutenants.

This creature is based on Hakkar the Soulflayer, a loa demigod from from Warcraft. In the Warcraft setting, loa are divine beings connected to nature, usually taking the form of specific types of animals, which grant power to those who worship them. There are countless loa, many of which are worshiped by groups as small as a specific family, which might have very minimal power. Hakkar is a more powerful one; he’s known as the loa of blood, and takes the form of a wind serpent. I’ve adapted this idea into a kami for Hakkar’s Pathfinder conversion; there’s no type of outsider in Pathfinder that perfectly matches the loa, but kami are close enough to work.

In Pathfinder, kami are a lesser-known type of outsider which are usually neutral aligned and peaceful, watching over a specific type of creature, object or place that they consider their “ward.” There are a huge number of different types of kami which each watch over certain types of wards. A hakkari kami’s ward is spilled blood, and it’s not nearly as peaceful as most others.

Like other kami, hakkari kami find themselves stretched thin, with too many potential wards and not enough kami, and seek to create more of their kind in order to protect more wards. They do this by choosing dedicated mortal servants to ascend to kami when they die. In the case of the hakkari, these mortal servants tend to be those that offer countless blood sacrifices, especially sacrifices to the hakkari kami itself, and who may even take their own life in a ritual sacrifice in an attempt to gain the hakkari’s favor and ascend to a more powerful form. If cornered by powerful enemies, a hakkari’s weaker followers may choose to kill themselves instead of fight, hoping to ascend and become kami themselves instead of passing to the afterlife, and gain enough power to then fight their foes.

A lesser hakkari kami is likely to be one of these followers, newly ascended and not yet in full command of its powers.

I included a line of text stating that a kami can choose a new ward by spending 24 hours attuning to it. This isn’t listed in the general rules for kamis’ wards, but I feel confident that it must be intended by the developers for there to be SOME way to obtain a new ward. Otherwise, kami that have short-lived creatures like insects as their wards would only have a ward for the first few years or months of their immortal lives, and then be left sickened and purposeless for all eternity. Since insects are even listed as one of their example wards, I assume that probably isn’t the intent of how this type of outsider is supposed to work; they should be able to take a new ward if their old one is killed or destroyed.

This creatures uses the overwhelmed condition, a custom condition I use in some of my creatures. In my own home games, I nearly always replace any paralyzed, stunned, or nauseated effects caused by monsters with the overwhelmed condition.

Lesser Hakkari - CR 11

Towering above you is a massive winged serpent with a fanged maw and scythe-like claws for arms. Its beautiful violet plumage contrasts against its blood-red scales.

XP 12,800 NE Huge outsider (kami, native) Init +8 Senses darkvision 60 ft., deathwatch, true seeing; Perception +20

DEFENSE

AC 22, touch 13, flat-footed 17 (+4 Dex, +1 dodge, +9 natural, -2 size); +2 vs. good hp 142 (15d10+60); fast healing 10 Fort +11, Ref +13, Will +13; +2 vs. good DR 10/cold iron Immune bleed, mind-affecting effects, petrification, polymorph Resist acid 10, electricity 10, fire 10

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., fly 60 ft. (good) Melee bite +19 (1d8+6), 2 claws +19 (3d6+6) Space 15 ft., Reach 15 ft. Special Attacks blood siphon, cleansing bloodrage, corrupted blood

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 15th; concentration +21) Constant—blood scent, deathwatch, protection from good, true seeing At will—blood biography (DC 19) 3/day—confusion (DC 20), quickened blood armor 1/week—dominate monster (DC 25, creatures with blood only)

STATISTICS

Str 23, Dex 18, Con 18, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 23 Base Atk +15; CMB +23; CMD 38 (40 vs. good) Feats Bloody Assault, Dodge, Great Fortitude, Improved Initiative, Improved Iron Will, Iron Will, Power Attack, Quicken Spell-like Ability (blood armor) Skills Acrobatics +13, Fly +20, Heal +20, Knowledge (local) +15, Linguistics +0, Perception +20, Sense Motive +6, Stealth +12, Survival +7, Spellcraft +12 Languages Common, Kuru; telepathy 100 ft. SQ merge with ward, ward (spilled blood)

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Blood Siphon (Su) As a standard action once every 1d4+1 rounds, a lesser hakkari can drain the blood from targets in a 40 ft. cone. Each target takes 6d8 damage and is overwhelmed for one round. A DC 21 Fortitude save halves the damage and negates the overwhelming effect. Creatures that do not have blood are immune. The lesser hakkari is healed for an amount equal to half of the damage dealt. The save DC is Constitution-based.

If a lesser hakkari uses its blood siphon against a creature that is poisoned, or that has poisonous blood (such as from the poisonous blood universal monster ability, the toxic blood spell, or a vishkanya’s toxic racial ability), the lesser hakkari receives no healing from that creature and must save against the poison.

An overwhelmed creature is staggered and cannot concentrate. If an overwhelmed creature attacks or casts a spell, it falls prone and becomes helpless until the beginning of its next turn after doing so. Effects that would remove or prevent the paralyzed or nauseated conditions also remove or prevent the overwhelmed condition.

Cleansing Bloodrage (Ex) Once per day, while below 25% hit points (usually 39 hp), a lesser hakkari can enter a bloodrage as a free action. While in a bloodrage, a lesser hakkari gains a +4 morale bonus to his Strength and Constitution, as well as a +2 morale bonus on Will saves. This bonus to Constitution typically increases its current and maximum hit points by 30. In addition, it takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class.

This bloodrage lasts for 1 minute. When a lesser hakkari’s bloodrage ends, it is fatigued for 1 minute. It cannot enter a bloodrage while fatigued.

While bloodraging, a lesser hakkari can cast and concentrate on its spell-like abilities, but cannot perform any other action that requires concentration, and cannot use Charisma-, Dexterity-, or Intelligence-based skills (except Acrobatics, Fly, Intimidate, and Ride).

When a lesser hakkari enters a bloodrage, it is affected as though by the cleanse spell, regaining 4d8+15 hit points and recovering from a variety of conditions and effects.

A lesser hakkari can enter a bloodrage even while under the effect of a condition that would normally prevent it from taking an action, as long as that condition is one that can be removed by the cleanse spell, but doing so uses a standard action instead of a free action.

Corrupted Blood (Su) As a move action, a lesser hakkari can corrupt the blood of a target within 60 ft. The target takes 2d6 negative energy damage, and must succeed on a DC 23 Fortitude save or be subjected to 1d10 bleed damage. Creatures that do not have blood are immune.

Whenever a creature takes bleed damage from this ability, all other creatures within 10 ft. of that creature must succeed on a DC 19 Fortitude save or begin bleeding as well for 1d10 bleed damage. The save DCs are Charisma-based, and the secondary save includes a -4 penalty.

Fast Healing (Ex) As long as a kami is within 120 feet of its ward, it gains fast healing 10.

Merge with Ward (Su) As a standard action, a kami can merge its body and mind with its ward (see the Ward ability below). When merged, the kami can observe the surrounding region with its senses as if it were using its own body, as well as via any senses its ward might have. It has no control over its ward, nor can it communicate or otherwise take any action other than to emerge from its ward as a standard action. A kami must be adjacent to its ward to merge with or emerge from it.

Ward (Su) A kami has a specific ward—in a lesser hakkari’s case, its ward is spilled blood, either from a specific creature or on a specific sacrificial altar. Several of a kami’s abilities function only when it is either merged with its ward or within 120 feet of it. If a kami’s ward is portable and travels with the kami to another plane, the kami does not gain the extraplanar subtype on that other plane as long as its ward remains within 120 feet. If a ward is destroyed while a kami is merged with it, the kami dies (no save). If a ward is destroyed while a kami is not merged with it, the kami loses its merge with ward ability and its fast healing, and becomes permanently sickened, until it chooses a new ward.

If a kami’s ward is killed or destroyed, it can choose a new ward by spending 24 hours attuning to it.

#d&d #pathfinder 1e #outsider #native #kami #warcraft

11 notes · View notes

ep2nd · 1 year ago

Text

I'm way to board-

Odyssey's Sequel AU

Part 4

The Adventures of Oli and Xornoth: Welcome to Pearl's and Perils!

Oli escapes the Afterlife, falling into Pearl's Paradise. With deep confusion, albeit determination, Oli ventures the cloud-like kingdom, meeting Pearl, the goddess of farming and strength.

He inquires about his good friend Sausage, an Angel who had risen to the Heavens they abode now. Pearl smiles sadly, yet her golden eyes fill with peaceful joy.

"He's sleeping. Finally resting. Earning the life he deserved."

Oli can't accept that, and he doesn't. He screams and wails dramatically, demanding Pearl wake Sausage up. He needs his best friend! Pearl tries to calm him down, yet her energy is turned worthless.

Oli dashes out, Pearl hot on his heels. Before she can tackle him and bring him back, because this is where he belongs, Oli jumps off the clouds and escapes Pearl's clutches, leaving a frustrated and fuming Pearl.

He'll die, she's sure of it. He barely survived Afterlife. She grumbles in frustration. If she hadn't already chosen a Chosen, she would happily Choose Oli, if to give Sausage any lasting comfort for his friend.

Then she remembers, remembers a Demon who died yet lived, balancing between life and death, only relinquished when the gods finally fulfilled their wishes and gave them godhood.

Pearl finds Xornoth, god of the Void and Corruption, sweet-talking them into Choosing Oli. Maybe she threw in a fib or two... whatever! Oli was going to die without help.

So, begrudgingly, Xornoth agrees, making Oli their Chosen, leaving the Heavens to help Oli.

Pearl stays behind, grinning from ear to ear. Her plan is going perfectly well.

She changes her fancy, skirts for a blue turtleneck and overalls, leaving through a special portal.

Hermitcraft will only wait for so long.

I bit of an explanation for how Xornoth ended up with Oli of all people. And hey, is that a potential Hermitcraft crossover in the future?!

Maybe...

Either I do Adventures of Oli and Xornoth part 2 or something with Pearl and False. We'll see!

12 notes · View notes

witches-and-weirdos · 10 months ago

Text

Nillan Seil

“Ignorance and bigotry are the banes of peace.“

[[This art was made by @equleart]]

Briefly

Nillan Seil is a female human necromancer

She is a Death Shepherd, a wandering holy woman of the goddess of undeath. Her divine role is the creation, protection, nurturing and guidance of the undead, so that they may prosper.

Due to the widespread distrust and fear of necromancy and undeath, she typically passes between the common folk as an ordinary nobody, and is quite cautious about who to trust and to what extent with her true nature

Age: 28

Height: 173 cm (5′8)

Visual Identifiers (Nillan): Looks perfectly ordinary, pale greyish-blue eyes, short black hair, almost always appears very calm

Visual Identifiers (Shepherd): Skull-painted face, a bone chest-piece molded from a human ribcage, white cloak, partially painted hair

Main Goals/Motivations: - Help make unlife better - Minimize conflicts between normal people and the undead - Follow her goddess' guidance

16 personality types test: not done yet

Alignment: True Neutral

Shipping: Nillan is bisexual, she isn't currently looking for anyone, but she isn't outright rejecting the idea either

Playlist

Trivia

Nillan carries a shortsword "for self defense", though her magic is much more effective

She likes hiking, staying up way too long and just enjoying peace and silence.

Her skin is usually a bit cold to the touch, quite enough to notice and to maybe worry a bit, and it is fairly difficult to make her look anything but calm

Nillan's body is slowly transitioning from living to undead, though she is very much alive for now, the truly perceptive might notice that a few things are off about her.

Her goddess is Ginerva, The Grave Queen, in most places she is considered a Dark God, and thus knowledge about her is limited and her worship is forbidden

[This was made by Stepan Alekseev]

Verses

Multiverse

Fantasy: This is probably already home territory for her. If necromancy is more accepted in the setting, she might be a bit more open about it.

Sci-fi: Probably no need to change anything here either, as long as the supernatural exists, though she probably also has a handgun here

League of Legends

Noxian, from the rural edge of the empire

Focuses mostly on neutral, "natural-born" undead, rather than the ones from the Shadow Isles or the Noxian revenant troops

Warhammer 40k

Ginerva is a Greater Demon of Nurgle here, joyously focused on creating various different types of undeath, rather than the more "common plagues"

As such, Nillan is a wandering Chaos Sorcerer with high psychic potential

Dead by Daylight (no recurrent memory erasure)

Killer

"This is not the afterlife I expected..."

Ingame Power: At Totems or anywhere after hooking a Survivor, she can raise Skeletons that harmlessly follow her. She can make Skeletons break breakable objects. or dangerously guard a small area. Skeletons can be destroyed with a holy Survivor item, but this notifies her, and they self destruct shortly if too far from her. Mostly a chase power to deny certain paths and loops from survivors, but also serves as a short term mid range info power.

