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[legendofthematriarch]

Aya (Ch. 3)

Aya al-Hareem was a woman, thirty of age and dark skinned of Arabic and African descent, though her lineage is that of incredible unimportance. Travelers and traders, all eventually settling into the Americas in its early foundations. At her age, she boasts a matronly jaw and was blessed with youth and beauty, most don’t guess her age above twenty-two or so. She has the body to match, a clean face and a bust that can certainly turn some heads when spotted in a crowd. She often boasts a content smile that she offers freely to any who make eye contact with her, but many in public quickly avert their gaze as to not be rude. For the perceptive, her smile still hides a vague creeping sadness, and is prone to fading into a more neutral expression if she doesn’t catch herself doing so.

Her hair is of a good hue of brown, long and flowing that dip beneath her shoulder blades. She was vision impaired, and was prescribed glasses at a young age that cover gorgeous brown eyes. She worked out in some spare time, and had bold arms that she enjoyed showing off. Her main attire was usually jeans and a tank top, just so that she could show off her arms which certainly fueled further public viewing. Aya was in good health, of body and mind and she knew it.

The life she had led seemed to be of little note, following the footsteps of her ancestors and getting into various retail jobs. From clerking to stocking, and even did a brief stint as a truck driver. The kind of work that, while incredibly useful, can wear a soul down into thinking they are doing nothing with their life by its end. Speaking of ended lives, she had little to no family to speak of. Most died of various accidents and illnesses by the time she was eighteen. While more than a decade had passed and the sting of loss lost its own hold on her, it was still part of her frequent saddened smile. What experiences had she lost, without a family to guide her life? She’s almost more sad for that than the fact she lost them at all. At best, she had a brother that moved out of state to find greener pastures while she remained and languished against the grinding stone of retail.

It is this depressing fact of life that led her to magic. For those uninitiated, the mask the underworld wore to hide themselves shattered. Within a few months, most myths revealed themselves to be true. Well, specifically based around the stories of monsters that lurk in the night. Werewolves, vampires, ghosts. Several aspects of life had been completely overturned. After all, the afterlife itself was revealed but the mechanics thereof still eluded earthly mortals. No actual gods or deities had revealed themselves after this upheaval, and ghosts are not exactly in the position to give accurate details beyond their own narrow experiences.

Most active of all, the Magister Council revealed themselves and spearheaded the campaign to help the world adjust at a faster rate. They established their own headquarters in Virginia, not terribly far from Quantico as to help law enforcement adjust to all of the new information. The magisters had their own set of enforcers to help upkeep the rule of law regarding magic in the realm, but they still cooperated with previously established world nations.

There was a new program introduced to the world to help others learn magic, because despite the sudden surge of extra-natural entities, they were still fairly low in population. The vampires had their own cathedrals that functioned as a similar recruiting tool, but their numbers remained low. Aya actually had considered them as well, and did some cursory research on it. The information was a bit too scattered and unreliable, and while the concept of immortality did not shake her, the side effects seemed too severe to deal with. Far too many bloodlines with too many drawbacks. Some could survive in sunlight, some could not. There was even an implication that she wouldn’t necessarily be able to ‘choose’ which bloodline she could join, as again their numbers were low and the culture had a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ vibe, which she just couldn’t get behind. Therefore, it was in one of those magical training centers that Aya found herself in. A program called “aetherial infusion”, the process of tattooing pure magic and energy onto a mortal body to help facilitate the use of magic to a greater degree. It was experimental, which typically means ‘free’ to lower class ears. Aya did not have much to go on, but her way forward was paid as were her lodgings. It was treated like a surgery, and was a bit taken aback by how little agency she had in the matter. No choice of colors, designs, or anything. She had some vague choice on where they’d be, but she wasn’t terribly picky on that either. 

Aya joked to one of the doctors, “As long as it’s pretty!”, offering a wide beam of a smile. The head doctor and magister gave her a chuckle, showing off the most likely designs. “Most think so, Miss Hareem,” and her smile was infectious as he offered one back nearly as wide.

She was put under anesthetics, as the direct infusion of magic into one’s body could potentially be as painful as one would expect. As magic is an otherworldly concept, it has a tendency to ignore standard medicinal painkillers.

Aya woke up in her room, the aforementioned free lodging. It was a fairly sterile but homey room, with a white and grey color scheme. It had a laptop and WiFi (how generous!) and some general basic reading material including some textbooks regarding magic that had been compiled within the last twenty years. Most important to her however, was the full length mirror. It actually seemed out of place, possibly something shipped straight out of a Wal-Mart. They knew that she would likely want to inspect herself, and they were right. She performed a brief but moderately thorough search for cameras. She didn’t find any, but there was in fact at least one affixed on the main light fixture but luckily for her, it pointed towards the doorway for security purposes and was not in a position to cause an awkward situation for the screen viewers. She began to strip, already seeing the glowing golden tattoos that took up a much greater part of her body than she at all expected. They were runic in nature, with flowing cursive curls as accents to tie it all together. They encompassed much of her clavicle area, avoiding her breasts but travelling between them down to her stomach and encompassing the left side of said stomach, and peeling off into her left leg where most of the tattoos seemed to have congregated. From her clavicle, they also went down her right arm, but they were not as elaborate as they were on her stomach or legging. She admired her nude body, having a smile as she posed and focused on the glowing energy that now encompassed her body. She could even feel it to a degree, a slight warm reverberation felt even down to her bones. It was disconcerting but not painful, and within a few minutes she became more accustomed to it. Aya then had a knock on her door, hearing a “Miss Hareem?” 

