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nikkil-rp · 6 years

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OFF Day 4 - Quotes

(A/N): For @originalficfest . This has been a heck of a scavenger hunt, particularly for the NO LOYAL KNIGHT ones. I only have the first one or two chapters written for each of these stories (all of which can be read here), so I had to go digging through old drafts for some of these quotes. Pardon the quality on the NLK v2 quotes--Those were all written in 2013, with all the melodrama of a high school senior. I’ve included as many introductory quotes as I can, either from the character’s first appearance or their first POV scene, as well as a couple of quotes that really sum up the heart of the character or their story as a whole. You can read more about all these projects on my WIP page and my Characters and Worlds masterpost. Enjoy!

Opening Character Lines:

Koltor Bryant (MH)

Koltor cried out. He couldn’t move. They had him tied down, and intense pain pulsed through the right side of his body. He pulled against the restraints, but they refused to give.

He jerked his right arm and heard something rip. The unexpected release of tension set him off balance, and a loud thunk met his fall to the floor. The impact startled him the rest of the way awake. His breath came in short gasps, and every time the air rushed past the back of his throat, he felt a sharp prickle accompanied by the bitter taste of copper. He’d been shouting in his sleep again.

DiPersia Iaonsen (MH)

Di swung her legs over the edge of the catwalk and slid under the guard rails. She crouched low as her feet hit one of the long cylindrical pipelines that fed pressurized steam from one end of the engine to the next. Snapping one of her carabiners onto the safety wires almost as an afterthought, Di scurried over to one of the feedback panels set into the outer shell of the boiler.

Jericho (J)

This must be what the inside of an ice grinder feels like, Jericho thought dully. The dust-turned-ice storm had blown in quickly, and the temperature on the surface was well below freezing. Shards of ice howled around him in miniature tornadoes that felt like they were made of dull knives, and the oxygen converter on his face felt like it was about to short out at any second.

Ania Kyatei (NLK v3)

A leaf blew across the book on Ania’s lap, sticking in the crease between the pages. She brushed it away, and read the last line again. To understand yourself is to understand your opponent, and to understand is to respect. This is the meaning of victory.

Magatha Briggs (CofM)

Back pressed against the exterior wall of the tenement sphere, Magatha squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe. She gripped the catwalk railing with one hand, her fist so tight that the bones of her hand threatened to come apart at the joints. The blue morning light filtering through the leaves of the distant Mother Tree at the center of the spheres of the House was at odds with the black pit inside her chest. She was dizzy, and everything was out of focus. She had to hurry. The people inside the sphere needed her.

Kaelan West (CofM)

The speaker—a man about her age—was dichromatic, more so than any other person she could remember ever having seen. The dual skin tones, a deep brown and a paler beige, swirled around each other, like two dyes dropped into a beaker of water, frozen in that fraction of a moment before the solution diffused to a single color.

Randen Derris (NLK v2)

Randen sat on the mattress with his shirt in his hands, and looked down at the scratches that covered his tan arms. Most of them were fairly shallow, but more than one was still a deep crimson, with white, enflamed skin puckering about the edges. He couldn't really feel the pain – he'd pushed it to the back of his mind, where it was nothing more than a dull buzz – but just looking at the cuts brought back the wrenching fear that had filled his gut the night before.

Elyys Faye (NLK v2)

His mother had always told him that he was useless, and he was incapable of doing anything, but he couldn't remember if he'd ever done anything besides just being a boy to prove her right. There had been a man among those three blood soldier. He hadn't seemed weaker than the others. In fact, he seemed like he was their equal.

His mother had sent him here to die. He never had to see her again. He didn't have to live up to anything she thought ever again.

"I decide who I am," he whispered. "I decide."

Skaught Farstrend (NLK v2)

He fell to his knees as a scream forced its way out of his throat. His arm was on fire. It felt like the bone had shattered and was trying to force its way out through his old scar. The back of his neck was filled with shooting sparks of pain until his mind had nearly shut completely down. He'd never felt this much pain before. His heart started skipping beats. It couldn't keep up with the waves of pain that were shooting out of his arm.

Mya Tohgis (NLK v2)

She yanked her knife out of one of the figures, twisting it on the way out the same way she did when slaughtering an animal back at home. She had a sick taste in her mouth, and it wasn't from the pale dust that covered her blade and hands where there should have been slick red blood. Strength? That girl obviously knew nothing of strength. There was no strength in words, only actions. There was power in knowing she could do anything to anyone and no one could stop her. That was why she was here – to have that power.