Usual Playstyle: "Good guy killer", careful in chases, kills the guy pointing out your location, noobs get it a bit more easy

Stories

None yet

“Unlife is a difficult blessing. I am here to help you with the difficult part, and to see beyond it.“

#Nillan #Info Page

3 notes · View notes

dumbblondesposts · 1 year ago

Note

If you could have it your way how would the process be for klayley. What would you change and what would you keep from canon? If it had an extra season how would it progress?

I'd remove haylijah all together for the simple fact it offered nothing to the characters/plot and was funny enough used to make klayley look better for some reason? Like idk if it was intentional or not but the narrative was absolutely ruthless in the way it obliterated them in favor of klayley/Hayleyxjackson every time

This question is so tricky because honestly the show actually worked in their favor really, but if anything I'd definitely have them confront each other regarding their feelings by the end of season one/ season 2 at most

I'd pretty much keep their canon dynamic because it was absolutely perfect and the tragic aspect is what makes them great

I would however give at least one scene that would deal with the aftermath of them choosing each other above hope, for example I find it insane that the writers had Klaus chose to risk unborn hope's life to potentially save a dead Hayley in 1x20, or choosing to Grieve her death over saving hope's life once again In 1x22, because how are you going to tell us Klaus loved her more than anyone but not elaborate or show the impact of such decisions on Hayley who wanted nothing more than to matter to him??

And while I love them to death season 5 was my absolute favorite klayley season despite their deaths and I think was the perfect conclusion for them because it summed up their relationship perfectly, after all the progress they made in the last two seasons Klaus going back to pushing Hayley away to protect her from himself out of self hatred and stubbornness cause he never really change since any "development" he had relied on Hayley/Elijah being physically there for him while Hayley resorted back to putting everything aside to relentlessly try and tell him she loved him no matter what and how she simply wants to be there for him, writing countless letters he never read, defending his heinous acts and abandonment of her and hope for years was nothing but perfectly in character for her and them

If there's one thing Hayley will do it's fight for Klaus and stand by him no matter what and it's absolutely sad how it took Hayley dying for Klaus to finally see just how much she loves him and how he wasted years being miserable and insecure instead of letting her in the way he wished

Him coming back to the city in a heartbeat risking countless lives, a war and his fucking daughter's life ONCE AGAIN for Hayley and allowing Elijah to die for no reason after disowning and hating him after what he did to Her were all a perfect representation of the tragic dedication he and Hayley had for each other

One thing I would've changed is maybe show them reuniting in the afterlife with the promise of making up for all that's been lost, they finally have no circumstances pulling them away from each other and can finally be at peace knowing they've done everything they can for hope and for each other

There's really no need for another season but both szn 4 and 5 should've been longer to show how great they finally worked out with Klaus getting out of his own way but also the inevitable Fall out with Klaus descent into who he used to be in season 5 and how his abandonment affected Hayley since all she did up to that point was to prevent that

#the originals #klayley #klaus mikaelson #hayley marshall #tvd #klaus x hayley #character study

8 notes · View notes

whitegownsandflowercrowns · 27 days ago

Text

Ok, time to drop my theories.

I’m team “it’s ending with Alicent,” and I think there are a few ways that ending with Alicent could go down:

The Tudors ending. For those of you who don’t know, the TV show The Tudors (2007-2010) ends with Henry VIII’s death, but not before the ghosts of his first three wives show up to haunt him and guilt him. This could absolutely be Alicent’s ending. Her children, Rhaenyra, Otto, Viserys, Criston could all show up and she could have conversations with them as she dies, with her on a sliding scale of apologizing to finally lashing out - if she got to yell at Viserys here I’d forgive all the praise he got in season 2. You could also use this (especially Helaena) to reveal that Jaehaera will die young, Viserys II will return and Aegon the Younger will never fully recover from the Dance. I’ve seen it proposed that these ghosts could mimic the Seven, which I think would be beautiful and devastating. Pros would be that I think this would be stunning and a great way to make sure that all of the themes are out there. Cons would be that this could be interpreted as ripping off The Tudors.

The Godswood Hallucination. All of the final rites have been done, and Alicent lays dying. As she dies, she sees the Godswood scene from the pilot in her mind. Maybe it’s exactly the same, and she only expresses that she wishes they could have flown far away together; maybe it turns into something completely different. Maybe they become their older versions and hash it out one last time. Maybe their younger versions express all their regrets. Maybe their older versions watch their younger versions, wishing they could be those girls again. Slight possibility that this could be underwhelming but I think this has a lot of potential to end the series perfectly.

The Viserys parallel. We all remember Viserys’ death scene in 1x08 - he reaches out to Aemma, the screen cuts to black, we hear his voice say “no more,” and the credits roll. This is significant as it was his death that kicked off the Dance, and the “no more” could equally apply to no more peace as it does to no more suffering. Ryan Condal loves his parallels, and this could be a great one - Alicent reaches out to Rhaenyra, the screen cuts to black, she says “no more,” and the final credits roll. I think those would be great final words for the show (this time no more war) and it has the potential to be a very powerful ending. My one problem with this is that I don’t want Alicent’s final scene to be paralleled so directly to her abuser. We’d need some sort of subversion here to make it work.

The In Heaven, Everything Is Fine Ending. Alicent dies. She is then woken (either as her older or younger self) by Rhaenyra (either as her older or younger self) who leads her off into the afterlife. This one is very much a 50/50 split for me - depending on how it’s done, it would either severely undercut the tragedy of the Dance or it would make me ugly cry for the next three weeks.

I'm interested to see what viewers most expect and also if we can accurately predict the ending scenes due to media analysis.

#can you tell that i want emily carey back at least one more time #also i think no matter what the writers are going for maximum tears if they end it with alicent #there’s also the possibility that multiple of these could be mingled together: i’d probably be okay with 3 if 1 came first #alicent hightower #hotd #house of the dragon #hotd theories #hotd speculation #hotd spoilers

27 notes · View notes

tobi-smp · 4 years ago

Text

I was thinking on the fact that a good chunk of people insist that technoblade really Does still care about tommy, he just goes out of his way to avoid showing it. pushing his emotions down either through outright denial or just not wanting people to see them. which I think is a fair interpretation, but not one that we can say is canon, as technoblade hasn’t really had an opportunity to Express those potential emotions to the audience. so I got to thinking about an au where techno could put his money where his mouth is (or isn’t I suppose)

that scene in doomsday where tubbo jumps in front of tommy to a take a rocket from techno? he doesn’t make it in time, tommy takes the full brunt and he doesn’t come back. no one realizes at first but as the night goes on it sinks in that tommy isn’t coming back (not for everyone, not yet, but the people who are paying attention to tommy in the chaos. like tubbo, like techno, like dream).

ghostbur yells at phil about tommy, and it’s tommy that he wants to try to bring back (it’s almost tempting to try to switch places with deadbur in the afterlife to go to where tommy is, but he doesn’t really know what’d happen to him if wilbur really did come back). it’s quackity and tubbo that confront dream at the top of the obsidian. you did this, you did this to tommy.

jack keeps waiting for tommy to pull himself out of hell hand over fist just like he did, he’s another stubborn bastard just like he is. he keeps waiting, he won’t stop waiting. ranboo doesn’t take phil’s offer to stay with them. puffy laments the children punished for sins laid down by the adults around them.

technoblade tells himself that it was worth it. that it wouldn’t have happened if it tommy hadn’t betrayed him. he isn’t laughing anymore.

while eret is helping ghostbur, quackity, tubbo, and ranboo try to bring tommy back (with phil silently in the back, no one tells him to leave) dream says hello to the first and only occupant in his prison.

dream brings tommy back right in the cell that was designed for him. it goes as perfectly until he tells the warden. dream hires punz as his replacement and sam goes to quackity who goes to tubbo. soon it’s the entire butcher army back together, this time not to hurt but to save. phil learns the truth through ghostbur and he has to ask himself if it’s something he even Should tell technoblade, if it’s a conversation that he even wants to have. he has to choose to care about tommy. just like technoblade has a choice to make.

the themes of the disc war finale, about connections and caring for people, about the entire server coming together to save two scrappy kids because they Cared, are now repurposed into a prison break for a kid who cared so much about everyone and was torn apart by it.

the butcher army and the anarchists putting their feelings for each other aside for tommy, they know what their odds are trying to do it alone from sam.

it’s punz that opens tommy’s cell at the end of it, dream can pay for a lot of things but he can’t buy his decency. it’s technoblade that gives tommy the axe of peace that’d been left discarded in l’manbergs ashes when its owner never came back for it. and it’s tommy that takes all of dream’s lives.

I Just Think It Would Be Neat.

350 notes · View notes

thesvenqueen · 3 years ago

Text

The Mummy

Rating: M (to be safe; gore, language) Main Pairing: Kristanna

Summary: Hamunaptra. A place filled with history, legends and mystery. A place Anna Arendelle had only dreamed of finding since she was a little girl. When it seems faith supplies her with the opportunity to find this hidden city, she jumps head first at the chance to find it. But a revengeful mummy, an apocalyptic curse, a deadly adventure (and possibly love) where not exactly on her list of things to discover.

Previous Chapters: [ P 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9]

Chapter 10

“Oh, I have dreamt of this since I was a little girl!”

“..you dreamed of dead guys?”

Anna rolled her eyes, “I think you are beginning to pick up bad habits from my brother” , eyeing a grinning Kristoff.

“I wouldn’t say sarcasm is necessarily a bad habit.” Sven said, eyeing her across from the black sarcophagus propped up before them. “I’d say it’s a healthy hobby.”

“Healthy?”

“Yes,” Sven said, raising his head a bit higher, nose in the air, “A healthy dose of sarcasm keeps one humbled.”

“Are..are you saying I’m spoiled?”

Sven feigned being hurt, hand across his heart and an expression of hurt on his face. “Oh, I would never do such a thing.”

Kristoff chuckled, earning a glare from Anna. “You both are terrible.”

“As we have been told.” Sven said.

“More so you than me.” Kristoff said, leaning against the black stone. Sven glared and it made Anna giggle.

“Ok, let’s actually get to why we are here.”

Anna turned to look back down at the sarcophagus before her. She couldn’t help but nervously fidget with the item in her hand, the key she believed would reveal who exactly was lying within the dark stone. The believed key had fit perfectly within the star like indention or lock on the side of the sarcophagus.

Anna knew it fit, knew it had to be a key to this person's final resting place, but she was puzzled as to why. For the last day she had wondered, questioned why the people had decided to lock this person within their deathbed. She recalled what she had read, the history she knew so well. Most were buried to ensure a good afterlife, to be guided by Anubis to a peaceful place with their most treasured items, pets and family. There were methods to the burial to ensure safe passage to such, to ensure they would find the peace they deserved.

Looking down at the artifact in her hand once more, turning it in her palm, she wondered. The sarcophagus had been designed to keep the person within, to forbid them from ever leaving. The usual sacred spells to assist one in having a peaceful, happy afterlife had been chiseled off the top of the tomb, leaving behind dark indentations on the stone. Was it simply to keep them from entering the afterlife, condemning them not only in this life but the next, or something else? The idea of the curse entered her mind, something she had so easily pushed off as being nothing more than lore to keep others away; forbidding curious people from opening the condemned individual from ever leaving their dark fate. Sealing the person to their destined doom as they had deemed they would suffer through for eternities.

Then again, Anna couldn’t help but feel as though opening this tomb would lead to more than just a simple discovery of a mummy. That something else could potentially lie within this dark casket, something more vile. That the reason the men had been so desperate to get a hold of what seemed like a simple trinket was more than just for financial benefit.

As though everyone seemed desperate to prevent anyone from doing exactly what they were about to do.

Anna shook her head, ridding herself of the thought and looked back to the sarcophagus. For years she had spent wanting, hoping, craving for this moment before her. No fear of some potential curse or condemnation would keep her from that.

Her fingers found the small button along the artifact, opening the key and Anna moved to place it back on the lock. For a moment, she hesitated, taking a breath before turning the key.

A loud hiss echoed in the room as the top of the casket popped open ever slightly.

A feeling of relief washed over Anna as she stepped back to let the men remove the top. Sven and Kristoff groaned as they lifted, trying to move the slab that had sat concealing it’s guest for hundreds of years. A moment, Anna thought the slab was stuck, refusing to move and then with one large push from the men, the slab fell away.

Anna jumped, yelping in surprise as the mummy within fell slightly forward out of the sarcophagus.

“Gods, I hate it when they do that.” Sven said, clutching his chest and trying to catch his breath. Anna couldn’t agree more, moving forward as she worked to steady her heart beat. She looked to Kristoff to laugh at his own reaction but she saw not a look of surprise or shock, but one of confusion.

“Are they supposed to look like that?” Kristoff asked, never moving his eyes from the mummy.

Confused now, Anna looked back to the mummy before her.

She blinked.