Her eyes widened and her expression soured, quickly belting out a “Gah, moment! Not decent!” And she rushed to reappropriate herself to an acceptable point. After which, she gave the greeter a nervous, “All good! Come in!” It was the head doctor that gave her the original set of tests. His smile was genuine and warm, looking over the slightly disheveled room and asking politely, “Been up long?” “No, just a few minutes or so.” “Fair enough. I wanted to go over a few things with you that may not have been clear before, when I spoke to some other magisters.” “Of course, Doctor,” she claimed a seat at the desk with the laptop, while the doctor casually strolled over to the bed to sit. “Yes, well. This wasn’t in the preliminary waivers and such, an oversight on our part that I’ve been telling my superiors about for months. The main one is that, by undergoing this operation you have forfeit your ability to visit standard doctors.” She nodded in agreement, “That does make a certain kind of sense.” “Yes it does, I’m glad you see that. However in some of your letters and essays before undergoing this operation you said you were interested in attending Snowcrag Academy?” “Yes of course, I didn’t want to do this and then do nothing with it, you know?” The doctor offered a chuckle, “Heh, that also makes sense. Then there’s good news here, because there is a laboratory outpost near there. As you attend that academy, if you find yourself with any health concerns, you should head there immediately. They should give you directions when you arrive.” “Good to know!” She smiled at him. The rest of the encounter was relatively boring. He went over and repeated some of the things she had previously learned. The doctor just wanted to make sure that she no longer had the ability to visit standard doctors, and modern medicine may have little effect on her after this point. If anyone was going to help her now, it had to be an actual mage. She had almost forgotten about Snowcrag Academy, truth be told. Anesthesia comes with short term memory loss as a side effect once one comes to consciousness. She didn’t forget it entirely of course, though she did lose about an hour of her day after she woke up, at random intervals, which is why she remained in the facility. She couldn’t help but feel excited as a new chapter in her life had opened up, and in a week’s time she would have set her foot within the Academy and begin learning the universe’s secrets.

[legendofthematriarch]

On Necromancy (Ch. 2)

Of all the subjects The Matriarch would go on to learn various forms of magic. She figured it would be useful for her coming adventures into the multiverse, and she had no qualms about the darker and the taboo. She did not have any basis of reference regarding the ethics and legality of certain types of magic, a trait she would ultimately share with other deities even though she did not know it. Of significant note was the subject of Necromancy and Blood magic.

As a young deity born of the aetherius, she spent much of her time studying Yggdrasil and norse lore. The aether, an old and ancient concept seemed to be an energy that flowed through the entire multiverse. It’s source is only hinted at in some ancient grimoires, some thinking that the gods themselves breathed life into the universe and that very breath became the aether. In reality, this overplays the various god’s roles in the multiverse’s creation. They are born, made, spawned and designed like anything else but the actual origin of all existence still eludes the gods themselves. They are functionally immortal but they still live and die like so many others. That however, is a subject for another time.

It was the concept of immortality that drew her to the subject of Necromancy. The passage of time meant very little to her personally, but as she read more on mortal lore she noticed a trend. There was an ever present anxiety upon the concept of death, to the point of personifying it. Death became a person, something tangible that they could ultimately defeat. Through technology, medicine, and even magic they extended their lifespans in order to defeat this abstract concept that their mortal souls will eventually join the aether. 

While she never intended to mass resurrect swaths of populations, she still pinpointed a problem that she could possibly assist in. So she got to work. The aether is a flowing force that keeps various multiverses together. Through her studies she found that, while lacking a sentient consciousness that mortals could understand, it still had its own intelligence. It could be effectively petitioned, just as all magic users do whenever they cast the most simplest of spells. Effectively asking the universe permission to make fire into their hands, and then proceed to cook their morning eggs because that damn stove pilot light went out again. The aether never truly says “No, this cannot be done” except in the rarest of cases (one example is that of Chaos - another lesson for another day). However, ‘petitioning the aether’ is effectively the closest comparison.

The same works for dark, deep, or ‘evil’ magic. The aether is intelligent in its own, unknowable way but it holds no judgement on how gods or mortals use it. This is a fact that The Matriarch surely could take advantage of. Necromancy was an interesting topic to her, originally thought to be pissing in the face of the natural order of things (and many mortals think that very thing), but some types of death magic have many practical uses. She thought of a saying whenever she was argued with; “People forget that while death magic can take life, it can also give it back.” It was her justification for essentially popping into some universes and ultimately engaging in graverobbing. Her estate held a lab, a sort of morgue and holding facility for corpses where she would experiment within. She had a nexus that allowed her to pop into various mortal realms (and otherwise), but she kept her presence secretive as to not alert locals. She still had so much to learn after all, and did not want to interact whilst unprepared.