Quintessential Character Quotes:

Ania Kyatei (NLK v2)

"Oh, come now, Master – I thought tricks were what you were looking for," she shouted to the darkness. "Who can jump the highest, last the longest, fight the hardest? Who can be the best blood soldier? That's what you want me to be, isn't? You want me to be just like you!" With a vicious stab, she got rid of another black cloak, this time before it had even raised a weapon. "But that's the problem – you don't even know what you are! You think you're blood soldiers. You think you're apathetic, and apart from everything. You think nothing concerns you anymore. You think that you're above everything, and that even if you wanted to, there's nothing you could do to help anyone but yourselves!" She yanked her spear out of the gut of another black cloak. Her voice grew louder and louder with each word until it sounded like it was coming from the mouth of a giant. "That's what everyone else believes about you, and now you believe it, too. You think that just because someone expects it of you, that's what you have to be. And now you think you can do it to me. You think that you can decide who and what I am just because of a name, or what you think is most important. Well, let me tell you – I won't let you! I still believe in what Knights are, even if you don't. I believe in helping people, even if they are scared of what I am. You can't take that away from me, because I won't let you. You can't define who I am – I do that. You think I'm weak. You think I'm naive. But I still believe in myself, and that's all the strength I need!"

Koltor Bryant (MH)

He hadn’t slept in five months. Sure, he’d close his eyes, and sometimes he’d slide in and out of consciousness, but the exhaustion was still there every time he crawled out of bed. Instead of resetting every night, the days strung together like a single never-ending nightmare. There was a dry ache in his left eye socket, and a dull pressure just behind his brow ridge, but those had been there long before the coma. Sleep had always been a rare commodity on deployment, but this was worse. He was used to “tired”, not this bone-melting exhaustion. He had no reason to be awake any more. Everything was so silent, like he’d been buried alive. His cabin was just a proactive coffin.

Sometimes, just before he woke up, he’d hear breathing near him, and he’d feel the heat of twenty bodies around him. He’d hear the snap as wind caught the edges of the tent. He’d feel the ground rumble beneath him, feel the weight of his rifle on the cot with him. But then the air conditioning unit would switch on, and he’d realize the rumbling he felt was the engines of the cityship Arboretum, and he was back in his cabin, alone, the same way he had been every day for the last five months.

Kaelan West (CofM)

“I thought these black and white birds were the most beautiful things in the sky. When they fly, they’re focused, like nothing in the world can stop them. When the sun catches their feathers, they shine like a stained glass window. They’re more than just black and white, but the starkness of their feathers is only emphasized by the iridescence.” The bird adjusted its wings, and Magatha saw it—a flash of the deepest greens and blues. “They are beautiful because they are different, but even that doesn’t matter. They are simply themselves.”

The magpie hopped up onto Kaelan’s hand, and he lifted the bird to his eye level. “I’ve noticed that the people of the House have a tendency to think in binaries, with no thought to the true nature of things. They see only the black and white, not the color that makes those things beautiful. Black, white. Success, failure. It isn’t all or nothing. Success isn’t dependent on you running yourself into the ground, trying to save the world all by yourself. Maybe everyone else sees you as the only one who can do this, but that isn’t the way the world works. There is nuance there, just like the color of a magpie’s wings.”

Jericho (J)

“If I say yes, will you stop disturbing the peace?”

“And let you die of boredom?” Jericho laughed as Joshua rolled his eyes, but then his voice turned quiet. “I’ve told you before, Joshua. I don’t disturb the peace. No one in their right mind can disturb true peace.”

“Oh? Then what do you do?”

“I make people notice things.” Jericho met the young man’s eyes. “But you already notice most of the important things. If you were in charge, something tells me that those shackles up top wouldn’t see use for a very long time.”

#originalficfest #original characters #writeblr #am writing #my writing #metallic heartbeat #the color of magpies #Jericho #no loyal knight #koltor bryant #dipersia iaonsen #ania kyatei #randen derris #elyys faye #skaught farstrend #mya tohgis #kaelan west #magatha briggs

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nikkil-rp · 7 years

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Masterpost: Characters and Worlds

The Color of Magpies

A second world novella, on the line between steampunk and fantasy, set in a structure called the House—a gigantic orrery/armillary sphere that hangs suspended around an equally gigantic tree called the Mother Tree—with an alchemy-based magic system that isn’t well known. The story revolves around a series of unsettling disappearances and the rush to solve the mystery behind them before the House comes apart at the seams, both figuratively and literally.