“No,” Anna said, curiosity filling her, “No, I’ve never seen a mummy who looked like this.” In all her time with her parents on sites, even within the library, Anna had viewed her fair shares of mummies. From royals, priests, wives, children, even cats; she’d seen them all. All were carefully managed, taking nearly one hundred days to perfectly mummify them. Vital organs, including the brain, were removed to ensure nothing would rot within the now departed human. The key step within the process was the embalming. They would cover the entire body in salts, ensuring the body would be dried out completely of all moisture. Then, the body would be wrapped carefully for burial, some using hundreds of yards of fabric to do so to ensure every inch of the person was covered.

What they should have found was a completely dried, mummified corpse.

“He’s still…still..”

“Juicy.” Sven & Kristoff said together.

Anna nodded, puzzled at the nearly unwrapped, very moist corpse before her. “This doesn’t make sense.” She said, looking over the mummy. Or what was supposed to be. The being’s jaw hung open, as though caught in mid scream, their arms hanging beside them and not in the usual crossed pose. The bandages that were supposed to be tightly wrapped around them were torn, bits only managing to stay on them. “They must be more than 3,000 years old and, well, they look as though they are still…decomposing.”

This made absolutely no sense. How could that even be possible?

Buried beneath a statue of Anubis, this person had been put in a securely locked tomb, with a key that was disguised as even being such, with the blessings completely chiseled off of his tomb and no evidence this person even existed within this site or burial area.

Just who exactly had they uncovered?

“Anna,” Kristoff called from behind her. She turned, finding him looking over the top of the sarcophagus they had just removed. Anna came over, Kristoff pointing as she came beside him, “What do you make of these?”

Along the underside of the lid, there were lines scattered across. All were in sets of four or five, scratched deep within the stone. For a moment, Anna pondered what they could be and with a gasp, she realized.

“My god.” Anna said, “These marks were made with…” She reached out, running her own fingernails across the lines.

“Fingernails.” Kristoff said dismally.

“Wait,” Sven said as he came over, “They were buried alive?”

“Yes.” Anna said, looking over the lid. What could they have possibly done to deserve such a terrible ending to their life? Something caught her eye, something that was most definitely not fingernail marks. “Look…” She leaned forward, recognizing the marks, “I think he left a message.”

Anna ran her hands over the marks, understanding of what this condemned being had carved into the stone, reading it aloud: “Death is only the beginning.”

---

“Oi, Bjorgman.” Kristoff looked up, eyeing the Americans as they came up to their camp fire. “What do you think these babies will be worth back home?” The blonde, Isaac if Kristoff remembered right, waved what looked to be a canopic jar. As being a part of ancient Egyptian history, they were a bit valuable.

Thing was, having no name or more importantly title for the person whose organs were within the jar, there was a good chance the jar would get them a couple hundred if that. If it had been a pharaoh, it would easily have been thousands, if not more. With no title or significance found for the mummy feet below them, it wasn’t as pretty a penny as they thought.

Then again, if they had all the jars, which as he saw Dan and Burns holding the other jars, they were in for a good reward.

“We hear you boys found yourself a nice juicy Mummy.” Burns said with a laugh.

Kristoff said nothing, looking back to the flames. Though they may not have found anything as valuable as the Americans had, the day had been one of the better ones Kristoff had had in a long while.

Seeing the smile & excitement on Anna’s face as she had been able to use the tool kit in the mummification room they’d discovered the day before had made it worth it. After the awkward events of the night before, he was unsure how she would be. The near kiss, the close moment they had nearly shared that Kristoff had absolutely ruined had eaten Kristoff alive all night. It was a relief Anna seemed perfectly cheerful the next morning as though nothing happened. However, there was a slight ping of disappointment that Kristoff wasn’t able to place.

After opening the tomb of the mummy, they had moved back to the preparation room. Sven & Kristoff had assisted where they could but it was all Anna who worked around he room, using every item in the tool kit she had. There was not a glimmer of sunlight in the room but Kristoff swore Anna’s eyes had sparkled when she had looked at him in pure utter glee.

Her smile was worth more than some organ jars.

“We did.” Sven said from his spot next to Kristoff, “Was quite interesting actually.”

“Oh, well congratulations.” Dan said with a grin, “I’m sure if you dried the sucker out, you might be able to sell him for some good firewood!”

The three of them cackled with laughter, but still Kristoff stayed quiet. This was why Kristoff hated excavations more than anything; the greedy bastards who were in it for only the potential gain. Nothing more. Weasel, who sat beside the cackling crew, was laughing right along with them. It came as no surprise Weasel would fall in with such a lot.

Idiots.

“Look!” Kristoff whipped around, seeing Anna walking to them quickly with something in her hands. She looked absolutely ecstatic over whatever it was she had. There was that smile again, the bright, beaming one that made Kristoff’s heart flutter. Without a thought, he moved to give space between himself and Sven to give her a seat.

He didn’t miss the small grin from Sven as he did so.

“I found something.” Anna said as she sat between them, oblivious to the slightly blushing man beside her.

Kristoff tore his gaze from Sven and looked down to what Anna was holding. Black shells of what looked to be some kind of bug, some larger than others but none bigger than a small shallot. Kristoff grabbed one, eyeing it over as he tried to ignore the brief contact his hand made with hers. Instead, he looked up as Anna continued to speak.

“Scarab skeletons.” She said, “Flesh eaters.”

“Where were they?” Sven questioned.

“Inside our friend’s coffin. They can stay alive for years, feasting on the flesh of a corpse.”

Kristoff grimaced, “That explains why he looked how he did. But that means--”

“He was very much alive when the bugs began to eat him.”

Placing the skeleton back in Anna’s palm, he frowned as he spoke, “So, someone threw these in with our mummy, and then they…slowly ate him alive?”

“Yes,” Anna murmured, “Very slowly.”

It was suddenly very still at Anna’s words, even the Americans had quieted down at the realization. Kristoff looked at her, a bit of excitement still on her face but also of great concern as he was sure she was wondering the same as he was.

“Wasn’t a very popular fellow.” Sven joked, breaking the silence.

“That’s an understatement.” Dan said.

“Well, according to my readings,” Anna said, looking at Kristoff, “it seems our friend suffered the Hom-Dai, the worst of all ancient curses, one reserved only for the most evil of blasphemers. Thing is…” Anna paused, “I never found record of the curse ever actually being performed anywhere.”

“Is it that bad?” Weasel asked in a small voice from across the way.

Anna shrugged, “They never used it because they feared it so. It’s written that, if a victim of the Hom-Dai was to ever arise, they would…bring with them the 10 plagues of Egypt.”

“Bullshit.” Isaac called. “Just some more stuff to scare us away from the treasure.”

Anna glared at the man, “The Egyptians were very sacred people, to call their ways bullshit--”

“Why else create these big stories?” Isaac continued, “I mean, there is no curse. They just don’t want us to find their stuff.”

Anna’s hand had balled into a tight fist, her jaw set tensely as she watched Isaac continue to blabber on about the Egyptian ways. Without thinking, Kristoff placed his hand on hers, causing Anna to look at him.

“It’s not worth it.” He whispered.

“But--”

“Trust me.” Kristoff said, shaking his head, “A lot like that are in it for one thing and one thing only: money. Arguing with them about this would be like arguing with a wall. Save your energy in case the plagues come.”

That earned him another smile to save to memory.

---

She shouldn’t be doing this, knew all too well what she was doing was wrong but Anna didn’t care.

The moment she had spied the book, she had known, knew what it was.

Holding it now in her hands, the weight of what she had was slowly beginning to hit her.

She walked quickly through the sand, careful to not make too much noise as she passed by the other tents. The night was early still, only a whisper of a breeze to disturb the peace surrounding her.

Everyone had fallen asleep a while ago, but Anna had evaded sleep. More so, her mind wouldn’t let her sleep. It kept thinking, pondering, wondering if the stone book she had seen the man trying desperately to pry open earlier that evening was what she had been longing to find.

She had seen it after she had found the scarabs. Having been looking them over in her hands, she had nearly missed it if not for the sound of the man groaning. Anna had looked up to see one of the members of the American party trying desperately to pry a black stoned book open. Anna had stood agape for a moment, shocked and slightly amazed at what she was seeing.

The man had looked up then, and Anna had looked away quickly. She smiled to herself, realizing the man’s attempts to open the book were futile as the same lock that was on their mummy’s tomb was splayed across the front of the book.

It would never budge without the key.

The key Anna just so happened to have.

Getting the book had been simple enough, the man had been fast asleep and completely unaware of her pulling the book from his grasp as he snored.

Her heart pounded as she saw their campsite, Kristoff and Sven lying fast asleep around the still burning fire. She quietly approached, gently placing the book on the log near the fire. Sighing as the weight left her arms, she moved to find the key.

“That’s called stealing, you know.”

Anna jumped slightly at Kristoff’s voice, though she continued to dig for the key in Sven’s bag. “According to you and my brother,” Anna said, pulling the key from the knapsack, “it’s called borrowing.”

Moving back to where she laid the book, she felt and heard Kristoff come and kneel beside her as she did so with his rifle in hand.

She saw Kristoff’s head tilt as he eyed over the book, “I thought the Book of Amun-Ra was made out of gold.”

Anna nodded as she held the key up, searching for the button along the side. “It is made of gold, but this isn’t the Book of Amun-Ra. This is something else.”

“What?”

“I think this may be the Book of the Dead.”

“The Book of the Dead?”

There was a click as the key opened and Anna wasted no time in placing the key on top of the lock. “The Book of Amun-Ra is filled with incantations on how to take life, while the Book of the Dead,” another click was heard as the book was unlocked, “brings back life.”

“...Are you sure you want to play with something like this?”

Anna looked up at Kristoff. He was looking at the book, his brows furrowed in concern. “It’s just a book, Kristoff.” His gaze moved to hers, “No harm has come from reading a book.”

He sighed, and Anna turned back to the book. Holding her breath, Anna placed her hands on either side of the so-called cover of the book and turned the page.

As the page fell, the soft breeze suddenly turned into a sharp wind. The sand blew up, the flame before them dwindling. It was brief, only lasting for a moment as it returned to the soft breeze once more but it was enough to give Anna pause. A chill ran down her spine as the flame in their fire recovered from the sharp change in the air.

Suddenly, a hand rested on her shoulder. Looking over, Kristoff was looking at her. The uneasy feeling within her left the moment her eyes met his. It was a comfort, him there with her, and his face seemed to say keep going.

So she did.

The book itself was beautiful. Hand carved hieroglyphics spanned the page, done so with great care. The binding of the book was made from what looked to be pure gold, an intricate spine that held the heavy pages perfectly together. There were images included with the writing, what looked to be Anubis standing over a body.

Quietly she began to read over the page, the realization hitting her that she, Anna Arendelle was reading from the Book of the Dead. A once myth she had only heard from legend, now completely proven to be true.

Anna could cry.

“What does it say?”

Anna cleared her throat, hoping Kristoff could not see the tears filling her eyes. “Amun Ra. Amun Dei.” Anna read aloud, “It speaks of the night and of the day.”

She continued, slowly reading off the first page. She spoke slowly, wanting to ensure she spoke each word as clearly as she could. The ones who had created this book, who believed the power it held, deserved to have it read aloud with near perfection. As she neared the end of the page, she realized what it was she was saying: the one who had fallen to rise, to return to this world once more.

“NO!” a cry echoed across the camp. Anna looked up to see the man whom she had taken the book from running towards them. He looked at her with absolute horror, “You must not read from the book!”

The change came immediately.

The wind picked up once more, slowly growing and whipping the sand around them as it did so. This time, it did not seem to settle back down. Tents and coverings rustled in the wind, fires dwindling as the wind struck it intensely. The camels nearby became restless, grunting and tugging frantically against their bindings as though they desperately wanted to leave. It wasn't the wind that had spooked them.

It was then that she heard it.

A soft, barely there buzzing caught Anna’s ear. It seemed far off in the distance, but it was unmistakably there. She stood, Kristoff following her as she eyed the vast desert before them. Anna moved forward, squinting to understand what she was seeing.

In the distance, a sudden black cloud had begun to grow over the desert, hovering just above the sand.

As it grew, Anna realized that it wasn’t just growing but moving. Moving towards them.

Others around them in the camp began to awake as the buzzing grew louder, the wind whipping faster. Sven himself had now come to stand behind them now. “What is that?”

As the vast form of darkness neared, Anna noticed how the cloud seemed to separate. It was not one large cloud but it seemed to be several small things hovering together; moving as one massive vessel. It rose up into the moonlight, and briefly the light caught one of them just well enough for it to be revealed.

By the time Anna realized what it was, it was far too late.

Locusts.

Hundreds of thousands of them were flying right at them in the largest swarm she had ever seen. There seemed to be no end in site to just how many of these creatures were heading straight for them. They moved quickly, coming up and over the camp and descended upon them.

As the locusts rained down upon them, Anna felt a hand grab hers, pulling her away and Kristoff yelling desperately,

“RUN!”

#kristanna #kristoff #anna #sven #The Mummy #Jessica Writes #i have paid my due lol

36 notes · View notes

l4mplight · 4 months ago

Text

So, keeping in mind that this is Vibes Based Storytelling and that most of this is implied rather than outright stated, these are my thoughts.

