The Fruit From The Endless Branch
| The Fruit From The Endless Branch | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven רַמַּא "Bud" | Dedicants of the Apple of the Great Tree | ||||||||
| Alkali |
Assorted Dedicant Spirits Blossom | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | The Dedicant's Externality | ||||||||
By Act of Grace my former state; how soon |
Summary
Alkali journeys into the metaplane of man and forms a pact with a fallen angel, carving its name upon himself in exchange for time and knowledge.
Background
Micah, better known in the runner community as Alkali, is dying. He has been dying for some time, now. His lungs are imperfect, ravaged by cancer, and his frailty is a constant obstacle on the road to the divine. This cannot stand.
The Beginning
It is a dreary, uneventful Saturday evening and Alkali is taking a well-deserved break. In his cramped apartment, he surrounds himself in arcane tomes and texts, perusing occult thesis's. His last set of jobs have had him facing crowds of toxic cultists and infiltrating Vory gambling dens. The change of pace is much appreciated. Except as he turns the page, he stumbles upon something out of place. A strange sigil, two interlocking circles, one within the other. It glows softly with golden light, much like a light he had seen once before. Adjusting his glasses, he quickly identifies it as a spirits marker, a lifeline that would guide him within the metaplanes.
Quickly, he readies his preparations for astral travel. Drugs are imbibed, alchemical preparations are readied and a ritual circle, sketched with ink atop paper in the center of his apartment, empowers his willpower. Alkali sits within the circle, takes a deep, ragged breath.
Then, his spirit rises out of his body. His soul yearns for the metaplanes, for the place beyond, but there remains a single barrier arresting his ascent to the initiate horizon.
The Dweller
Alkali enters the space beyond and becomes aware of a great entity, miles high, towering above him. Beyond it is a nigh, endless void, starstuff stretching into the ether. The mage begins to walk.
First, the entity asks to see his past failures. His weakness. His shame. From the depths of Micah's psyche, a scene forms. A petty argument between siblings, both exhausted and dying and poor, killing themselves for a dream that felt so far away. Shouting at one another over nothing.
Micah journeys onward across the void.
Next, the entity probes into the depths of his present. Seen are two Micah's, one of pure magic and one of pure flesh. One ascends to the heavens, growing stronger and purer while the other wilts and fades, sacrificed to the altar of his greater half. Health and breath have been cast aside to assure might. The result of cutting off a limb to secure the survival of the whole again and again and again.
Halfway there, now.
Finally, he sees a picture of the future. Micah walks along a wooded road. Some is the same. His hair and face are the same. His crucifix and ribbon. New are the robes and staff. New are the countless spirit markers he bears, connecting him to powerful beings. Even though he seems to be the same age, something about him is older. Wiser. Stronger. And yet Micah knows that this version of himself has given something up to get here, has left something behind.
He crosses the abyss.
From the beyond, a voice asks for his name. He answers, simple and clear.
Micah.
The Metaplane of Man
The metaplane of man sweeps out before him. Mighty skyscrapers next to castle towers, city and civilization of every creed all piled in next to one another. Spirits rushing back and forth along a great, incandescent boulevard. It is beautiful. Micah feels the tug of the spirit's symbol and lets it pull him along, past the towers and bridges and trains and every other scrap of metahumanity that reflects upon the astral realm.
Eventually, it takes him far away from the imagined sprawl. To a lonely dock overlooking a river. Quiet. Serene. He steps out onto the dock.
And is met by the most beautiful spirit he has ever seen.
Blinding light. Shimmering star. Heavenly. Radiant.
He is so blindsided that he completely fails to perceive its aura.
The spirit introduces itself to him, tells him it called him there, knew of him. Knew of him by name. The spirit's, blood backed and fallen, offered him a pact. Eternal life and patronship and its true name, should he bring the spirit an apple from the thousand-story tree.
Alkali, true to his nature, bargains. He tests the spirits nature by asking it of its knowledge of faith and he negotiates for a single bite of the apple. The spirit speaks lowly of faith, that it is a pointless thing in comparison to knowledge. Curious but not unowrkable. He would knock on wood three times once the job was done. How quaint.
