exiles_misc (exiles_misc) wrote in exiles,
@ 2012-10-21 16:39:00

Entry tags:

"generation hexed", crusader, dorrek, goblin, gwenny, mystic

Generation Hexed
Three years ago, Xarus Tepes, son and slayer of Dracula, united the warring vampire sects under a new banner. They followed his new vision for the future, a future of vampires empowered in a fashion the world had never seen. A melding of vampire and mutant blood, ushered in through fire and blood. In another world, he might have only sent forth one suicide bomber, in San Fransisco, but in this one, he sent many. Overnight, across the United States, the ranks of the vampire nation swelled, bringing mutants and other superhumans into the fold. Some resisted their new natures, many did not. With the aid of the X-Men, Dracula eventually was restored and then resumed control of the vampire nations and restored order, but the swell in the ranks represented a fundamental shift in power amongst the supernatural community. Almost overnight, other camps began responding. Otherworld tested its pact with the British Isles, soliciting humans to serve as scions of fey magic. Tribes of lycanthropes went on offensive strikes into isolated communities to spread their own condition. Things that lurked in dark places offered more power in exchange for fewer souls.

Now, the world has a new face. Fields of wild magic dotted across the globe render technology moot within their territory, and magic is nearly commonplace. Sentinels and Hulkbusters were repurposed and reshaped into magic-powered golems and armors of hideous might. The world has become the stuff of the Brothers' tales, before Disney and modern media got hold of them. Cities run the gamut from overgrown by restored wilderness, to reshaped into gleaming spires of otherworldly beauty, to ruins.

Where and when the Exiles arrive, it is night by all appearances, but there are no stars, and what appears to be the moon high above is featureless and pristine. By all appearances, they are in what was once a suburban neighborhood, but the homes now are either falling apart, or fortified and bearing runes and hex marks across their structures. Swathes of thornbushes have replaced flower-beds and lawns, and spikes of iron ring some of the properties, seemingly the remains of automobiles, torn apart by bare hands and claws.

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	brit_sorcerer 2012-11-28 06:57 pm UTC (link)
	"I need a beer or ten," Quinn said. He was tired and just wanted to get plastered beyond belief to forget about all of this and dull the pain of the migraine. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	goblin_savior 2012-11-29 01:07 am UTC (link)
	Jason wills the gilder back down before it dematerializes, dropping him lightly to the ground. Coming from a world full of demons, he is decidedly nonplussed about all this. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bornlucky 2012-11-29 01:08 am UTC (link)
	"Make that twenty beers then," Casey says. Better to do something that made sense to him in the normal world he was from. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	a_pal 2012-11-29 01:53 pm UTC (link)
	"...Sarah, what's the job here again?" (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	rogue_star 2012-11-29 02:38 pm UTC (link)
	"Stand together - I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean us, but there seems to be different factions here. Might have something to do with it. Sounds sort of like the whole 'must all hang together or we will all hang separately' bit." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	notallhunkydory 2012-11-30 04:31 am UTC (link)
	"Gonna be hard to figure out who's supposed to be hanging together against what without information," Dory says, stepping away to retrieve Walker's chair. He brings it back over and sets it down with a flourish. "So, if there's a place we can go and you can tell us what's going on, sir, that would be great." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

exiles_hero
2012-12-04 05:47 pm UTC (link)

"'Different factions'..." Walker grunts. "Little girl, you don't know the half of it." He nods to Dory as he settles back into his chair, then rolls himself sharply up the sidewalk. "Inside, now. Streets aren't safe to talk."

They should all be able to enter the doorway without a problem, save for Macendale, who will be stuck with the equivalent of walking face-first into reinforced glass.

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	rogue_star 2012-12-04 09:52 pm UTC (link)
	Sarah lets the little girl comment slide for now - it just renews her general dislike of people named John Walker... but this one is still better than the previous. "Which is what you're supposed to tell us about. I'm getting the general idea though." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	a_pal 2012-12-05 05:07 pm UTC (link)
	"You okay, Mr. Macendale?" (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	goblin_savior 2012-12-07 12:21 am UTC (link)
	"Yeah, kid. This place..just reminds me a little too much of home, that's all," Jason assures. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	brit_sorcerer 2012-12-08 05:51 pm UTC (link)
	Quinn will teleport Jason from one side of the door to the other. He staggered over to the wall and slid down to sit on the floor. His eyes closed, but he was still awake and listening. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	rogue_star 2012-12-08 11:59 pm UTC (link)
	"Alright, so we're as safe as we're going to get. Care to start a rundown? What are we dealing with here?" (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bornlucky 2012-12-09 12:10 am UTC (link)
	"Aye. I definitely want to find out what the hell is up with this place." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

exiles_hero
2012-12-19 06:27 pm UTC (link)

"First, I want answers myself, from you especially." He nods to Sarah, before wheeling himself over to a battered steel coffee pot. "Help yourselves to cups. The brew's piss-poor, but it's not poisoned, I promise." He takes a sip to settle himself, then starts up again.

"You said a lot had changed. What do you think you know about this world? There's enough about the way you carry yourself that I can believe you're Steve's daughter, but he'd have to have kept you a secret a hell of a long time, and you sure don't look only two years old."

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rogue_star
2012-12-19 09:18 pm UTC (link)

"Information for information is fair enough. You can believe us or not. We're not from this dimension - don't know how far this world is with the concept. Something in this timeline was hit by a temporal anomaly - things weren't supposed to turn out like this. While we can't go back and fix the original turning point, we have some minor clues on how to put it back on a stable track - or it will not only get worse, but start affecting neighboring dimensions in a worsening chain reaction.