Magic functions ever so slightly differently in every timeline she entered, Matriarch noticed. Asking the aether for permission still only goes so far. Some spells were less effective at times, so this was a fact she had to take real note of and could be a threat in the future (which is why she also endeavored to self train in some martial arts). Regardless, there are some fundamentals to Necromancy she had learned through some trial and error, as well as utilizing dozens of grimoires to effectively triangulate the truth. Firstly, there was a window of effectiveness. Two weeks after death is the most ideal window of time to resurrect a corpse. She had done so and monitored certain mortal’s lives after giving them the gift of a second life. After some upheaval in their home and work lives, they typically carried on as normal. Most even continued to live well into their eighties or nineties, though their health seemed to have declined more rapidly after a certain point. 

That’s when she discovered the second point; the aether demands a trade. Not so much that all magic requires such a thing, but necromancy effectively drains a certain life force from the subject and engineers a different kind within. It is a death magic after all, so resurrected subjects are typically instructed that some time has been shaved off their lifespan. Most never mind, as they are typically eager to return to their families. Thirdly, something the Matriarch dubs as the ‘yellow zone’, two to five weeks is when certain side effects become more apparent. After the initial resurrection, subjects are far more sluggish and slower to attune to the life they’ve been given again. Their lifespans are also much shorter, their health dropping a decade or two before their timeline’s life expectancy. The idea here is that part of their essence has already passed into the aether, and petitioning it to return what has been taken becomes too far a demand. Even if their spirit had lingered, their very soul continually passes through a course of time (this very thing causes most ghosts to turn mad over the course of decades or for some of the strong willed, possibly centuries). 

Yellow-zone subjects can still live mostly normal lives, but at a depleted capacity. They’re prone to more health problems and they also hit earlier in their lives. Some medicine and magic can alay this, but they will eventually pass sooner than they probably wished for.

There are two other tiers. There’s an orange zone, which is roughly one to two months. It is everything that the yellow zone offers but worse. The Matriarch reserves month-long resurrection for information gathering rather than worrying about the subjects quality of life - Which will soon rapidly decline. Breaking one of her own rules, she had met with some mortals and utilized an Orange resurrection to a higher classed noble family whose grandfather passed without making it clear which family members acquired which assets. She kept her personal interactions brief, but she was ultimately paid a sum of gold once the matter was properly settled. Gold is typically useful no matter the timeline, so she made a storage facility to keep various treasures. Finally, they can go into the red. After two or three months, the corpse is just a corpse. Their essence has been absorbed into the aetherius, and petitioning it to bring back life to the corpse yields unfavorable results. In common parlance, the subject effectively becomes a zombie. The more polite term in mage circles would be “ghoul”, their actual formal term. Some intelligence can be forced into them, but they essentially become subservient creatures to their summoner. What was once held within their minds, is long gone at that point. 

There are exceptions, like an aforementioned strong-willed ghost hanging around for a long period of time. Since their soul is still present, necromancy can be used to mend the corpse and force their soul back into their original home. This still leads to potential health risks, especially that of mental. Speaking of exceptions, all of this varies slightly in every universe. What has been documented above is just the typical ‘average’, and the Matriarch makes it a point to make sure the subjects know about the potential variance. Even if a subject was resurrected within a day of their death, there’s always the risk of health issues in their future.

(Chapter ‘On Necromancy’ may be edited/added to in the future as I think of more specifics, of if I’m asked things that could be addressed within).

[legendofthematriarch]

The Matriarch (Ch. 1)

Then there was something. A blink of consciousness, into a green and blue void of space and time. She sees a branch, and then words form in her mind. Language and thought, downloaded directly into her very being at a rapid but somehow still manageable pace. The basics, of course. I’m born of Yggdrasil, she thought. A newborn child of mythology, her pages blank of all history. Ready to make her mark upon the multiverse and cosmos. There was still yet so much to be done, though.

She was a beautiful woman, of darkened and tanned skin. She was nude, as all newborns are. Her skin unscarred and unmarked by time or touch. She possessed gorgeous orange eyes, along with a smooth and youthful face. Her hair was of shoulder length, black as night. It would have been considered difficult to mark her out of a crowd if she wore standard clothing, beyond her otherworldly eyes that seemed to glow in dimmer light conditions. What conditions did she find herself in, but a void that she remained in for indeterminate time. Create, another word popped in her head. What to create, though? She supposed that she was to start with the basics. Hmmm, ground. Yes, that’ll do. It was not an instantaneous process, as dirt formed beneath her feet while she levitated several feet above. Grass came after, and she found feet touching and feeling earth for what she could only perceive as the first time. She found it to her liking. The blades tickled between her toes, which cracked a smile and a giggle. There’s a voice, she discovered! My my, that will be useful. She spoke aloud for the first time in her existence, “Uh, more?” 

