Cross Effects > Areas

Albion

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Aiden:
Albion
An island from which man ruled the sea, once. Dockyards the size of cities maintained an armada that could overcome any opposition, outcompeting anyone who sought a piece of trade along the southern coasts or up the rivers. The riches of a thousand districts flowed to the shores of Albion in its cargo holds, and distant lands paid fealty to its goddess: Britannia, She of Waves. It was a time of glory for all who bowed to her magnificence.

That time has passed. The Albion of today is a shadow cast over the heavens, a place of competition turned inward rather than outward while its people lose faith in all that made them great. The armadas of yesteryear are no more, unable to match the might of mainland economies of scale. The sea has become a place of horror, and only the waters around Albion itself yield to their fracturing will. Britannia sits alone on her throne, weary with age as songs of prayer fade one by one from her ears.

Twilight has come to the people of Albion, and they cannot even see it.

Politics
Albion is officially controlled by a constitutional monarchy, whose sole representative is the goddess Britannia, reduced to a physical form by the steady decline of her people’s faith in her power. While still a formidable force in a face to face encounter the people have had enough leverage to push through a constitution limiting her to a role that is largely ceremonial. The day to day governing of the district is overseen by a parliament that is a mix of hereditary seats and political party appointments. Over the course of time representation has begun to skew more to the latter as the great and noble merchant houses die out one by one. Divine interference in politics is viewed with suspicion, rather than joy, by those most benefitting from this new status quo.

Culture and Demographics
This district feeds on a foul mixture of nostalgia and misplaced blame. The stereotypical Albioner takes pride in their impressive naval traditions, blames a combination of ‘sea monsters’ and ‘foreign interference’ for the downfall of both them and their district’s place of prominence, and refuses to recognize their own role in the decline of the many blessings which enabled the former and protected them from the latter. They view citizens of other districts with condescension and bitterness, and insist that they would be better off without them. They may even go so far as to say their nation has been reduced to poverty and anarchy as a result of their alien influences.

The reality is a little different than that. Albion is still a safe, stable place to live relative to many other places in the Nexus. Its people have food, shelter, and basic healthcare on a reliable basis. Its coast guard can overcome almost any threat that tends to come its way. Its police are effective, but not overly cruel. It has a supernatural defender who would die to defend it despite the fact that almost half of her citizens don’t even believe in her divinity anymore. Longing for the past has limited their ability to appreciate their present.

The economy is driven by a mixture of services provided for and by their own citizens, the fishing industry, and a number of old shipbuilding businesses that have managed to stay afloat despite Albion’s reduced prominence. Other industries abound, but these are the ones people talk about the most. Of course, their cuisine can be a bit of an acquired taste…

Most citizens of Albion are human. Many of them have distant faerie ancestry, the result of generations of sailors taking on alluring amphibious brides in the days the seas were calmer. Non-humans aren’t explicitly discriminated against, but often will receive strange looks the first time they visit any given part of the district. They may end up being hit on.

While the Church of Albion is still nominally the district’s official religion, more and more people have been driven from their faith in the face of hardship, rather than toward it. This can be attributed in part to the death of Britannia’s oldest avatar generations ago in a great battle against the most terrifying crew of pirates the Nexus has ever seen. Mortality ill suits the faithful, and the power vacuum that followed also saw the rise of secular influences who undermined belief in the goddess in her time of weakness for their own benefit. Still, a stubborn core of believers made of both old traditionalists and sympathetic youngsters remain.

Magic used to feature quite prominently in their society, and modern translations of old sea shanties still echo with remnants of power few still know how to harness. It is one of the lost splendors of Albion - much like its self-respect.

Landmarks
Albion’s capital, Brittany, is a tarnished jewel upon the seas. Its ports welcome ships from all along the southern shores of the Nexus. The Palace of Waves, seat of Britannia’s royal authority, glimmers on the horizon as if to say ‘come, behold the city of our world.’ Once the initial impression fades what truly remains is a sense of awe for the sheer size of the docks. Despite the lapse in profitable shipping over the years they remain almost entirely intact relative to their glory days. Each year the Church of Albion makes a concerted effort to keep beautiful the first vision visitors receive of their once-mighty nation. Gazing upon it from her balcony, visible from the water, is one of the few things that puts a true smile on Britannia’s face.


Britannia



Physical Attributes

Strength: Fantastic

Agility: Heroic

Durability: Fantastic

Magic: None

Magic Resistance: Very High

Willpower: Determinator

Other Abilities
Britannian Stoicism: To know the love of Britannia is to know the love of the parent - the single earner who breaks her back to provide for you, who puts on the strong face so you are never hurt by her pain. Those who pray to her share in a shadow of that strength, experiencing increases to their Willpower which help them endure their day to day hardships when they might otherwise falter and fail. The more devoutly they believe, the more of her strength they share until they realize it has become their own. The increase is by one rank per level of their Intimacy toward her, with most of her active and involved church members having lesser intimacies.