Magatha Briggs: Autistic. Brilliant scientist in a world that seems to be run by mystical rules, with things being explained by allegory and myth. Her parents were the Masters of the House until they fell unexpectedly ill, to the point where they are almost entirely catatonic, and she was forced to step up and become the Master of the House in a time of crisis. She believes that who she is is unhelpful and unnecessary because she is interested in botanical chemistry, where her father and all the Masters before him just “listened to the Mother Tree”. She does not know what this means. She tries to suppress who she is for the good of the people.

Kaelan West: Visibly Dichromatic, including dichromatic facial features. Works in the conservatories, and has worked on the grounds crew for the Mother Tree. Cares a lot about plants. Loves them, even though it is literally impossible for a plant to repay him for doing so. He thinks magpies are beautiful, even though “magpie” is a pejorative term used against Dichromatics. Struggled with depression when he was younger, but found that when he worked with his plants and tried to help people around him, things were brighter. Goes out of his way to help people who he thinks might be struggling with depression or something similar.

Ivory: A mysterious, otherworldly woman that no one has ever seen, but that everyone seems to know about. Has an apparent network of individuals at her disposal, and may be responsible for or otherwise connected with the series of disappearances that have been plaguing the House.

The Steward: An older man who keeps a library, filled with all kinds of books. Some were written by members of the community, others were found in newly discovered spheres as they joined the tracks. The Steward has been around for as long as anyone can remember but barely seems to age.

The Mad King: Magatha’s father, the previous Master of the House. Currently in a catatonic state for an unknown reason. Many members of the community resent his absence and refer to him as “the Mad King”, a character from an old folk tale who abandoned his people in a time of great need.

Chemeia: A name found in some of the oldest texts in the Steward’s library, frequently associated with long, detailed passages about obscure sciences.

No Loyal Knight

A second-world fantasy series, set in a 4th-generation matriarchal society called Koronea, with an energy-based magic system that draws inspiration from Daoist theory. The story revolves around a group of young adults who were recently recruited to an elite fighting force (the Knights of the Covenant) tasked with protecting the ruling family and being a kind of special operations unit for particularly dangerous or important missions. Their recruitment comes just as the previously loyal veteran Knights seem about to collapse under the weight of corruption and apathy.

Ania Kyatei: Main character. 15-18yo over the course of the first book. After being seen as an outcast for most of her life because of her association with the Knights, she wants to help create a world where everyone is safe and anyone can belong. Currently doing her best to get to the bottom of the unexpected corruption of the leaders of the Knights with the help of her best friends, Randen and Elyys

Randen Derris: Best friend of Ania and Elyys. Autistic. Son of a male Knight who was recently killed in action. Incredibly gifted with instinctive magic and martial arts, but also prone to self-doubt. Has a deep love of the ocean after spending his childhood pearl diving with his mother, and is fiercely loyal to his friends.

Elyys Faye: Best friend of Ania and Randen. Close as a brother. Powerful observational and pattern recognition skills. Ania teaches him to read, and he loves it. From an abusive home, but comes into his own after being recruited to the Knights.

Alecgorn Eldan: First male Master of the Knights in seventy-five years. Mid- to late-forties. Specializes in ranged weaponry and fighting styles adapted from those practiced by Nephin Corifalle, one of the founding Masters of the Knights. Has not yet been allowed to take an apprentice, but goes out of his way to mentor male recruits when he can. Best friends with Matlynd Derris, Danin Kyatei, and Alliania Kyatei.

Raea Miral: Joconan immigrant. 18-21yo over the course of the first book. Works in the infirmary at the Inner Compound and the Corifalle House. Came across the mountains with her father and brother four years prior in the first border raid Ania ever volunteered in. While her father is still with her, working as a blacksmith for the Knights, her brother disappeared back over the mountains several years ago. She is in a relationship with Kyros Dehaan.

Kyros Dehaan

Skaught Farstrend

Amirone Farstrend

Mya Tohgis

Ehmita Kyatei

Matlynd Derris

Metallic Heartbeat

A second world diesel-punk sci-fi short story, set in the world of Ithaca, primarily on the civilian-class airship Arboretum. The story revolves around two cyborgs struggling to find and keep their place in a society that does not want them, who find themselves pitted against a biological supremacist group. Contains themes of ableism and domestic terrorism.

Koltor Bryant

DiPersia Iaonsen

Jakob Mahara

Alec Connelly

Karina Azuras

Jericho

A science fiction story set on the ice moon Europa-66, in an inhumane military labor camp. The story revolves around an escape attempt and the way it draws in good people on both sides of the conflict. Contains themes of torture and violation of human rights.

Jericho

Bradley Wallace

Amelia Abrams

Joshua Abrams

Commander Caen

#writeblr #original characters #roleplay #no loyal knight #masterpost #the color of magpies #metallic heartbeat #jericho #my writing

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