She noticed her plot of land being smaller than a single acre. She expected a world, somehow. That thought formulated into an expansive field, the dirt forming into a flatland of comforting grass. She frowned, the aesthetics of which displeased her. She expected rolling hills, and then it became so. The land became pregnant, birthing further plantlife. The more she thought, the more that there was. Trees began to sprout from the branch of Yggdrasil, spawning a sparse forest that dotted the landscape, which by the hour was becoming more homely and livable. Hour by hour, more necessities were required. A house, some clothes. She thought nothing of her nudity, but if she were to have guests in the future she’d figure it may be polite to possess some form of robe. So it came to pass, a lovingly layered dress formed around her, the fabrics born of grass and reeds that had made their home around her. It was simple in form, but it’ll do for her purposes. Though, her purpose still eluded her. As information slowly crawled its way into her mind, she thought of childbirth and immediately painted her spawning as irregular. She was not born directly from the gods that call Yggdrasil their home, but the universe deemed her existence necessary. What is she, who is she. So many questions, and not a soul was around to answer them. She surmised that she too, was perhaps a god. A god of what, though? She still lacks a name, and a motivation that still eluded her. She’ll have to start with something of course, and the only thing that truly came to mind was… “Matriarch”. More of a title than a name but parents have done worse, and she has none to speak of. Still, the thought of motivation creeped into her mind, and she just wanted to learn. So much, as much as possible. Just as the thoughts came to be, a massive summit of a structure broke free from the void and into her grassland. The rumbling was intense, the ground shook beneath her and she popped into some levitation to counteract the sensation. The Matriarch had to investigate of course.

The building was fairly featureless in its own right. It lacked windows, and was more of a monolith than a building. It was longer than it was wide, but it had to have been a few dozen stories in height, and easily dominated much of the early flatlands she had created. Her brows furrowed at this, as it was quite the eyesore in comparison to the beauty of the land she originally created. She still lacked a house proper, and if she was as powerful in this realm as she thinks she is then there might be plenty of room for improvement. Still, the investigation had to continue. Hells, there’s not even a door. Then there was, as her thought willed it to be. She stepped inside and was overcome with senses. It was nothing like the land of nothing on the outside. It was… a library. Refurbished and practically used. It utilized darker browns and was lit very dimly, looking abandoned and apocalyptic. There was a draft coming from an unknown source, as stacks of scrolls and papers fluttered around the place without a care. Using her very limited detective skills, she surmised that it was indeed an abandoned library. She heard no sounds of any beast or persons, but the halls and shelves echoed the flying of papers and the shuffling of books as time and weight shifted their location. Of significant interest, she randomly picked one and skimmed the initial pages. First in a language she did not at all understand, the words shifted into understanding within a few moments. It was a collection of poetry, based around forlorn lost loved ones. The themes involved wartime, or hasted divorces due to family and circumstance. Cute, she thought, but her investigation was not over. She shut the book and flicked her fingers across several bindings, enjoying the sensation of the rough leathers they boasted. Plucking another book out merely a foot or so away, she discovered that the theme could not have been more different. It was a combat manual, with plenty of pictures and diagrams. It was a sort of martial art, originating in an earthen country. Her expression was neutral, but she nodded in approval as a realization hit her. 

“Gods and hells,” she thought, albeit aloud despite not a soul to be present to hear. “There’s no sorting here whatsoever, is there.” A smile cracked upon her face, which contorted into a deep grin. It’d take quite a bit of time to sort this mess, wouldn’t it? A type of glee washed over her. Sorting would require a great deal of reading. Her motivation was a bit blurred before, just an abstract thought. However it just became very clear and very real. The Matriarch exists to learn, and that’s exactly what she would go on to do.

To a mortal’s perception, hundreds of years would have gone by. Several, in fact. The sorting of her expanse of knowledge only took a couple of decades with some focused sorting, but Matriarch would have gone ahead and added another as her focus constantly drifted into reading the books in full. Her sorting was haphazard, being categorical rather than alphabetical. She eventually decided to sort them by some earthen centuries to help her follow a linear path of technological understanding. Effectively learning things ‘in order’. 

The Matriarch learned how humans evolved from primates, to walking and speaking. They discovered fire, language, and civilization. She learned of the weapons and war they created and used upon each other, as well as educated her on their love of music and art. She loved it all. As she drifted into the more modern times that included engineering and computers, she thought those would be incredibly useful tools in streamlining her process. 

So, she created her own estate with the full benefits of electricity. An octagonal tower with various wings dedicated to the expected purposes. An office, a kitchen, some guest bedrooms. Just in case. 

Her estate was extravagant and comfortable. She went with a theme of red and white appealed to her greatly, with the occasional black highlight. Even in terms of color theory, this was a popular choice in human culture and media. The colors just complimented each other well, the sharpness of red complimented the monochrome of the black and white, and it’s a theme she would use throughout her void-spawned estate. With the occasional practical choice of brown and other colors, as to make sure her interior did not look like a cartoon of some kind.

The guest bedrooms were more or less scaled down versions of her own main bedroom, which housed some of the obvious necessities. A desk, a computer, a bed. Singles for the guests, a double for herself as she liked to sprawl around and swim in the silks from time to time. Sleep seemed to have been unnecessary for her, but she still found it useful to decompress her mind after several dozen hours of straight reading.

Her office was outfitted with computers and a sort of emulated internet; in the sense that she was not directly connected to anything. Ultimately, her systems effectively “refreshed” every so often to give her access to more updated information. 

As alluded to, none of this happened over a small period of time. She’d dedicate chunks of time to singular tasks. Sorting the library took the bulk of her first few years of existence. Again, as sleep and sustenance was unnecessary, her own estate did not become important until she read about things that she simply wanted to possess. Once a manual of interior decorating was discovered, well… she just had to have it of course.