The deal is too good to pass up. He risks making terrible enemies of the ones that hunt the spirit. He risks dissolving his sense of self by taking on a patron.
But life eternal cannot be denied.
Alkali, no ... Micah agrees to the task.
The Tree
Micah follows the heartbeat of the great tree, listening to the sound of its reverberations through the astral earth until he beholds the tree.
A thousand stories tall and surrounded by thorns. It is said that once the great tree bore many fruit but travelers have taken everything but one, final apple. The tree itself strikes down all astral travelers that attempt to bypass the climb through the thorns. The spirits known as the Dedicants simultaneously guard and worship the apple, their very nature is to obsess over the apple and one other object of their focus. Other astral travelers observe the apple, focusing upon it, attempting to be like the Dedicants and be one with the apple.
And Micah stands at the edge of the grove, the one that would steal it.
He walks through the grove, appearing peaceful. A dedicant approaches him, its new object of fascination, and he discusses with it the tree and the apple. The dedicant finds the apple beautiful in its simplicity, its ability to simply be as it is. To climb the tree would be agony and folly. To sit and ponder upon the apple is the way of things. Be as the apple is. Alkali digs for useful information and then journeys on.
Next, he encounters an astral traveler. A beautiful young man at a table, enjoying tea and sweets. He seems to be taking on the qualities of the dedicants, complete with a blue flower growing in place of one of his eyes. Alkali questions him, too, declining the offer of pastries. The traveler also seeks to contemplate the apple and has been doing so very a very long time. Alkali poses the question of the self, of memory and perception, whether or not it would be like the apple to be without them. The young man, however, is uninterested in lobotomizing himself to prove a philosophical point. They part on good terms nevertheless and Alkali journeys on to the base of the tree. There he sits, spying a narrow path up through the brambles. A narrow crevice, barely small enough for him to climb through.
First, he sits and focuses on his self. Attempts to make himself smaller, his astral form more narrow to more easily slip through the cutting thorns. It is to no avail. Cursing his foolishness, Alkali stands. After one more scan of the dedicants (and the sweet-eating flower boy) to ensure he is not being watched, he begins to climb.
The Climb
The tree is not meant to be climbed. It's thorns cling to any brave enough to tempt fate amidst them. They cut and prod and poke at Micah as he begins his ascent and he knows that as he pushes forward, they will only grow more deadly. A dedicant spies him beginning his climb and pursues him. Alkali, cruel Alkali, bends away its will and sends it elsewhere, buying himself enough time to climb deeper and lose the spirit amidst the briar.
And the thorns cut at him as he climbs.
It is slow going and arduous. At first, he climbs slowly, aware of the spirits that might detect him upon the trunk. Once he feels safe, however, he begins to climb at a rapid clip. He's cognizant of the timer upon his astral form, a mere five hours of time before he is lost forever amidst the astral sea. Death.
And the thorns cut him as he climbs.
He pushes himself. The briar wraps around, cutting deep. A crown of bloody thorns around his head. He bleeds, his stained glass form is cracked and broken and star stuff leaks out. His hands are slick with the stuff. His clock is running out. Four hours have passed.
And the thorns cut him as he climbs.
Onward. Further and higher, stopping only briefly before returning to his ascent with renewed vigor. Nearly five hours now. He feels no pain in his drug-addled state, only focus. His body is a tool. The climb is a tool. The spirit is a tool. The pact is a tool. The apple is a tool.
The apple.
He sees it. At the end of a branch, one thousand stories high. The apple of the great tree. It appears as all apples should aspire to be. It is beautiful, welcome respite from his journey. Micah plucks it from the tree with his starbloodied hands and bites deep of the magical fruit.
It tastes like an apple should. Nothing less and nothing more.
He shelves his thoughts on the apple, for now. More important matter are at hand. Cautiously, he marches to the end of the branch and throws himself from the tree. He shrugs off his crown of thorns and falls down.
And down.
And down.