All we really know is that our job here, before we can move to the next job, is trying to lessen the fighting - possibly unite a couple factions, or something. We know it has to do with 'standing together'. But to go beyond that, we need to know who the players are, and who is promoting the warfare."

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	brit_sorcerer 2012-12-20 12:16 am UTC (link)
	"We're all from different worlds," Quinn said without opening his eyes. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

exiles_hero
2012-12-23 09:35 pm UTC (link)

"Mary and all her crazy nephews..." Walker mutters to himself as he downs the rest of his cup.

"Three years ago, one of Dracula's bastards sons popped his head off and took over the vampires. Damn near all of them. Built some of the craziest into suicide bombers and had them go off in cities across this great land of ours. We didn't even know what the bombers were until the victims started to change days later." He spits out the words. "San Francisco got hit the first and hardest... Xarus was trying to make a statement by going after the X-Men first, build up his power-base. Bit off more than he could suck, and got what he had coming to him. The X-Men brought back his old man, and he took out the punk. It was a rotten play no matter which way you slice it, but it was the only one they had left to them.

Dracula... he put things back in order, at least, for a while anyway. We were all breathing a sigh of relief, for half a second, before we realized people were still turning in other cities. There were just too many. When the bombers went off, it didn't take much. A spatter of blood into the mouth, the eyes, a scratch... some changed sooner rather than later, but before we knew it, they were everywhere. Not just regular Dicks and Janes, but heroes too. Some of them were able to pin it down, some of them offed themselves when they thought they were going to lose control... and some just changed body and soul.

And that was just the first part of it." He puts down the cup and puts his face in his hand. Hard as he is, this is still a tough tale for John Walker to have to narrate.

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	goblin_savior 2012-12-23 09:38 pm UTC (link)
	"This is way too similar to back home. I'm going to need a drink." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	brit_sorcerer 2012-12-23 09:41 pm UTC (link)
	"I'll buy the first round," Quinn said. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

rogue_star
2012-12-24 02:46 am UTC (link)

Why does it have to be vampires? Sarah can't help but think to herself again. Images of Vampire Queen Storm disintegrating under the lightning blast and Dazzler's light flash through her head at mention of infected X-Men.

Suppressing the desire to shudder or retreat from the conversation, she steps up instead.
"Ok, so what is being done? Who are the main opposing factions? We need somewhere to start as an approach to this. Or at least what locals are doing."

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	a_pal 2012-12-24 11:59 am UTC (link)
	Gwenny just worries and listens. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

exiles_hero
2012-12-24 04:26 pm UTC (link)

Walker nods to Sarah. The girl asks the right questions. Maybe she really is Steve's kid, somewhere, anyway. "We'll get to that. Like I said, the vampires were just the first part. When the vampire nation, the vampire nation now, made that kind of surge in population... it wasn't long before it was practically an arms race.

Were-things, wolves just got the best movies, came 'out of the forest' is what the media called it. Idiots. Anyone who wanted to become one could... until the buzz died down and they weren't getting the numbers they thought they needed to resist the suckerheads anymore. So.. people started going missing, then coming back. None of that only on the night of the full moon garbage either. They can change whenever they damn well please; full moon just means they don't get a choice, and unless they're experienced enough, their mind changes along with their bodies that night.

Of course, all the high and mighty sub-lords of Dracula and the older weres forgot to take into account they'd all been what they were for decades, if not centuries. The people they were changing were still too human. They didn't care about some great nation of their new 'kind'. They were just going to keep being humans... selfish, stupid, greedy, violent humans." He snorts. "Infighting in just about every state for a few months, until the geniuses in Washington got into a joint project with the Brits." He's now becoming less wearied by the story and visibly angry and disgusted.

"They rolled out a new Sentinel initiative... they called them the magic-hunters."

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exiles_hero
2013-01-03 05:28 pm UTC (link)

"And at that point, the arms race was pretty much on. As if it weren't bad enough that we had sucker-heads and weres everywhere, we started getting overflow from the magical explosion going on in England. Ober-whateverhisnameis started taking liberties with the pact Avalon had with the government. Appointing champions and whatnot all over the place. It didn't take more than a couple weeks before people had magic wands and whatever as easily as they might have gotten a handgun before. The expansion slowed down after a couple months, but at that point real humans were pretty much a minority in the world.

You asked about the main factions. Well, here in America, there's no doubt that Dracula's at the top of the food chain, with most of the vampires loyal to him. There's little pockets of rogue sects, but they're like street gangs, not the mob. The weres have stronger holds on Canada and Mexico, and demons and fairies show up wherever the hell they feel like it, but with no real organization. The vampire seat of power here is pretty much Texas, all of it. Dallas and Houston are completely covered in darkland energy, like this place.

The X-Men have a pretty good hold on San Francisco and their own little island nation, and the last we knew New York was still Avengers territory, but nobody's heard from Steve or Parker in weeks. All the magic flying around makes technology go fidgety, so phones and the internet are mostly long gone."

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	rogue_star 2013-01-03 05:32 pm UTC (link)
	Sentinels too. Yeah, this is starting to sound like one of the worst places ever. And more like home at the same time. Not a point in its favor. "Alright, so there's faction-based warfare, and some of those factions are none too stable. X-Men and Avengers... that's something. Anyone or anything that might stand as giving a chance to slow down the fighting?" (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bornlucky 2013-01-03 06:40 pm UTC (link)
	"Sounds like even worse fraction fighting than the Troubles. Peace talks or something maybe." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)