In a way, her own personal realm remained disconnected from all others. She yearned to explore, but there was still far too much to learn in order to be prepared to interact with others. A creeping, nagging feeling became incredibly irritating to deal with over a grand deal of time. She was lonely, as the more she learned of outside worlds the more she wanted to interact with them. There was of course, nothing blocking her from directly doing so. The massive branch of Yggdrasil that hung over the blue and green alien sky still invited her soul to find the nine realms and beyond, to possibly even meet her creators. She still felt too impotent to interact with her fellow gods. As they were thousands her senior, with the activity and experience to match such a boastful existence. All she had were books, and as some mortal scholars have said; “Experience is the best teacher of all”. She wasn’t even sure her own existence was known at all. Of all the centuries she spent fixing up her realm, not a single soul or deity found themselves to her. No answers, no family, not even a reverberation in the aether. It was an awful feeling, a quivering in her heart. She wanted so much, but saw so little of herself.

[legendofthematriarch]

Prologue

A vampire gentleman of some repute in his own corner of the world was napping comfortably in his puffy chair. Where in this world was he? Indeterminate as far as he was concerned, likely somewhere in Europe considering the accents he was surrounded by. He had one of his own but it had been a couple centuries since his homeland was relevant to his own interests. Where in time was he? Also irrelevant, his style was gathered from the local evening markets. There were some pretty frills and puffy sleeves which he found more comfortable than he originally expected. Last he checked it was somewhere in the 1800's but once more, he stopped bothering to keep track. He was of the old blood, one of several dozen bloodlines that dates back a thousand years, perhaps even two. His face contorted into that of a bat when the call of the blood demanded him to feed himself, or perhaps at times when he just felt like it. The world suited him just fine, and some decades ago he had essentially retired to a special cliffside estate. 

A marvel of an estate it was, built inside a mountain that was originally commissioned to have the recent invention that was steam powered locomotives, later to be dubbed as trains, to fly through the mountain in a winding path. This idea was shot down and shelved, but the local vampire hierarchy still scammed the officials out of the funding needed to make such a plan happen and replaced it with their own; a Grand, multilayered hotel of a thing. The eventual structure was borrowed from their fellow vampiric neighbors in Mexico. Now, this particular vampire in question was hired on to deal with the money involved in such a coup, and was just given a room and office as he managed to filter their crimes through the ages, though in this case he had only been employed for a couple of decades. They kept him comfortable due to his importance, as he was dubbed ‘the money man’. As time went on, it became an absolute nexus of vampire kind. A bastion of trade, pleasure, and influence. It would go on to house hundreds within its walls, and the hallways became busier than a festival in New York. Something was wrong, he managed to notice. One of his pets, sheepish and terrified, stammered out an emphasis while pointing at the man’s face. Confused, he reached up and noticed that his glamour spell had faded (he was reaching up in the years, and had to resort to magic to keep his visage applicably young). This was odd, he thought, considering that glamour spells require very little effort and can even maintain beyond sleep. There was also a spot of tinnitus in his ears, something he hadn’t experienced since his turning. Also very odd. He stepped up from his nab and located a nearby mirror. Worthless to him, as his old blood did not allow for a reflection but they still had their uses; that of communication. Indeed, like the fairy tales that even his age are familiar with… mirrors were used as a form of long range contact. He hadn’t bothered learning the art of telepathy, only for a short range across-the-household type of way. He felt the faux-silver lining of the mirror and found that his call went… unanswered. Well, that was irregular. He felt his heart sink, if not beat just a touch, as he heard a frantic shuffling of steps all around him and heightened vocals. It hit him then; The estate had just been mass dispelled. They were under attack.

The sounds and feelings of the attack were like nothing he had heard or felt before. A loud booming, not unlike cannonfire but precise. The foundations shook, and he started hearing the vocals become further frantic yelling. He told his pet to flee and inform others, and she did as he commanded, running off into parts unknown or rather, irrelevant, for this retelling. He ran into the hallways and immediately, the wooden fixtures in the hallways exploded and splintered around behind him. The shards of which, large enough to have impaled and ashed a few of his neighbors. The sight alone shocked him, the mere suddenness of such an explosion. The frantic vocals of the estate had now become outright screaming, and he only took a few steps before the foundations crumbled beneath him, his movement became entirely out of his control and he fell through the floor and landed one floor below, where he managed to regain his composure fairly quickly and delve deeper into the halls. He had recalled the test of naval artillery when it was first being introduced to the French military, but the sounds he was hearing were far too rapid for his understanding. Try as he did, he could not find any proper cannonballs lodged into the walls. The holes were also far too narrow, though certainly large in their own right. 

He yelled out commands and orders, and most of them were related to getting into the undercroft so that all may flee into the relative safety of the inner mountain. He found one of the higher nobles, having retreated to the residential areas to give like minded orders. She recognized this gentleman and quickly approached him. “Do you know what is happening?” “No, no, I was just…” He tried to reply but before they had a chance to blink, a sharp and deafening sound shot through the hall around them. Some form of projectile had just entered her throat, only allowing her a shocked cough before she immediately burned into ash, followed by another explosion that sent her ashed corpse straight into him. It was if some green magic had entered her neck and engulfed her jawline before fading entirely. Madness, he thought, what manner of weapon could kill a vampire so damned quickly? Some kind of chemical, he thought, entered her veins but did not have nearly enough time to act as a poison. She was just shot and then… gone. Her ash had entered his nostrils and lungs at this point, causing some coughing. He tried to regain his composure but the shock of the situation begins setting in while one, overbearing directive enters his mind: Survive.