I think it comes from how many times we see it repeated throughout the game that the soul can live on after the death of the body. Ranni, Sellen, Melina, Latenna, and now Radahn, show us that the death of the body can be overcome, because the soul is the place where identity, consciousness and will reside. For everyone except Godwyn, death leaves the soul in perfectly good condition to become a spirit, move on to the afterlife/be reborn via the Erdtree, or whatever it may be.

With Godwyn, it’s the opposite. No one else is ever “killed in soul,” and the implication seems to be that it is a decidedly unnatural thing that has left his body in this endless “Life in Death” state. There’s no soul to be resurrected or reborn, because it is dead. No one else’s soul has ever died before, what Ranni did to him is entirely unique in that regard. His body is “alive,” sort of, but The Prince of Death is basically a new force of nature now.

I think some of the disappointment around Godwyn not showing up in anything other than Corpse Surrogate form in the Shadowlands comes from a few places. First, he’s a cool concept and fans wanted more of him. Second, there were two years of time for headcannons and theories to form since the basegame came out, and it’s always disappointing when the story goes in a direction you don’t expect. And finally, many fans think Souls lore/narrative is pointless if the character in question isn’t an epic boss fight.

Personally, I think Godwyn has quite enough going on with Fia and his ending, and that bringing him back in some form could potentially undermine that as well as the impact he has on the characters of Marika (shattering the ring out of grief and despair that her removal of the tune of death was pointless) and Miquella (whose failures to cure Malenia and give Godwyn peace are key to his desperation in the Shadowlands).

It would also undermine the horror and symbolism of his fate, I think. The point of Godwyn is that he is quite literally the embodiment of the Rotten Roots of the Erdtree society, with Golden Order zealots being obsessed with the need to suppress and condemn Those Who Live in Death as they are the ultimate symbol that the Order is flawed. His initial life as the Golden Child is too good to be true, and his fate mirrors the fall of Marika’s empire from the Age of Plenty to the corrupt and stagnant thing it now is. The need to control undeath is the need to keep the fact that Marika’s age is failing from coming to light, and preserving Godwyn’s image as the shining Golden Prince instead of the horrific Prince of Death is a part of that too.

shadow of the erdtree final boss spoilers under the cut. not anything insightful dont worry.

what did i miss. why in the world is everyone suddenly ranting on about how godwyn is the most dead of the demigods when like 70% of what we know about him is that he explicitly died a half death. at least two characters mourn the fact that he died a half death and want him to finally Actually Die. and no i dont necessarily think he should have been magically brought back into replacing the final boss. i am not yet truly invested in the whole ordeal of what should have been and im still digesting everything about twodahn. the point of this is why are we just saying things!! the way deathblight even came to be is that godwyns body is alive but his soul is not!! do we respect the dire plot. do we remember that theres a whole questline with an ending that tells us about how godwyn is dead in soul only. please what is happening.

#elden ring lore #elden ring dlc #godwyn the golden #godwyn the prince of death

17 notes · View notes

memryse · 3 years ago

Note

What do you think about renchanting duo

I'm Fucked Up In The Head Over 3rd Life SMP Part 2: Monarchy Boogaloo

ahhhhhh renchanting duo... i love them sooooo much. their story is so tragic it hurts it physically hurts (dear god i love them so much). again no read more you're all going to read my several paragraphs of incoherency whether you like it or not

renchanting duo is also bolstered by the fact that ren and martyn had never met prior to this smp. it makes the development of their characters' friendship that much better.

i always like to think of them as the literal antithesis to the desert duo, beyond just being enemies, maybe i'll elaborate on that in a separate post though because i ofc want to focus on renchanting duo exclusively here.

the two of them start off as a capitalist duo, with martyn being a marketing manager and nothing more. but by moving into renchanting, martyn quickly gains ren's trust - which, to be fair, is pretty easy. ren's weakness at the start of 3rd life was always his kindness: telling people cleo's secret, letting everyone walk all over him and renchanting in the hopes of forming alliances. he gave out his trust too easily. martyn, meanwhile, was bored and chaotic - the server's wild card, the one predicted to cause the most problems at first, running around performing magic tricks and causing raids.

they grow closer again when scar turns red. martyn is immediately concerned for ren's life, and that concern only grows as martyn realises his own life is also under threat. the next episode, ren dons his kingly crown, and martyn steps up from marketing manager to hand of the king. it's a significant responsibility increase, but martyn is loyal to ren - ren took him in, gave him a purpose. and ren is equally grateful to martyn.

from that point onwards, their trust in one another only grows stronger. martyn steps up perfectly as hand of the king: first, when running around trying to solve all the various problems dogwarts is facing in session 4, when grian plants the enchanting table trap. like, you can feel the adrenaline in that scene. it's insane. ren, meanwhile, has finally put his foot down and is standing up to scar. it doesn't work, unfortunately, and martyn is unable to protect ren. (but he did do his best, it was unfortunate timing more than anything)

next, the test. ren's naïveté is gone. replacing it is a simple desire to protect his kingdom, through any means necessary. he gives martyn the chance to murder him, publicly branding him as a killer (and technically a rule breaker, might i add - martyn was strict about following the main server rules until the end, it's very telling that he broke them for ren). ren turns red, and gives martyn a perfectly fair opportunity to eliminate him. but martyn doesn't take it. he can't. not ren. the two of them are too loyal to each other. whilst dogwarts are often painted as the objective villains of the series, it's really... not like that. scar antagonised them. ren's descent into the red king was a tragedy, caused by paranoia and threats on his life. at first ren was kind, and forgiving, and far too easily trusting, and really just wanted to start a little shopping district starting with a funky enchanting emporium.

the red army forms, and martyn remains unquestionably loyal. martyn fights alongside his king - ren stays on the front lines, determined to protect his people with his own hands. which, looking at his kill count, i would say he achieved. i think it's a bit inaccurate to frame renchanting duo as the exact same dynamic as desert duo - while they're similar, their main difference is that ren was a genuinely capable threat the entire time. he's strong. and scary.

martyn makes his peace with devoting his life to defending his king. he'll lose all his lives if it means protecting ren - he'll take anyone else's life if it means protecting ren. he's okay with that. because martyn's loyal, and for the person who gave him a purpose in life he would go to the ends of the earth and back.

finally, he loses his first life, and we see the hints at a potential betrayal plot forming with the voice. this tension builds throughout the remaining episodes, including our favourite iconic line "after every winter, comes a spring". while this plot never technically came to fruition because of time and the flow of the sessions, the fact that martyn even heard this voice trying to tempt him to betray ren only further cements how loyal he was. literally nothing would stray him from that path. and ren? ren never even questions his hand's loyalty. he has no reason to. it's the two of them to the end.

ren dies.

and martyn follows his king to the grave.

i like to think that they found their "spring" in the afterlife.

bonus fun fact: they'd always said that if they made it to the final two, they planned to have a fair fight, fists only with no armour. at least those wishes came true for somebody else.

bonus fun fact 2: martyn's hand of the king coat actually has a yellow life variant too, but it was never used in 3rd life. you can see it on namemc though!

#(sobbing) it's ye and me til the end hand #rendog #inthelittlewood #renchanting duo #3rd life smp #3rd life #mae analyses

125 notes · View notes

pathfinderunlocked · 1 year ago

Text

Hakkari Kami - CR15 Kami

There is a guardian spirit for all things. Even blood.

Artwork by T SWCK on Artstation.

This creature is based on Hakkar the Soulflayer, a loa demigod from from Warcraft. In the Warcraft setting, loa are divine beings connected to nature, usually taking the form of specific types of animals, which grant power to those who worship them. There are countless loa, many of which are worshiped by groups as small as a specific family, which might have very minimal power. Hakkar is a more powerful one; he's known as the loa of blood, and takes the form of a wind serpent. I've adapted this idea into a kami for Hakkar's Pathfinder conversion; there's no type of outsider in Pathfinder that perfectly matches the loa, but kami are close enough to work.

In Pathfinder, kami are a lesser-known type of outsider which are usually neutral aligned and peaceful, watching over a specific type of creature, object or place that they consider their "ward." There are a huge number of different types of kami which each watch over certain types of wards. A hakkari kami's ward is spilled blood, and it's not nearly as peaceful as most others.

Like other kami, hakkari kami find themselves stretched thin, with too many potential wards and not enough kami, and seek to create more of their kind in order to protect more wards. They do this by choosing dedicated mortal servants to ascend to kami when they die. In the case of the hakkari, these mortal servants tend to be those that offer countless blood sacrifices, especially sacrifices to the hakkari kami itself, and who may even take their own life in a ritual sacrifice in an attempt to gain the hakkari's favor and ascend to a more powerful form. If cornered by powerful enemies, a hakkari's weaker followers may choose to kill themselves instead of fight, hoping to ascend and become kami themselves instead of passing to the afterlife, and gain enough power to then fight their foes.

I included a line of text stating that a kami can choose a new ward by spending 24 hours attuning to it. This isn't listed in the general rules for kamis' wards, but I feel confident that it must be intended by the developers for there to be SOME way to obtain a new ward. Otherwise, kami that have short-lived creatures like insects as their wards would only have a ward for the first few years or months of their immortal lives, and then be left sickened and purposeless for all eternity. Since insects are even listed as one of their example wards, I assume that probably isn't the intent of how this type of outsider is supposed to work; they should be able to take a new ward if their old one is killed or destroyed.

Hakkari - CR 15

Towering above you is a massive winged serpent with a fanged maw and scythe-like claws for arms. Its beautiful violet plumage contrasts against its blood-red scales.

XP 51,200 NE Huge outsider (kami, native) Init +10 Senses darkvision 60 ft., deathwatch, true seeing; Perception +25

DEFENSE

AC 27, touch 15, flat-footed 20 (+6 Dex, +1 dodge, +12 natural, -2 size); +2 vs. good hp 210 (20d10+100); fast healing 10 Fort +13, Ref +18, Will +16; +2 vs. good DR 10/cold iron Immune bleed, mind-affecting effects, petrification, polymorph Resist acid 10, electricity 10, fire 10

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., fly 60 ft. (good) Melee bite +25 (1d8+7), 2 claws +26 (3d6+7), 2 wings +20 (1d8+3) Space 15 ft., Reach 15 ft. Special Attacks blood siphon, cleansing bloodrage, corrupted blood

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 20th; concentration +27) Constant—blood scent, deathwatch, protection from good, true seeing At will—blood biography (DC 20) 3/day—confusion (DC 21), quickened blood armor 1/day—dominate monster (DC 26, creatures with blood only)

STATISTICS

Str 25, Dex 22, Con 20, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 25 Base Atk +20; CMB +29; CMD 46 (48 vs. good) Feats Bloody Assault, Dodge, Great Fortitude, Improved Great Fortitude, Improved Initiative, Improved Iron Will, Iron Will, Power Attack, Quicken Spell-like Ability (blood armor), Weapon Focus (claws) Skills Acrobatics +13, Fly +20, Heal +25, Knowledge (local) +22, Linguistics +0, Perception +25, Sense Motive +6, Stealth +12, Survival +7, Spellcraft +12 Languages Common, Kuru; telepathy 100 ft. SQ merge with ward, ward (spilled blood)

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Blood Siphon (Su) As a standard action once every 1d3+1 rounds, a hakkari can drain the blood from targets in a 60 ft. cone. Each target takes 8d8 damage and is overwhelmed for one round. A DC 25 Fortitude save halves the damage and negates the overwhelming effect. Creatures that do not have blood are immune. The hakkari is healed for an amount equal to half of the damage dealt. The save DC is Constitution-based.

If a hakkari uses its blood siphon against a creature that is poisoned, or that has poisonous blood (such as from the poisonous blood universal monster ability, the toxic blood spell, or a vishkanya's toxic racial ability), the hakkari receives no healing from that creature and must save against the poison.

Cleansing Bloodrage (Ex) Once per day, while below 25% hit points (usually 52 hp), a hakkari can enter a bloodrage as a free action. While in a bloodrage, a hakkari gains a +4 morale bonus to his Strength and Constitution, as well as a +2 morale bonus on Will saves. This bonus to Constitution typically increases its current and maximum hit points by 40. In addition, it takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class.

This bloodrage lasts for 1 minute. When a hakkari's bloodrage ends, it is fatigued for 1 minute. It cannot enter a bloodrage while fatigued.

While bloodraging, a hakkari can cast and concentrate on its spell-like abilities, but cannot perform any other action that requires concentration, and cannot use Charisma-, Dexterity-, or Intelligence-based skills (except Acrobatics, Fly, Intimidate, and Ride).

When a hakkari enters a bloodrage, it is affected as though by the cleanse spell, regaining 4d8+20 hit points and recovering from a variety of conditions and effects.

A hakkari can enter a bloodrage even while under the effect of a condition that would normally prevent it from taking an action, as long as that condition is one that can be removed by the cleanse spell, but doing so uses a standard action instead of a free action.