Then his eyes are open again. He is in a grove at the base of the tree, sheltered from onlookers, apple safe within his skirts. That astral hourglass was nearly divested of its sand so, fearing his demise, Micah rapped sharply on a nearby root. Three times.
The spirit appears, taking for itself its bitten prize. Into the spirit the apple goes but the fallen angel is dissatisfied. Is Micah sure? Is this truly the apple of the great tree?
He assures the spirit that it is.
How ignoble, then. How disappointing. It did not taste of anything special. Anything memorable. The spirit would not stand for this. One more task, then. One final clause before the deal is complete. Micah will take revenge upon the dedicants that had wronged his would-be patron by plucking the great thread that connects them to their will and ideation.
The maid is too hagard to argue, save to ask the spirit for more time, he is bloodied, cut open by thorns, and his time is nearly up. The spirit salves his wounds and bids him go. Rest and return stronger.
And so Micah does. He follows the silver thread back to his body and awakens in the centers of the ritual circle, covered in his own blood. He does not move from the center of the room, simply divests himself of his bloodied dress, grabs a blanket and collapses within the ritual circle. His frail form had been utterly pushed to its limits. If the spikes pierced a hairsbreadth further, he would have died.
Once More With Feeling
Rising from his rest, Micah renews the sigils and spells that bolster his astral form and returns to the astral plane. He summons a guardian spirit to assist him, a revolver-wielding detective who asks to be referred to as 'Bud'. The two of them return to the great tree and begin to look for the thread.
It doesn't take long to find it. They find the head of the thread, buried within the earth and the two of them grasp it. With all of their might, they tug at the thread of willpower.
And all at once, everything unravels. The thread connects to the core of every single one of the dedicants and all are uprooted, all at once. With their willpower and drive removed, all of them shrivel up and fall to the ground, made into seeds. The traveler with the flower growing from his eye looks bemused, almost disappointment he did not go with them, for their goal had been achieved, in a way. They had acquired a oneness with the tree that they lacked before. Micah consoles him and the sweet-eater stands, resolving to search elsewhere for meaning and to return to that place he once called home. When Micah asks if he has a name, he responds that he had forgotten it but allows the maid to offer a new name in its place. He proposes Blossom, a name which the other mage graciously accepts. The two exchange commcodes before Blossom departs.
Aftermath
And so, the traveler returns again to the dock and is again met by the spirit from before. It asks whether he has taken revenge upon the dedicants and Micah, tactfully, answers that he had pulled the thread. The spirit is grateful and the deal has been made complete. As it readies itself to brand the mage with its name, he offers his eye as the canvas for the mark. The spirit complies, etching its name upon him, body and soul.
רַמַּא
How fitting.
The mage thanks his newfound patron, who vanishes into the astral sea, and returns to his body. He pulls himself to his feet, still coughing, still frail, still pathetic ... but eternal. Fixed. No matter what injuries he sustains, no matter how many years pass, he would return to the same form. His hair and nails would never grow long. His cancer would never progress. His wounds would heal quickly, returning him to that form. He knew all of this. Understood all of this implicitly. Forever young and beautiful. Forever dying. Forever.
For the first time in a very long while, Micah had time.
It had been worth it.
Rewards
17 RVP High 7 Karma (7 RVP) 4 CDP (1 RVP) Spirit Mentor (Raven, the knowledge version, not the “be a dick” one - The Fallen Angel “Ramay”) ((5 RVP)) Spirit Pact with Ramay - Formula Pact, altering Alkali’s aura to have one of its eyes permanently altered by the pact, and the word רַמַּא written across his physical eye. Blossom - 1/3 Planar Magician Contact (4 RVP)
Optional Rewards Tough as Nails - 5 RVP
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Alkali - I cannot fully trust him. I must internalize that. His nature is that of a faithless trickster and I am being used just as much as I am using him. I know, also, that he must have enemies, there is little reason to enter such a pact without them. Ramay.
Ramay.
...
Still, I'm elated. I can hardly contain myself. I am going to live, my body will not worsen and fail me. I have saved myself.
We will see if it kills me.