He fled, through the hallways and towards the stairs. The very floor he stood upon buckled and cracked at various points, causing him to have had to jump across a small gap. He went down a single flight of stairs, and the entire woodworks were crackling. The red and black themed rugs were slipping through said breaks, and he had a moment to look up as others came behind him. The stairs cracked too severely and some fell, but the force of the stairs snapped by and impaled another woman, ashing her immediately. The cries of her followers were seen and heard as they jumped down after this gentleman, and he gave the universal signal to continue onward. He did as well, fleeing through the gothic hallways and trying to make his way towards one of the main lobbies or lounges, the nexus in which the various wings were connected.

He had made it, following the sounds of terrified shrieks but another realization came upon him as a hallway that flanked the direct outside was breached. It was roughly noontime, a point of horror when the cornered roof above them exploded open, leaving the shine of sunlight to unleash its wrath upon several vampiric civilians, killing several instantly in a painful display of fire and seared flesh. Sunlight can be survival for some bloodlines, but some succumb to it within seconds and he was surrounded by very old blood, where the sun holds incredible sway over their lives. He continued on.

He found another hallway to traverse (there were many, after all!) but his advance was blocked by another explosion, trapping dozens. After witnessing another bout of ashing, he found himself in a position of proper investigation. The sunlight was not beaming at the immediate angle that would do him harm, and this allowed him to peer outside to find out what was attacking. He could barely comprehend what he was seeing. A type of ship that was flying on its own, no sails, and had the silver sheen of pure metal. It had mounted guns beneath instead of atop, which he recognized and were horrifically put to use as they let loose upon the crackled hallway where many vampires were trapped by the sheen of sunlight. Most died, but not before he had the abysmal memory of watching limbs fly off from being shot from some kind of enlarged bullet which he had never seen the likes of before. His reflexes and senses allowed him to see the shape of it, but they were still far faster than the rifles he had seen before. 

Horror, madness, murder, was all he could think of. So many of this estate were simple civilians, working for the higher nobles to keep the vampiric hierarchy running. Through the likes of himself and his superiors, they were simply operating to keep the peace with the outside world and to make sure no harm could be done to either side. It was all he could think about, but what could have enticed such a brutal attack. He knew of some of the darker elements that his superiors would get up to, but even then if evidence was mounted then surely justice would have been served? This is nothing but a slaughter, he thought.

He hadn’t the time to dwell on what manner of sorcery or technology that was assaulting them, but that particular route was no longer viable. As he turned back, once again the foundation buckled and cracked, and he was forced once again one floor below. He quickly saw a shattered log fire upon him, and he narrowly avoided the same fate he saw so many others befall. Everything shook at all times, but he was in the position to face the lobby he was seeking, which had access to more points of escape. He ran on through, finally getting what would be at ground level. At least, as ground level as the cliffside allowed, but near one of the several main entrances that at least held the stables and horses. He found a small family, some of which he recognized. There were several, not all related but adopted each other through time and bond. An old blooded vampire matriarch, her face contorted into batlike features not for thirst, but for battle. However, there was no fighting, there was only fear. All their hopes for an escape were quickly annihilated as some of the roofing collapsed in just the way to force sunlight near the front. They could go back, but everything was collapsing around them. They were trapped, and he approached the huddled few to help protect them and give time to think of plans.

Beyond the matriarch, there were two younger men, three women, and two vampiric children, neither could have been older than eight or ten. One of them was fully turned, but the scent of the bloodline was unfamiliar, and the older of them might have been stuck in that youth’s body for some time. They barely spoke at all, as a loud humming engulfed the collapsed nexus. A type of fan perhaps, but far too loud, and the dust of wind and ashes washed over the group as they heard footsteps approach the wreckage of the entrance. Deep, heavy footsteps entered the front door, or what could be considered the remains of a front door. Through the ash that seemed to have been permanently affixed to the air surrounding them all, a pair of glowing red eyes was seen through the veil. They seemed to smoke on their own, a magic he did not recognize without proper study. As the creature approached, he once more could not recognize the technology they wielded. It was a man. Massive, something to the tune of eight feet or so and the broadness to match, that of an incredible warrior. His armor looked like plate or steel, but was layered oddly. It also clicked has he stepped, as well as some lights throughout that were sharp, small, and precise. It was once again like nothing he had ever seen. His eyes drifted towards the massive hammer he wielded in a single hand, easily half of his own height. A special, runed hammerhead that was crackling with some red-orange energy that matched the man’s own eyes. His grin, filled with wickedness and untoward thoughts. His teeth were unnatural as well, pointed in their own way but not like a vampire’s. More of a demonic nature, but he couldn’t tell. All the gentleman could ask was, “What are you…?” The voice of the being was deep, guttural, and coordinated. His words were carefully chosen, if strangely playful, and seemed to originate straight from his deepest bowels, “I am the result of thousands of years of your kinds baaaaad decisions..” Then, he lifted his hammer to bring it down and… there was nothing at all.