Corrupted Blood (Su) As a move action, a hakkari can corrupt the blood of a target within 60 ft. The target takes 2d8 negative energy damage, and must succeed on a DC 27 Fortitude save or be subjected to 2d8 bleed damage. Creatures that do not have blood are immune.

Whenever a creature takes bleed damage from this ability, all other creatures within 10 ft. of that creature must succeed on a DC 25 Fortitude save or begin bleeding as well for 2d8 bleed damage. The save DCs are Charisma-based, and the secondary save includes a -2 penalty.

Fast Healing (Ex) As long as a kami is within 120 feet of its ward, it gains fast healing 10.

Ward (Su) A kami has a specific ward—in a hakkari's case, its ward is spilled blood, either from a specific creature or on a specific sacrificial altar. Several of a kami’s abilities function only when it is either merged with its ward or within 120 feet of it. If a kami’s ward is portable and travels with the kami to another plane, the kami does not gain the extraplanar subtype on that other plane as long as its ward remains within 120 feet. If a ward is destroyed while a kami is merged with it, the kami dies (no save). If a ward is destroyed while a kami is not merged with it, the kami loses its merge with ward ability and its fast healing, and becomes permanently sickened, until it chooses a new ward.

If a kami's ward is killed or destroyed, it can choose a new ward by spending 24 hours attuning to it.

#d&d #pathfinder 1e #outsider #native #kami #warcraft

5 notes · View notes

monstersdownthepath · 4 years ago

Text

Monster Spotlight: Living Effigy

CR 8

Neutral Huge Construct

Adventure Path: Giantslayer: Ice Tomb of the Giant Queen, pg. 88~89

Construction Requirements: Craft Construct; Limited Wish, Nightmare, Trap The Soul. The creator must have a caster level of 15, and must make a Craft (Stonemasonry) check with a DC of 20.

A Living Effigy must be constructed from a 40 ton block of the appropriate material, typically stone but marble or bronze are also common. The quality, thankfully, does not appear to matter, but the carved face must also possess two matching gemstone eyes each worth at least 500 gp. While the statue is technically complete once the carving process is finished, the Living Effigy will not animate until the soul of the creature it was created for is implanted inside it, a process which occurs automatically so long as the creature perishes while within 1 mile of the statue if the gemstone eyes are intact.

Cost to Build: The laborious effort of carefully preparing the special gemstone eyes is almost as difficult as performing the exact carving necessary to perfectly capture the recipient’s likeness and instill it with enough latent spiritual energy that the soul can comfortably flee into it when its previous life ends. A single mistake in the carving process requires the entire block to be tossed aside and a new one used. This means, on average, a Living Effigy costs 35,000gp to create.

When a great chieftain, spiritual leader, or shaman is close to their final hour, they may worry about the safety of their tribe once they’re gone. For some, this worry becomes so extreme that they willingly bar themselves from the afterlife to watch over them forever, commissioning the construction of a stone housing for their soul. The life of a Living Effigy is not one that’s typically safe for a mortal mind, their immortal existence consisting of simply sitting completely still and silent for hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, and longer. Some tribes may simply forget the Effigy is anything more than a quiet stone, paying heed to their past leaders through it but not knowing that the leader is still with them.

Effigies typically retain their sanity via entertaining themselves with their at-will Detect Thoughts, or the use of their 3/day Witness spell, sharing the senses of their people for hours at a time and quietly assuring that their lives are peaceful and plentiful. When guidance is needed, an Effigy’s Preserved Mind allows them access to the Knowledge they had in life with an additional +4 to two chosen skills, which they can share via the use of their 1/week Dream... provided no one’s done something to truly anger it, in which case its Shape Self allows it to alter its features into a more furious expression before unleashing its 1/week Nightmare upon those who’re leading the tribe to ruin. While useful for maintaining their knowledge as the ages march on, their Preserved Mind leaves them Vulnerable to Mind-Affecting Effects, as many ensouled Constructs are... if someone attacking the Effigy even knows it’s something more than a simple Statue, its true power nearly impossible to discern until it actually uses it.

While the purpose of a Living Effigy is mainly to maintain the soul of a wise and/or powerful figure, the mystic binding process has the fun little side-effect of instilling quite a bit of magic power into the Construct. They are 70%% support casters, able to use Calm Emotions, Crushing Despair, and Good Hope 3/day each, and the incredibly potent Arcane Concordance 1/day to bolster the casters of the tribe. They can also unleash Obscuring Mist at will to shield their helpless citizens from line of sight or confound encroaching enemies, but when push comes to shove, you can’t really shove harder than 40 tons of solid rock.

Ironically, the true shoving power of the Effigy does not lay in its slam attack, which deals a comparatively minor 2d8+7 damage, but in its voice. An Effigy can speak, but traditionally does not for fear of spooking its people and because it is simply insanely loud. The speaking voice of an Effigy is so loud it can use Sound Burst at will, damaging and potentially stunning entire crowds of foes at once, with a 3/day Empowered Sound Burst waiting in the wings for especially stubborn foes. Those who can’t be stunned may simply be flattened by a powerful, earth-shaking shout in the form of Thundering Drums, knocking them right off their feet or potentially killing them outright with 5d8 damage.

Tribes with one of these ancient guardians in their midst enjoy the protection of their most treasured ancestor in a way that’s both direct and indirect (Living Effigies normally only communicate with their most trusted allies, as citizens casually sharing the existence of the Construct can invite unwanted attention), and adventuring parties heading into negotiations with isolated and seemingly nonmagical tribes would do well to keep on the lookout for the gem-studded eyes of these massive stone sages.

You can read more about them here.

#Monster Spotlight #CR 6 to 10 #Pathfinder #Dungeons and Dragons

126 notes · View notes

katsidhe · 4 years ago

Text

15.20 Final Thoughts

Supernatural is over, and somehow, despite itself, it did the very best it could to please me. That was always going to be an impossible task. But truly, sincerely, that finale was as close to my desires as the show could ever bring itself to come, and so, so much closer than I ever dreamed it would dare.

I am so, so glad that no other regular characters were involved (Bobby aside, but he was brief). How better to encapsulate their own emptiness? How fundamentally fitting, than in the epilogue to their final battle, wherein the entire world beyond them was erased, the wider universe is merely set dressing for them to move through. And it was so quiet this way. This finale wasn’t overcrowded or rushed. It kept its own peace. And it preserved the tangible claustrophobia that 15.19 invoked: that tangled, lovely, solipsistic, toxic conviction that these are the only two people on earth that matter.

It’s unclear exactly how much time passed between 15.19 and 15.20. I like to think it’s been at least a year, given that they’ve settled into routine and that their grief seems less fresh. (Although yes, the concept of Dean dying on his very first hunt without a resurrection available is hilarious, I must confess.) Their calm domesticity, their peace, was lovely to watch (Sam kicking the laundry machine! Sam with wet hair! Sam running! Sam cooking, Sam looking a little less bulky than usual, and happy!) But man, it really is Dean’s world, isn’t it? Even the DOG, which really, really, really could reasonably have been primarily Sam’s, was Dean’s dog first and foremost. Then on Dean’s say-so, they get in Dean’s car to drive to a pie festival for Dean. Sam is perfectly content to go along with all of it.

As if we hadn’t gotten enough delightful fanservice, we also got one last scene of Sam threatening to torture someone to death. :) what a king.

I love that Dean died to an OSHA violation while fighting a random loose end from season 1 (which, by the way, I CALLED IT, I am so proud of myself). It’s perfectly mundane. I truly and deeply do not understand anyone complaining that Dean should have gone out in a way that’s more epic. He’s been there, done that, guys, and remember how miserable it was? Now there’s no cosmic safety net. Dean died in a broken down old barn, saving some kids. Moments like these are when Dean is at his best, at his most fundamentally sympathetic: when he’s not trying to control the shape of the universe or dictate righteousness or let his anger drive himself down into a destructive spiral. He’s just putting his money where his mouth is. He’s not making a broad moral statement. He’s simply putting his life on the line to defend someone who needs defending. It is not an unworthy end. It’s so much better than going out to, god forbid, God.

Did Dean earn a lifetime of peace? The concept of just desserts is fraught. But I also don’t think it’s something Dean wanted. He wanted to keep killing things in tetanus-infested barns until he died. He got what he wanted. And while the arc of his wants has adapted over the years, MOTW hunting is fulfilling for him.

Dean’s deathbed speech was, oh man. It got me good. Like many of the things I loved in this episode, it was quiet. No desperation, no revising history (or not too much, anyway). Just, “stay with me, please. I love you. Tell me it’s okay.”

The quiet of Sam’s grief, alone in the bunker. How still his face is, until for a little bit it crumples again, and then it comes back and goes still. He’s not trying to control his reactions or press back against his sorrow. There is no work to do, nothing to avenge, no one to find, nothing to defeat. He is alone, and the washes of visible grief simply come and go in waves that he doesn’t try to fight or force.

I need the gif of him flinching at the toaster. His startle reactions are my favorite thing. He’s alone underground, there is not a living soul for miles and miles, he’s just buried his brother, not for the first time, but this time, he knows, for the last. And the goddamn toaster goes off and he cannot control the way his heart leaps up into his throat and the way every one of his muscles tightens.

Sam grows old. Sam. Grows old. Sam grows old! SAM GROWS OLD.

Ohhh my God, Sam grows old. Without Dean! Without hunting! Without Cas! With people outside that claustrophobic world, beyond the four tight walls of SPN, beyond the people approved by Dean and by Fandom, who give him peace and love and fulfillment! SAM GOT OUT. Even with the truly terrible wig the image brings me to actual tears. I cannot believe SPN would allow him to have this. I cannot believe that the show let him be happy without Dean. I want to read the set of novelizations about Sam’s recovery.

Of course this was the only way for Sam to get unwound, and of course it had to happen offscreen in flashes. Thank god for the ambiguity. There’s so much potential there, years and years, we were simply told: and at some point Sam’s life gets better, at some point his mental health improves and he feels safe enough to start a family, with someone, and at some point he has a child, and he dies peacefully, he dies loved and with people who love him, and dammit I’m getting weepy again.

Sam quit hunting. Not in a sudden jolt. We see him leaving the bunker on another job. But when he leaves the bunker, he leaves for good. He has so much knowledge, but he does not preserve the Men of Letters. He does not honor their legacy of extermination and experimentation. Maybe he gives someone else the keys, for the books. Or maybe he’s digitized it all, and maybe it’s done.

Maybe his wife is Eileen, or maybe it’s Amelia, or maybe it’s Piper or Cara or maybe it’s someone new. Maybe it’s not even a woman. And maybe she’s a hunter, but I hope she isn’t, and when Sam tells her, haltingly, in fits and starts, the bare outline of the truth, she looks at him and she believes him. And she understands the shape of the trauma he carries, even if Sam can’t quite speak the details, and maybe Sam goes to therapy. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he wakes in pain and fear for many years, but over time, it dulls.

Sam’s son is still a young man when Sam is on his deathbed, probably in at least his eighties. Think about the mountain Sam had to climb to reach that point. How many years and years of work did it take before Sam felt safe enough to want a child? How long for him to gently conquer his terror at the legacy his blood might carry: Lucifer and Azazel are dead, he knows this, but how long before he lets himself believe it enough to permit the risk? And then he raises his child, not in fear and loneliness, but with love and support and care. And he makes sure his son is protected, that he knows to salt his thresholds and ward against demons, but his son will not suffer the way he suffered.

Maybe he untangles his thoughts about Dean, maybe he learns that to feel angry with his brother is not to betray him or to dishonor his memory, maybe he comes to a more complex understanding of their relationship. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he simply enshrines Dean, and Dean’s memory becomes ever more golden and untarnished, and the Impala becomes truly an altar. The details of how Sam carries Dean with him—the watch, the car, the absurdly large photos, his son’s name—perhaps these are played straight, and perhaps Sam never finds a more nuanced love. In the meta sense I think we are certainly meant to think this. We are meant to see Dean deified here, canonized into a saint. We are meant to view Sam’s fifty more years of life as worship, as a dedication and an offering.

This is the long shadow of the finale. These are the things untouched by necessity and by design: this is Dean’s apology in 15.18, this is Sam not wanting an apology, and not wanting to hear Dean offer one. This difficult work was always and inevitably going to be elided. But there is so much time, decades and decades, offscreen, for Sam to come to a quieter peace.

I think he can do it.

I think Sam can do anything.

I’m crying again.

I really didn’t think I would cry much about the finale. I thought I would cry at the concept of the show ending, but not at what the ending was. I didn’t think any details would actually affect me. But then Sam got old. I am truly and genuinely hung up on the canonical image of Sam finding peace. Good god. He had GLASSES. Help.