[legendofthematriarch]

Disclaimers

This will be rated Mature 18+ -Violence (hefty descriptions of combat and wounds) -Blood -Sexuality (exactly how explicit I get remains to be seen) -Necromancy, Corpse Mutilation and Experimentation (again, the severity of descriptive writing may vary). If you can think of any other potential trigger warnings, feel free to let me know. Everything in this blog should be considered a First Draft. Some edits will be abound but if this ever sees any actual publishing, some chapters might be shuffled around as the narrative needs. For example, I might save some of her youth chapters for in-between bits, but for now they’ll be some of the first things I’ll be writing. For a long time, I have been a very big consumer of media. You might be able to find some similarities and equivalencies between some of my characters and media. This is largely unintentional and sometimes unconscious and again, they may be subject to rewrites in the future.

Post subject to change.

[legendofthematriarch]

The Matriarch’s Birth and Inspirations

Fair warning, this post will include late-chapter spoilers as to who The Matriarch is and will eventually become. However this post will have a lot of insight as to my writing style and might be fun to get in my head for a time. After all, I hope the journey itself will be well worth the read. In my youth, I had created a certain character in my head. I considered him a bit of a dream-guard, a powerful man that would guard me against nightmares. A sort of anti-monster that held all the tools to combat whatever dreams that might invade my mind after foolishly watching a horror movie. He evolved over time in his own right, as I took inspiration and ideas from various pieces of media. One of the biggest sources was Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness from various Elder Scrolls games, though he’d later draw some inspiration from Thanos. Over time, I would effectively create an entire world around him. I even made a wiki. Some of that will come into play in The Matriarch’s story but some of it will be tweaked and retconned. It’s an old wiki that has no mention of The Matriarch herself, being a newer creation in comparison. Also borrows too many elements from other games. Kyna Vance for example is essentially Nocturnal, again from The Elder Scrolls. Allein Dakur was my Draenei on WoW and sometimes Tiefling in different universes. These characters will continue to exist in their own right, in smaller roles but much of what made them exist in the first place will be changed as their core births are far too entwined in other people’s universes. Also it’d be stealing if I were to ever publish some of this. I originally wanted to create an entire series on Kyna herself, being one of my first “main” characters bourne from my inner femininity. She was everything I wanted to be but didn’t know at the time that she was essentially my inner trans before I know that being trans was even an option. I had a post regarding that but it appears it has since suffered from the recent “Adult content” purge, despite having no imagery. Either I can’t find it, or some algorithm thinks a trans person coming out in a blog post hidden behind a Read More break counts as adult content and thus must be purged FOR THE CHILDREN. Either way, it became clear to me over time that Kyna became a tad overpowered, even to my liking. She continues to be a relevant force in my lore but will be semi-retired as a background mentor type character to more women. I remember writing a short and incomplete story about a young woman in a universe not too unlike Repo! The Genetic Opera (where my main internet moniker comes from). Instead of prosthetic limbs and artificial organs, the world was run by implants based on a spine attachment because for whatever reason, the world’s emotions had drained. People needed these emotions and thus came together to invent colorful implants, and many people wore their spine attachments with pride as a sort of cultural pissing contest. “I have more emotions than you!”  It was one of the first stories that I made a character gay. My brother, in his pre-woke-ness (and indeed, this story was written long before I knew anything about LGBT subject matter) asked “Why does she have to be a lesbian?” I don’t recall my fullest answer but I do remember me trying to talk about trying to balance the books, as it were. There’s so many stories about straight white men and I just became bored with it all. Ultimately my answer was more like “Why not?”, to which my brother had no real answer. To that end, I don’t even really remember when I made the Matriarch. I believe  she was my real legitimate attempt to make someone her own person, however even she was not immune to direct inspiration. I vaguely based part of her origins on Thresh from League of Legends, and you’ll soon read about a suspiciously similar creature with a powerful Lantern that eventually spawns the Matriarch in her fullest form. However, I did not play LoL all that much and it was certainly not a platform for creative writing or roleplaying. It was likely she was created for a game but she was not born in Oblivion or Skyrim. She was unique in the sense that she was her own creation, while I cannot say that for many of my “original” characters. The Dream-Guard man I mentioned earlier was the true first but drew far too much inspiration from the likes of Sheogorath to the point where he essentially became “Sheogorath - But with more War!” Each and every single character on that wiki I linked above has a direct videogame equivalent, perhaps with the exception of Brian McGee, who was based off a guy I barely knew in school. Otherwise, point to a name on that wiki and I can tell you exactly what game or movie I ripped them out of. To that end, The Matriarch is fairly important to me.  It’s kind of funny, really. Most of my life I’ve always heard certain parts of advice. Jack Patillo of Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter fame told guests at one of their conventions to “always make stuff”. Famous authors (Stephen King, maybe?) have always given the advice of “never stop writing”. I’ve known all of this but it wasn’t until a meme, something about not worrying about what’s in the “middle part” and just start, and you’ll figure out the middle part as time goes on. I finally created this blog to at least... begin.

[legendofthematriarch]

About My Writing

Hello! I am Zydrate. Consider this an “About Me” style post, including a description of what you might expect from this story. I began writing fairly early in my life, though not always on paper. My mother taught me how to read with Goosebumps, or that’s what my family tells me. I remember learning most out of school but from what she used to say, I’d merely point at the various pictures and essentially make my own stories based off of that. Fast forward a few years and I have fond memories of taking part in a charity event called the “Haunted Forest”. I was very young around this time, maybe nine or ten. Did it for a few years with a majority of my immediate family, though I cannot recall what all of their roles were, except that my father was the showrunner for the scene. Basically, every year between October and late November, this organization rented out some unpurchased forest land, and took volunteers to set up paths and various spooky scenes for tour groups to come through. Some were straight-forward jump scaring, and some were more eclectic such as a Sam Kinison lookalike who had an entire stage and simply did standup for a few minutes, often making jokes about how he’s “still alive”. Primal scream and all. My father was our family’s showrunner (as he often was) and his signature scene was an electric chair, with himself as a grim reaper sort of character. I enjoyed the whole ordeal so much, I’d often recreate the entire setup with Lego weeks after it ended. Around this time I created entire character arcs and storylines with my little Lego people, oftentimes with zombies because I amassed enough people to simply remove their heads and have entire zombie plotlines. I even had the idea of “seasons”, ending with a major event and reshuffling my main characters. Moving on, I was a fairly well behaved kid. This is largely in part to my mentally abusive narcissistic father whom I feared reprisal. I was only ever hit once, spanked on a couple of occasions (I drew crayon all over a wall which, I’m told, is a pain in the ass to clean up, indeed it would become a pain in mine) but otherwise most of his abuse was more mental. I remember a lot of food denial for mere slights. My father was a funny, charming man so he’d often make me laugh so hard that I lost my appetite entirely, and then he would become angry that I wouldn’t eat and take away my dinner. It didn’t help that the man was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder, making these swings incredibly jarring and confusing as nobody knew why this kind of thing happened. Thankfully this didn’t translate in school. As I said, I was well behaved and received decent grades before taking a dip after my parents divorce. I had a sort of trick; I would literally begin my homework the second it was assigned, often having my worksheets half done or mostly completed by the time I got home. Sometimes I’d even do it on the bus. Partly to get it out of the way for more video games and Lego, and partly because even then I wanted to get the information down while it was still fresh in my head before forgetting it all by the next week. All this time, I’m still a little salty that I was never given a class on Geography. That will actually tie into my writing style, you may notice that I will completely omit dates. I’ll do my best to google likely occurrences in the time frame I have in my head but some things will be left vague. I enjoyed going to school, even if I correctly predicted that most of the information I learned was useless. I still can’t do math, nor have I needed to do so. However I did a lot of writing in between. As a behaved kid I was one of the first few to finish any and all assignments, so I’d immediately start working on my own creative writing. This largely started thanks to the game Morrowind, as I finally had my own original characters to actually branch off of. I even utilized them in an assignment, which had a frustrating turn of logic from the English teacher at the time. This part gets a bit rambly so bear with me, but it just speaks to the way the education system can’t really figure out how to pinpoint what someone is good at and foster that passion.

We as a class were once taught how to make Resumes with a Resume wizard. I took a few extra minutes on mine and made it more professional looking than the common fare that she expected. Everyone else’s were just bland with underlined words here and there and nothing else. I don’t remember the details of what I did differently to mine but I remember the teacher refused to take it, sending me back to the computer to make a more basic version. Now, to wit, I’ve printed out Resume’s well into my 20′s and they don’t really have to be flashy or anything. Again though, I don’t remember the details.

Later on, we were tasked with writing some short stories. Perfect! I’ve been a writer for most of my life. This sparked when my mother regaled stories to me about having me on her lap, showing me picture books and having ME read to HER because I was just making my own stories based on what I was seeing. That young, I was a storyteller. Anyway the prompt was “Ethical Hero”, we read some story about knights and armor, some old Celtic tale or something and she tasked us all to write our own.

However I wanted to break the mold a little. My story ended with a twist; my “Hero” had actually bribed and threatened some of his subordinates to help him look better than he was. He was a good fighter but not a great man, so he needed to ‘look’ great so he could become King or something. I took this several page story to my teacher, I was so excited! The fact that my ~15 year old self could comprehend this kind of  complexity, I thought the teacher would appreciate it. She did not. She just told me “Well, this isn’t ethical”. She wasn’t wrong and I don’t remember if I had any rebuttals for her since I was 15 and she was like, 50. My violet probably shrinked away and I rewrote the last couple of pages to make him look like a proper knight in shining armor. If memory serves… And it very well might not; I remember writing the ‘good’ version concurrently with the ‘twist’ version because even then, I suspected she would turn it away. I’ve always considered myself a bit clever in terms of my youth. I’m sure many look back at their younger self and consider themselves idiots. While I certainly lacked certain knowledge and experience, I still feel I was a bit sharper than some others my age. So let’s fast forward some more years. I never really stopped writing but as video games busted into my life there was certainly a reduction in my pen-to-paper writing. I blogged here and there. I had a MySpace and LiveJournal, probably even a WordPress at one point. It wasn’t until my discovery of Tumblr  around 2012 that I started to try to dedicate myself to posting at least something once a day. Largely gaming related, my various adventures. I later started outright reviewing movies and games, and I’ve improved greatly during my time here. So that’s a lot of words. In my next post, I’ll talk about what one is to expect from this storyline, as well as a general sneak peak (and possible spoilers) as to who the Matriarch is and who she will eventually become.