My chief complaint (aside from that absolutely awful Carry On cover, why oh why, they should have just played the original again), if I felt at all like complaining at the moment, would be how happy this ending is. But I can’t begrudge Sam that. I can’t even get too mad at the scene that I was SO SURE I would despise: that of Sam and Dean content in a Heaven that is now apparently Great, Actually (even though a prison dimension with an open floor plan is still a prison dimension, but hey, I guess we humans can’t leave earth either). Supernatural clearly wanted Sam and Dean to not be facing down an abyssally bleak afterlife, and I think I’d be complaining about the lack of bleakness a whole lot more if it didn’t have the (perhaps unintended??) side effect of giving Sam even more freedom from Dean than SPN already deigned to give him. Sam isn’t in a shared cell with Dean. He can be with his friends and his wife and his son.

One of the fundamental questions of SPN is, would Dean ever let Sam go? And it’s a question that the bulk of s13-15 has rendered moot with Sam’s growing passivity, and one that 15.20 neatly dodged. And I’m glad it did, because I wouldn’t have liked whatever 15.20 had to say on the matter. This deflection feels true to the spirit of what the show has become.

It was impossible for Sam to find peace while Dean was still alive. And on its own that kind of says everything, doesn’t it? And Sam is still forever denied the peace he truly longed for. Sam didn’t want death to force Dean’s hand. Sam wanted Dean to want to let him go. But the only way Sam and Dean could heal is apart. The potential of their relationship on earth becoming untangled is forever precluded, explictly. And yet Sam’s freedom is validated, Sam is allowed what he sought in season 1 and season 8, Sam is something beyond a hunter and Dean’s brother, and the show let him be, the show let him grow.

Supernatural said Sam Rights, and the world shook.

#spn spoilers #sam and dean #15.20 #final thoughts #sam and romance #sam and peace #just leave me here to die #I did not realize how relieved I'd be #I do not believe how much tension has left me #at the realization that I liked this ending #and of COURSE there are so many people complaining about sam's peace #but guess what!!!#this isn't season 8!#this time the show agrees with ME!#SAM HAS riGHTs!

114 notes · View notes

mst3kproject · 4 years ago

Photo

The Astral Factor

This movie has a great deal to offer the MSTie. It was written by Arthur C. Pierce, who did the same job on The Human Duplicators, and it can boast the presences of Leslie Parrish of The Giant Spider Invasion, Frank Ashmore of Parts: the Clonus Horror, and Rayford Barnes from Mitchell. The premise is ludicrous but presented with a perfectly straight face, and the whole thing just oozes 70’s-ness.

Roger Sands is a man of many talents, the most important of which for our purposes is his ability to become invisible in a shower of disco sparkles. This allows him to escape from prison, argue with his mother’s ghost (who apparently throws bangin’ parties in the afterlife) and go on a killing spree. The cops know who they’re hunting because he’s left fingerprints all over the place, but they have no idea how he’s moving around unseen. Fortunately, the prison psychologist knows some psychics who might be able to help them out… but will they be in time to save the various celebrities Sands is stalking, women who remind him of his own neglectful mother?

The main impression one gets from The Astral Factor is that it’s a parade of clichés. The first victim is killed in a bubble bath. Chuck the detective gets dragged out of bed to come investigate the case, which makes his girlfriend pout because she was hoping for sex. The killer is obsessed with his mother. Dogs and birds can sense Sands’ presence when he’s invisible. Chuck’s girlfriend is a terrible cook. That sort of thing. None of this needs to kill a movie, of course… clichés become clichés because they work.

Much worse for the movie is that it isn’t very interested in its characters. Sands’ backstory is that his mother was a movie star who thought it would ruin her career if it came out that she’d been briefly married and pregnant at the age of seventeen. She therefore distanced herself from him, leaving him feeling unwanted and invisible (insert giant blinking neon sign that says METAPHOR) until he finally got fed up and strangled her. This isn’t a bad setup for a movie’s serial killer, but the narrative doesn’t do much with it. Sands has a list of women he wants to murder, but we never find out what makes them good potential victims beyond simply being famous blondes. Surely there should be some moment of recognition, some sin they’ve each committed against their own families, but apparently ‘famous and blonde’ should be enough.

Opposed to Sands is, of course, Chuck the detective. He comes across as kind of a jerk but he does seem to love his empty-headed girlfriend Candy. I think his arc is meant to be that he starts off skeptical of the paranormal but is eventually forced to believe, but this is pretty badly mishandled – when the prison psychiatrist talks about Sands’ interest in psychic phenomena, Chuck seems bored rather than disbelieving, and when a man demonstrates telekinesis in front of him, he accepts it but looks entirely unimpressed. He never seems to be really affected by the phenomena he encounters. Instead of a man whose worldview is shaken to the core, Chuck appears to be merely annoyed that this is yet another thing he has to deal with.

The other possible arc Chuck has is that Candy suggests he get a job with ‘normal hours’ so that she no longer has to make coffee for his co-workers when they come to tell him about a murder in the middle of the night. He says he’ll think about it, but there’s no follow-up.

Finally, there’s Christine, the potential victim that we’re supposed to get attached to and worry about. She’s a spoiled trophy wife who hangs around in her mansion drinking while her husband, who lost all interest in her once she turned thirty, is out of town. The problem with her is that she doesn’t have much by way of a personality. In one scene she’s grateful for the cops protecting her, in the next she’s telling them to piss off and let her go shopping in peace, and then suddenly she’s sobbing in her room. Are these supposed to be mood swings? It feels more like neither the writers nor the actress cared enough to figure out who she is.

I guess that brings us to the movie’s misogyny, which is as rich and gooey as the inside of a lava cake but does not taste like chocolate. First of all, Sands’ problems are said to be his mother’s fault – she abandoned him, leaving him no choice but to murder women who remind him of her! The prison psychologist specifically absolves Sands of responsibility for his own crimes. He cannot be reformed, he cannot be helped, he must be locked up because his mother’s selfishness (more interested in her own career than in raising her son) destroyed his mind. Never mind that there are people with neglectful or even abusive parents who don’t grow up to be serial killers.

The women Sands kills are celebrities – models, dancers, actresses, socialites – because they remind him of his fame-obsessed mother. But as I previously mentioned, they’re not really all that like her. We don’t see any signs of any of them having families they neglect. The only one who even seems to have a husband is Christine and it’s him who neglects her. Perhaps the point is supposed to be that Sands has misjudged them, but we don’t see any signs of them being better than his mother in this respect, either. Most of them seem to have avoided children in order to focus on their careers. Perhaps in the mind of a male writer in the 70’s, this is itself a sin.

Certainly the movie is not interested in these women as characters. I’ve already discussed Christine, but there are others. The first one comes home, takes a bath, and dies. The second one is working on a painting when her dog runs off – she chases it, and she and the dog both die. The third is the dancer at her rehearsal. She has the creeps for no reason, does her rehearsal, and dies. The emphasis is always on their bodies: they’re sexy, then they’re dead. The sequence with the dancer is particularly weird, with her male partner representing the devil dressed in some kind of bondage getup.

The most frustrating thing about The Astral Factor, though, is that it really doesn’t know what to do with its premise. It keeps bringing up interesting ideas about what a psychic murderer might be able to do, and then just drops them.

The opening scene, in which Sands escapes from jail after telekinetically beating up his cellmate with furniture, seems to promise us a much more exciting movie than we get. After escaping, Sands visits the cemetery and his heart-to-heart with ghost mom is interrupted by a security guard. Sands uses his powers to push the guy into an open grave and bury him alive! I wanted to see more of this kind of thing, but after that Sands seems to forget he can do anything besides the ‘becoming invisible’ thing. Later victims are either beaten or strangled, as if they were killed by some loser who doesn’t have any psychic powers. Perhaps he has to strangle the women because that’s how he killed his mother, but he does the same thing to bodyguards and boyfriends when we know he has more creative means at his disposal.

The rest of the movie is also at odds with the title, which suggested this would be a movie in which Sands sits in jail the whole time, astral-projecting himself into his victims’ homes to strangle them. This idea is discussed, but it is in no way what happens so I’m not sure why they brought it up. There are a couple of reasonably effective scenes, as when it’s implied that Sands is invisible inside his first victim’s apartment but we can’t be absolutely sure until he starts interacting with objects. The bit where the dancer is strangled onstage and people don’t intervene because they think it’s part of the show… that’s another cliché but it works all right.

The Astral Factor also has no interest in how psychic powers work. They’re shown to require great concentration for the guy demonstrating them at the institute, but Sands seems to throw things around effortlessly. Why is that? Where did he get these powers? Just by reading about them? Can anybody learn to do this or just certain people? If the latter, what makes Sands special?

In trying to catch his invisible killer, Chuck shows very little creativity. I can think of a bunch of ways to try to thwart an invisible man. What about filling a room with mist or smoke? What about scattering flour on the floor to show his footprints? What about physical tripwires? None of these are ever suggested. Nor does anybody ever come up with the idea of fighting back psychically. If anybody can learn these powers, that could have been a cool thing for Chuck to have to do – not only come to terms with the fact that this exists, but having to figure out how to do it himself! Or if only special people can do it, why not hire one of those psychics the scientists were working with? If a parrot knows there’s an invisible man there, surely another psychic could figure it out!

The way they do eventually catch Sands is by having Christine speak to him as if she is his mother, which prompts him to reply, and the sound of his voice tells the cops where to aim their guns. This works, but it’s not nearly as interesting as some of the other possibilities and does not reveal anything new about Sands himself.

Watching people get ‘strangled’ by something invisible is always fun, and The Astral Factor has a couple of really funny special effects (I especially like the cellmate pretending to be in a fight with his mattress), but mostly the movie is a disappointment. It had potential to be way scarier and way more fun if it were willing to explore its premise a little more deeply, but all it really wants to show us is blonde women getting killed.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the astral factor #70s

27 notes · View notes

goldeneyedgirl · 4 years ago

Text

JALICEWEEK20 DAY 6

The Way of Things

JaliceWeek20 Day 6: Reincarnation

Notes: I... don’t know. It just sort of happened? This wrote itself. There were a few more lifetimes I thought about including (there was a Jessamine and Alice ‘life’ that I really wanted to include but it’ll be a standalone fic once I’ve done a bunch of research) but I think I’m happy with it?

This was absolutely inspired by a gorgeous Thor fic I read a few years ago based in Norse mythology and the creation of Yggdrasil; if I can find it, I will absolutely link it because it was an incredible piece of writing.

Also go me! I’m kind of getting a hang of writing sex adjacent scenes! I remember not being able to look directly at my cursor when I implied a blow job in Shadow to Light, I’m oddly proud!

Now, just the second part to Against a Wall.

Word Count: 4,322

NSFW - not graphic but yeah.

Soulmates are funny things. They do not start out existence together; they must find each other - it might take one life time, it might take ten. It is important they undergo this struggle; some souls are not meant for regeneration - they shine and burn out within a lifetime or two. But others get stronger, more powerful, during those early searching years.

And one they find one another, they are forever more entangled. The oldest and strongest eventually fuse, unable to be separated in life or death.

Of course, eventually they burn out. But not in a tragic way; more like in a way that is last page of a very good book; the wilting of a final flower in autumn; the way snow melts in early spring, with sense of peace and satisfaction, and utter tranquility. And as they dissolve into starlight and dust, they begin the cycle anew. It is neither good nor bad or anything in between.

It is simply the way of things.

—

When they meet the first time they are vampires in Dacia - the land that will become Romania. It is an era of indulgence for vampires in that region, and if any records had been kept, it would have declared nearly dangerous levels of changes.

She is Alis, a peasant girl changed by a careless vampire who fed and left her in a ditch. She’s a gentle beauty, with long dark hair, sharp and cunning eyes, and even after the change, her skin maintains a slightly golden tint of someone who spent their life in the sun.

He is Jesper, who mentions nothing of where he came from or what he was before he arrived to hover at the fringes of the Romanian court. He has a reputation in the court, with the ladies and the men both, and Alis is entirely aware and slightly amused by that. She catches his eye more than once, but is illusive like a quicksilver, unbent and unbowed.

Until she isn’t.

It’s been a good hunt, blood soaked through their clothes to their skin that they lick off each other in their frenzy, and she learns exactly how he developed such a reputation. He learns exactly what he was looking for as he finds himself skin to skin with the spirited girl that has always seen him coming before he could catch her. But he has her now, and he’s not letting go.

She doesn’t seem to mind. They become a common sight, as a pair, their hands constantly entangled. They are not at court to curry favour or power or anything more than their next meal, but their relationship is magnetic, and more than one jealous or yearning gaze falls upon them as he presses hot kisses to her neck as he ties a choker of sapphires or diamonds around her pale throat.

The Volturi attack a century or so later, and they stand with the Romanians, their leaders and their friends. He remembers thinking they cannot possibly fail; they are the side of the kings, of the angels. He remembers admiring her as they lined up; the way she had pinned her hair with the silver clasp he’d given her, the way her dress fit her and the smirk on her lips that promised something to look forward to in their personal victory celebrations.

They don’t survive. In the chaos of the battle, it is hard to say how they each fell - the Volturi take no prisoners anyway, so a quick death in battle is preferable to an execution. But they fall and they are burnt, and their ashes mingle in the purple-grey smoke that fills the field.

When Lord Aro finds a silver hair clasp discarded on the battlefield, still clinging to a clump of dark hair, he pockets it and later presents it to Sulpicia, polished to shine and on a bed of velvet. It is a curious and beautiful piece, the shape of a raven’s wing, and it quickly joins the Volturi’s treasury without a single thought given to its origins.

—

In whatever counts as the afterlife for souls and spirits, they reunite. It will take more than one life to work out their powers, the boundaries, of this resting place - how to shape it to their preferences, how to give themselves form. For now, it is just a long horizon of contrasting light, and they are little more than sentient energy, mingling and expressing regret and pain at the demise of the other, of relief of being reunited, of contentedness being once again with the other.

Time is not something that exists on this plane, and soon they learn how to change what is around them; a swathe of sandy beach that meets perfectly clear water, expansive grassy plains that fit between quiet, looming forests that are quiet and cool. They are no more fixed than any other aspect of this space, but it remains unexpectedly consistent.

Sometimes, there is a house. It’s immediate form never changes, but the outside facade does, as the lifetimes pass them by. Somethings a log cabin, other times an English cottage, or a farmhouse, or a bamboo hut. It is their every-changing, ever-evolving desires, a nod to their shared past and their hopes for the future. It is their reward, their sanctuary.

They learn how to shape themselves as well. She fluctuates a little more than him, but she is always small, always naturally dark-haired, always cunning but sweet. He is always tall and always blonde and too charming for his own good, and sometimes not he is she, blonde and tall and could charm birds from the trees. It doesn’t matter either way; the small one greets them just the same, with enthusiasm and passion and sweet sadness at their demise but always joy at their return.

And that is where they are together until the next life.

—

The next life is simpler; a part of a nomadic tribe. She is married, in their customs, to him when she is little more than a child and he just barely a man. And despite how they were raised, he is kind and gentle to her and has no interest in her as a wife before she becomes a woman.

It is a hard year, a bad year, as they travel the mountains and ridges, the snow sharp against their faces. Few of the tribe have born children that year, and less still have lived through the winter; when food is so scarce, the dying are calmly let go so that the rest might survive. There is an undercurrent of resentment when he hoists his child-bride onto his back so that she might make the climb; that he, young and strong and likely to live long and hardy, gives his share of food and water to the bony waif he is bound to.

But she lives through that year, and the next. She lives enough years that they are both ready for her to become a wife, and everyone who scorned her frailness, her smallness, the waste of a strong husband on such a girl, is shocked when she conceives and carries his child so easily. First a son, then two daughters, all born close enough together that the old women of the tribe mutter.

The tribe becomes stronger, settles in one place for longer and longer periods of time - where food and water are plentiful and they are safe from predators and other threats.

She dies during her fourth pregnancy, slipping away in an ocean of blood no one could have prevented. Her eyes are wild and frightened, and he promises that he’ll watch over their children and see them safe, and weeps openly over her body and that of his second son.

He dies after his second daughter is married to a neighbouring tribe, to a boy who looks at her like she is a miracle, and he knows his job is done. The death is quiet, in the still of the night, in the shelter that he once shared with her. As he passes from the world, he remembers the nights when it was him and her amongst the furs, and then their children pressed between them, and then the firm bulge of the child who would ultimately kill her. He holds no resentment for the cause of her death, just a faint and worn sadness, and as he drifts away, he is certain he can hear her laughing.

—

He is a soldier, to protect his family, for a cause he finds entirely repulsive. But he mouths the words and holds the gun, and does not recognise her when he is ordered to shoot. Why would he? They’ve never met. She dies in the mud, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because they end up naming him a traitor and he dies in prison heavy with regrets.

In their sanctuary, they reunite in silence, with sad eyes and gentle embraces. Whatever powers above govern creation, they still send the souls and soulmates to earth, to be swallowed up and spat back out by human machinations, human fears and flaws and greed.

It is simply the way of things.

—

She is a barefoot thief in the streets of Paris, dangerously fast, and subtle of hand. She tells no one her story, or at least, no one her truth. Ragged and smirking, people mistake her for a child, and so there is little trouble to be had - if she’s caught at all.

She runs into him, lounging in an alleyway, tricking lords and ladies out of coins wiht sleight of hand, and is delighted with their potential. She’s old enough to be charmed by sharp green eyes and a lazy grin, and young enough to contemplate the sheer levels of chaos they can cause.

They live like kings those next few years, pinching pearls and purses, watches and rubies, and living in an icy dormer room wearing stolen rings to convince others of things they’ll get around to eventually. It’s really not much - a narrow bed with wafer thin blankets and a shared pillow; water that runs cold and brown into a bucket; pigeons that nest in the rafters and shit all over their clothing.

Doesn’t seem to matter, though, when she welcomes his kiss and sleepily encourages him when he rolls on top of her during the late night hours, frost forming on the weave and weft of their clothes. When their work is good, he brings her flowers from the seller on the corner, and she tucks her pockets full of cakes for them to share, and really, neither could imagine a finer life than together in their little tower.

But time marches on, and soon they recognise that the tricks that have gotten them this far in life aren’t going to be overlooked forever. There are less nobles on the street, less coin and jewellery to be fleeced, and so they decide to leave for the country - he’s not afraid of dirty work, and she’s not afraid of anything.

The journey will be long, and she steals a book for him on their way - he’s determined to teach her to read. It’s a neat little Bible with a smart green cover with the name ‘C-a-r-l-i-s-l-e C-u-l-l-e-n’ written in neat script on the front page.

They settle in a village, where she becomes a laundress, then a seamstress, and he finds work with horses. They marry in the village parish, where the kind priest is happy to absolve them of the sin of living as man and wife before their vows, and keep their secret. They exchange stolen rings for ones of brass, from a jar the priest keeps for that purpose.

There’s a tiny two-room cottage they occupy; those early years of hunger and neglect have left their mark on them both, and so there are no children in this life. But there is an endless parade of animals that he brings home tucked under his jacket; wounded or lost or discarded, and she finds that she doesn’t so much mind waking up to a blind duck on their bed or a sickly fox on the pillow next to her, when he is always so pleased with their progress, with their improving health. He saves more than he loses, and he takes pride in that. Some are set free and returned to the wild, but others linger until they are something of a spectacle in town - the house with all the animals.

They live a long life, a good one, and it ends peacefully. They are buried side by side in the village cemetery, with wooden crosses that bare their names, and prayers muttered in their honour.

But one Carlisle Cullen never gets his Bible back.

—

The good lives give them less time together in the in-between, if such a thing could be accurately measured. They wade, knee-deep into that perfect ocean that stretches out to their infinite horizon, hand-in-hand, and then they both feel it; that fizzing, tingling feeling as whatever oversees them pulls them back; back into bodies and minds, back into lives and places, and they once again have to go through the push and pull of finding the other and crossing their fingers it’ll happen sooner rather than later.

As he becomes nothing again, he holds her smile tight in his mind with a prayer that this will be the time, this will be the life, that he’ll recognise her for who she is to him as soon as he sees her.

She hopes its a long life, a good one, with his hand in hers always.

—

He’s reborn in Texas in 1863 and dies nineteen years later, only to rise again.

She’s born in Mississippi in 1901 and dies nineteen years later, only to rise again.

They meet in 1948, and if he knew any better, he’d tease her about keeping him waiting for thirty-seven years, six months, and three weeks. But it will be a while more before they both remember things like that, so he can’t. Instead, he falls completely and utterly in love with her, in a way that echoes right back through to that very first meeting in Dacia.

He wonders if its possible to miss someone he’d never met before, when he takes her hand. She wonders if he’s going to disappear, to startle and panic about the future that lies before them and leave her behind.

He kisses her like a starving man, and she almost immediately drags him - a willing supplicant - into her bed because it doesn’t matter what life they’re living, she’s never been particularly subtle. He knows exactly what to do to make her scream indecently, and she puts her mouth to every single one of his scars, and he wishes he could weep - with relief and guilt and a million other things that are knotted up inside his head.

And she will untangle each and every single one with enough time.

They unknowingly draw from each of the lives that have come before - they are nomadic for more than two years, criss-crossing across the country. He is no less fixated on animals - as a human, it was the training of them; as a vampire, they are his salvation. Their hands are always entangled, their gazes always on the other.

This time, they find a family, and some quiet, subconscious little corner of her mind decides she likes that they aren’t alone this time. There’s a small joy in the memory of a ‘family’, and a warm feeling - one that she doesn’t know originated from a long-ago life where they were the ones welcoming new children into their heart and home, one she doesn’t quite recognise. But families are shaped so many different ways, and the Cullens are just another way to fit together, and so they stay.

It’s a good life, an untroubled life - at least until Edward gets tangled up with a human girl and the cursed Volturi. Somewhere, the great puppet master jerks the strings and decides that if history is so desperate to repeat itself, well, it might as well put on a show.

They escape the Volturi once (a flight to Italy to save an idiot brother), and twice (Renesmee shall live, Joham shall die, and Aro leaves without any new amusements and deeply, infinitely disappointed in his beloved Carlisle).

Third time’s a charm.

—

Aro’s great error shall go down in history as underestimating the damage he has done assembling his collection, the rage and resentment that boils like an undercurrent in the vampire world. He is not a beloved leader, but a feared one.

In truth, which will be lost to both time and the fact that the powers above don’t keep written or oral histories as humans comprehend them, his undoing is two things: the fact that in all things there must be balance.

And an ancient silver hair clasp shaped like a raven’s wing, that his Sulpicia wears in her hair as they arrive at the battlefield, cloaked and over-confident.

The battle is ugly and fatal and messy and all those things wars usually are, and there is no certainty in their victory, not with the wolves involved, with the shifters and the cryptids that have crawled out of every shadow and space to be done with Aro and Caius forever.

(Stefan and Vladimir are naive if they think they will fill the vacuum left behind in Aro’s wake; Jasper takes them both out quietly on the battlefield, when neither of them can call out the betrayal or identify their killer. Sometimes ugly things need to be done, and he’s not above getting his hands dirty.)

The battleground is smokey and even her supernatural eyes struggle to see through the gloam; her dead heart heavy as she looks for him. Voices call for help; for missing limbs, for injuries, for protection and she ignores each and every one.

She doesn’t know why she stops at the sight of a silver hair clasp, ancient and lost in the mud. Or why she reaches for her own hair, cut short.

Or why she picks it up and unlocks something inside her own mind. It is not an explosion of information, a supernova of memory. It is simply an intense awareness of who she is and who she was and who she will be. It is a confidence in her stride as she moves through the battlefield with a sense of self she has not known since before her home was known as ‘Romania’.

Jasper is bent and twisted, Rosalie limp on the ground, and those vicious, hideous twins hold them captive, like fish twitching on the line. Their deaths are not imminent, because who could take down the little vipers and stop their little game?

Jane’s head is off her body, and Alec’s too, before Jasper has shaken off the pain, expecting Peter or Maria or Emmett to have gotten a lucky shot and dismembered Aro’s little favourites.

Instead, it is his mud-streaked wife with a strange look in her eyes and emotions skittering over her skin like static. A battlefield is no place for a lover’s reunion, but she still bestows a kiss on his kneeling form (so ready for his own execution) that is so positively lascivious that it takes him a minute to remember himself.

And then he remembers himself.

The scales have been rebalanced, and the fight is won by a toss of a coin that finds Aro, Caius, and Marcus on their knees in the mud, waiting for their own trial. The oldest of the gathered line up - Carlisle, Amun, Maria, the Chinese coven - to pass their judgement, but the memories that press on both of them demand their pound of flesh, and Edward eyes them both uneasily.

Instead of violence, of sliding down a slope that turns them back into the monsters of old, into the truest of nightmares, Alice crouches in front of Aro with her wide dark gold eyes, and pulls the hair clasp from her pocket.

Aro’s rage is cold, at the few strands of Sulpicia’s hair that are still trapped in the metal, and if he could, he’d shred her to pieces in that moment, gift be damn. But she smiles sweetly, and strokes the etched feathers.

“Did you know?” she asks quietly, only loud enough for the fallen Volturi kings to hear, and Edward who hovers in case this spirals into a cataclysm, “When he gave me this, I mean?”

Aro stares at her, straining to touch her and understand, but his guard holds him tight and all he can do is sneer at her.

“The night before you brought your army,” Alice plucks the strawberry-blonde hairs from the fixture and tosses them into the mud. “He pinned this in my hair and we danced; we thought we’d win. And I suppose we did.”

Aro gapes at her, Caius is spitting curses, and Marcus is just pleading for his peaceful death - and how many lifetimes has he lived without Didyme, has he wanted to return to that in-between space?

She sees the scar on Esme’s face and finds it hard to care.

Edward is backing away in horror from whatever he sees in her mind, and Jasper is helping her stand, returning to their place amongst the very confused witnesses - what could the diminutive vampire say to the Lords of Volterra that would inspire such a response. The three are summarily executed without ceremony, and they are scattered over the fire without reverence.

Alice tosses the hair clasp in, too. It is better to be burnt to nothing, to be forgotten and buried by dirt and ash. It is too close to becoming a cursed object, one that will follow them, if they place too much belief and trust and hope into it. It has witnessed two downfalls, and it will never witness another.

He holds her tight in the aftermath, as they count their dead and make their plans. Edward is already whispering warnings into Carlisle’s ear, of the shape their thoughts and memories take. But they are family, and that comes before everything else.

(It’s not exactly their fault that Edward is a shiny new soul, and it’s going to take him a few lifetimes to understand what he’s seeing and hearing. Harder especially for him, with his gift so strong so early in the cycle. But everything happens for a reason.)

Despite the curiosity wafting off everyone, they say nothing and they go… well, not home, but to the closest residence, the headquarters of this war. A sprawling property with enough beds for the wounded, the wolves, and the lovers.

That’s where she makes good on her unspoken promises from eons again, of their private victory celebration. She sits astride him, her hips rolling hard against his, drawing out his groans and growls as he grips her thighs almost tight enough to crack. Their gazes are locked the entire time, her tongue skimming over her lips, as she lets her emotions tell him everything that she wants and everything she plans to take.

He remembers fucking her in the dirt in Dacia; his mouth between her legs as she hollered obscenities in a Paris attic; and the urgent, passionate loving-making of a marriage finally consummated.

She remembers bloody emeralds looped around her throat and resting between her breasts as she gets down on her knees and takes him into her mouth, his fingers tangled in her hair; the delicious weight of him on top of her, their sweat mingling and cooling in the frozen night as their flimsy bed creaked against the wall; and his soft encouragement in her ear as he grasps her around the waist, their hands resting together on the gentle swell of her stomach.

It is times like this that their talents are burdens and gifts both because it is so much, so very much, and in all that passion and true love, there is also loss and regret.

But they have each other, and they will weather this new storm together.

—

They are hardly the only couple to spend the night tumbling together, but they must be the loudest, because when they reappear the next morning with darkened eyes and clean clothes, Jacob and Emmett are looking at Jasper with a new and very specific kind of respect, and if she flips both of them off behind Esme’s back, no one has any proof.

They don’t talk about what they’ve learnt, because it probably wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else. It doesn’t make sense, doesn’t matter, until the mantle of it settles upon you. And then it is everything.

Instead, they hunt. They have won the battle, won the war, and whilst rebuilding will take time, they can take this small moment to feast with their family and relish freedom from fear.

She truly doesn’t know what comes next. He truly doesn’t know if it will be good or bad. They will live this life for as long as it lasts, long may it last, surrounded by the people they love and trust.

And then they will die.

And then they will live again. Maybe they will live another ten lives, maybe another one hundred. Maybe one day they will cross paths with their family again, or they will choose to have children again. Maybe they will be long lives full of joy and laughter, maybe they will burn out fast and hard, but full of feeling.

But the thing they are now both and utterly certain of, above all else, is that they will walk each step hand-in-hand.

It is simply the way of things.

#jaliceweek20 #alice cullen #jasper hale #twilight renaissance #twilight fic #jalice #jalice fic #my fic: the way of things

23 notes · View notes

wisdomrays · 5 years ago

Text

The Four Great Deeds Which Take Willpower

QUESTION: The following is related in Al-Munabbihat (The Counsel) with reference to Ali ibn Abi Talib, may God be pleased with him: “The following four virtues are the most difficult of deeds: Being able to forgive while enraged, showing generosity during hardship, remaining chaste in the face of temptation while in private, always speaking up for truth in the face of another whom one fears or from whom one expects a benefit.” Could you expound on the deeds mentioned in this statement, and the Divine rewards to be granted in return?

ANSWER: When you consider other statements that are ascribed to noble Ali, his words included in Nahj al-Balagha (The Peak of Eloquence) and his style and use of language, and then also consider the fact that the Muslims had newly emerged from the Era of Ignorance so notions and concepts about different fields of knowledge had not fully flourished, and works about language and eloquence had not yet fully appeared, then these words, which require a certain literary background, do not appear so likely to be his. Therefore, one cannot help but imagine that perhaps the people of the third and fourth centuries, when different scholarly fields had been developed, ascribed the words they said to noble Ali, may God be pleased with him. However, when we consider his unique qualities such as being open to spirituality, having dynamic inspirations and his position as the father of a chain of saintly people, then it is highly possible for him to have said these words as a result of inspiration. On the other hand, the previously mentioned possibility should not be dismissed. In addition, it is also possible for those people from a later period to have rephrased his original statements by enriching them with the meanings and concepts of their own period. As it is not easy to have a decisive view on this, let us say “God knows its truth” and discuss the subject of the four deeds that are mentioned.

Our master Ali firstly expresses that the most difficult deeds number four. Actually, every deed has a difficult aspect of its own. Making ablutions five times a day, observing the Prayers, Fasting throughout the day particularly on long, hot days, donating from lawful gains, observing the duty of Hajj, observing the rights of parents without any complaint near them... When such acts of worship and responsibilities are viewed, it will be seen that each of them has certain difficulties of its own. I imagine that nobody views these deeds and worship as easy. However, he particularly draws attention to four issues that he sees as the most difficult among deeds.

1. Forgiveness while enraged

The first difficult deed is being able to forgive others while in a state of rage. Actually, swallowing one’s rage and showing forgiveness at the moment when a one’s rage overflows like magma is a deed the Qur’an praises and encourages people to do. For example: “They spend (out of what God has provided for them) both in ease and hardship, ever-restraining their rage (even when provoked and able to retaliate), and pardoning people (their offenses)...” (Al Imran 3:134). With this Divine verse, God states that swallowing one’s rage and pardoning others is a quality of God-revering and pious ones (those with taqwa). He brings to our attention that swallowing one’s rage is as difficult a task as swallowing a thorny cactus. Surely, the reward for a person who accomplishes such a deed will be greater accordingly.

Forgiving is easy for a person who is not disturbed by anyone, who is in a good mood, who is shown appreciation and love by others. What really matters is a person’s giving his willpower its due at a time when he is bothered and troubled by others, and is in a rage because of that—to not respond in the same way and show forgiveness.

In fact, a human being is not a creature that has to react in the same way when some others touch him with their horns. God Almighty, may His glory be exalted, left no gap in human abilities. He endowed humanity with the way to perfection and created them as perfect beings. He granted them such a willpower that, when a person is able to harness its full potential, he can carry out the most difficult deeds and subjugate his feelings of anger and rage by taking them under control.

As you know the original word for forgiveness is afw, and it means “erasing something.” That is to say, you deliberately ignore some of the attitudes and behaviors displayed by others which disturb and enrage you, and virtually white them out in your mind. You do not even allow all of these negativities to take a place in your mind or leave a trace in your neurons. Even if they pressurize you to the degree of affecting your health, you erase them from your cortex. This truly is a difficult deed to fulfill. However, once a person is able to accomplish that, namely, build a character predisposed for forgetting others’ evils, then the rewards in the afterlife will be very different. It is likely that in response to this forgiving attitude, the Divine punishment due for certain wrongs and sins committed by that person will be erased and he will be blessed with Divine forgiveness in return for having forgiven others.

2. Showing generosity in times of hardship

Secondly, our master Ali, may God be pleased with him, emphasized the importance of acting magnanimously when seized by hardship. It is easy for a person with a substantial fortune to be generous because it will not seriously diminish by giving some of it away. What will a person who has a thousand dollars lose if he gives away one dollar of it? What really matters is being able to give for God’s sake during hardship. As forgiveness during rage is an invitation for Divine forgiveness, generosity during times of hardship is an invitation for Divine generosity.

In a way, he drew attention to the altruistic virtue of ithar, preferring others over oneself; ithar is a person’s giving his food to another while he himself is hungry and thirsty. God Almighty states the following in relation to this issue: “...and in their hearts do not begrudge what they (other believers) have been given, and (indeed) they prefer them over themselves, even though poverty be their own lot” (al-Hashr 59:9).

During the Battle of Yarmuk, a Companion with dried-up lips, on the verge of death, was about to drink the water they brought for him. On hearing another dying Companion asking for water, he beckoned for the water to be taken to him instead. When the second Companion received the water, he heard the same moan from a third and beckoned for the water to be taken to him instead. This repeated until the water was taken to seven different people. In the end, all of them were martyred and none of those altruistic souls was able to drink the water. It is one of the most striking and beautiful examples of the virtue of ithar, preferring others over oneself, as an outward reflection of living for the sake of others in the true sense and remaining loyal to real human values.

3. Being able to remain chaste in the face of temptation when in private

The third difficult but good deed mentioned by our master Ali is remaining chaste in spite of being in a situation that allows one to sin in private..

In a saying, the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, referred to the seven categories of people who will be provided with shade by the Divine Throne on the Day of Judgment when no other shade exists. He revealed that one of these is someone who rejects the indecent invitation of a woman of status and beauty by responding to her by saying, “I fear God.”

In a way, it is easy to appear decent in others’ sight. It is not easy for people to commit sin while others’ eyes are on them. However, when someone finds himself in the vortex of such a tempting opportunity, when someone immoral is attempting to seduce him, it is very difficult for him to master his willpower and become an example of chastity; refusing temptation by exclaiming as Prophet Joseph, peace be upon him, did: “God forbid!” (Yusuf 12:23), and thus taking a clear stance against that temptation. In such situations where one is pushed toward negative things, it truly takes a willpower of steel to stand perfectly upright with the soundness of a mountain without being shaken at all. Undoubtedly, the reward for a person who withstands such temptation will be as great in the same degree.

During the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, a seductive woman laid her eyes on a handsome young man and set a trap for him. One day, she somehow managed to make him take one step in through her door. However, the young man found himself reciting the verse with the following meaning: “Those who keep from disobedience to God in reverence for Him and piety: when a suggestion from Satan touches them—they are alert and remember God, and then they have clear discernment” (al-A’raf 7:201). Upon this, the young man’s heart stopped and he passed away right there. The Companions did not wish to inform the caliph about it; they took the body, which was found in front of that immoral woman’s house, and buried him quietly. On realizing the absence of this devout youth, who would normally take his place in the first rank of the Prayers, Umar ibn al-Khattab asked where he was. The Companions told him about the situation. After this, the caliph ran to the grave of the young man and recited the verse meaning, “But for him who lives in awe of his Lord and of the standing before his Lord (in the Hereafter), there will be two Gardens...” in address to him. Then a voice from the grave replied with the following words: “O leader of the believers! I have been granted twice more than that.”

This event also indicates that it is so hard, so valuable, and very important for a person to remain chaste in case of immediate temptation while in private. Unfortunately, as the recent few centuries have taken away so many values from us, it also destroyed our idea of chastity. We Muslims have become so miserable and corrupt in this regard. Under the banner of “freedom” some have laid all indecent means of immorality before us and thus made our atmosphere vulnerable to all kinds of immorality. But in spite of everything, we hold the belief that as far as those who protect their decency and chastity in our time are concerned, God Almighty will treat them with His Divine favors, honor them with two Paradises, and crown them with His good pleasure, absolute acceptance, and seeing Him.

4. Speaking up for truth when this is difficult

He explained the final good deed he thought to be difficult as “speaking out against another whom one fears or from whom one expects some benefit.” In situations where one fears someone or is promised some benefits by them, if a person cannot be morally upright and speak up for truth but instead agrees to engage in a deal, then the holders of power virtually shackle him and bring him under total control. They then make him do everything they want. As it can be seen in different circles in our time, fear is a factor that restrains, paralyzes and totally disables a person while running on the righteous path. Likewise, cherishing expectations of certain benefits puts a person in the position of a mute devil who cannot speak out against oppressive rulers. It causes that person to knowingly distort realities, speak wrongly and commit wrongs. As we witness its very bitter examples, so many people today are saying just the opposite of what they said yesterday because of certain opportunities laid before them, some expectation they cherish, or due to being paralyzed by fear and anxiety. Like a chameleon, they change from one hue to another with the changing conditions and thus—may God protect—they commit successive wrongs in a way that will ruin their life in both worlds. By means of different engagements of benefits, they virtually live like slaves and cannot manage to break free. So it is true heroism to speak up for truth during a time when fear and benefits prevail. Such a heroic act will surely be rewarded accordingly in the next world.

In short, rewards for deeds will differ according to the time and conditions in which they were realized. However, one point should not be missed here. Receiving a much greater reward for having fulfilled a difficult deed depends on keeping the sincerity of intention and not making any overt or covert complaints. In other words, in order to gain a greater reward in accordance with the difficulty of a certain deed, one must not complain about the difficulties. One should show patience against all odds, not dare to criticize Divine destiny and fulfill that deed in a willing and voluntary fashion.

5 notes · View notes