Divine Admiral: She of Waves. In the realm of all things nautical there is no better to be found than Britannia, and give her one good crew and a decent ship and she can likely find a way to sink a fleet come hell or high water. She can keep a vessel together against everything short of complete disintegration, preventing it from taking on water or faltering because the wind was against its sails. She can invigorate its crew and protect them from the ravages of long voyages, and extend this to any crew that declares for her name.

A Sailor’s Sailor: Gunslinging, sword swinging, cannons and all, there is no respectable form of fighting which Britannia cannot masterfully manage. A death of a thousand cuts, or bullets, is all too readily a reality for those who thought themselves a threat. In addition to her excellence in a fight she can give form to all manner of swords and firearms that can at least compete with her Strength rating in damage output, calling them forth from her worshipers’ dreams of wars long past.

The Sun Never Sets: There was a time when a sailor’s death on the waves was but a break from their duty to the glory of Albion. Britannia in her prime could call forth from the depths the wrecks of all who’d sailed beneath her flag, and project her loving memory of their fervent spirits to have them take up their ropes and raise their anchors one last time. Those days have long since passed, but she can still invoke this ability at a price. Britannia could, in theory, sacrifice her body to bring forth the Endless Armada one last time. Should her people keep her in their hearts and memories then one day, years later, she could be born again in glory.

If only.

Intimacies
Greater Intimacy: The People of Albion (Devotion)
Lesser Intimacy: Belfast (Self-Loathing)

Avatars
Once, Britannia was a holy spirit pure in presence. She could not appear in person to her followers, so vast and glorious was her greatness. Instead she acted upon the world through her faithful, through miracles worked through them in her name, and through a series of divine sub-selves who were expressions of her personality and desires at least on the level of her current body. Those days are passed, and the only avatar she can sustain is the one her diminished self uses to act upon the world now.

But one still endures, negligent in her duties to hearth and home and sustained by the will of another. Were it within Britannia’s power she would hunt this being down, strip her of flesh and bone, and reclaim from her every scrap of divine essence to stave off her own inevitable decline just a few years longer. It is not yet within her power… personally.

yinsukin:
Aruna

Continued from The Great Sea.

A light bounced across the water, the people screaming and rushing about to flee.  The white light flew across the water eventually crashing into the sand with a bang, a geyser of sand birthed from the impact.  Aruna gasped as she hit the grainy uneven ground of a beach.  Within the geyser of sand, she looked up only to see Mael was already above her, his strikes coming down on her hard and fast.

"It does feel good, that power....." she said, deflecting the hail of strikes.  Even though it was a flurry, the sheer power of those strikes broke her guard, one or two causing her arm to stagger and the hand holding her blade to fall to her side.  A chain emerged from her shoulder as the flurry came down, attaching to a pole at the boardwalk.  Like a grappling hook, Aruna's chain retracted back into her, pulling her closer to the pole's top.  "But a blessing.... a curse.  Those are two sides of the same coin."

Thats right.  She couldn't forget the lesson she learned before from him.  It was embarrassing, a lesson she should have learned a long time ago.


"What is a demon?"

Aruna blinked, staring up at his creator with eyes of curiosity.  "Someone who resides in the dark and is protected by its power, its culture."

"What is an angel?"

Aruna tilted his head and responded, "One who resides in the light, god's herald and one who guides humanity."

"Then whats a human?"

Aruna scowled.  "A human is someone who gets drunk on light and darkness but fears darkness."

"And what are you?"

Aruna looked down at his own body, then at the thing talking to him.  "I am a demon, a denizen of the dark."

"Is that all?"

Aruna nodded.  "Yeah."

"You don't really think a person can be boiled down to something so simple do you?  What is your job?"

"I am a guardian, someone who protects promising humans until they can protect themselves."

"Why do you ignore that other part of yourself?"


Aruna hung from atop the pole, her limp body bruised and bloodied.  Red liquid trickled down her lip.  A purple gash colored her normally pristine flat belly.  Her entire body felt weak while a pain radiated through her entire body.  That one fight with Zeke, that moment of resolve.  She couldn't forget that here.

Because I don't want to be a monster, not anymore.

Aruna thought back to all those times she had fed on humans, the look of shock and horror as she ripped out their souls and fed on them.  It was exhilarating seeing the look of fear and powerlessness.  There was an undeniable high to it, the sort of power she held.  However, all she fed on was the stress in their soul, the angst that weighed them down in life.  In other words, she played the part of a monster, but never truly was one.

The demon's chain, once wrapped around the pole slunk back into her shoulder, letting her fall into the vulnerability of the air.

Aruna thought back to the angels, those creatures laying waste to hundreds of demons with a single slash of their mighty light infused blades, all while talking about the just nature of god.  The demons were enemies to humanity and must be purged for their sake, but only because of the multi millennia long narrative they spun.  Maybe she was weak, but she wasn't a monster.  Maybe that weakness was too much to bare at times, but at least she could call herself a proud demon.

I don't want to be a monster, not like them.

Kotomine_Rin:
Mael

The black knight blot the light of the sun like the coming of judgement day. The sand rippled in the air in the incoming explosions, each blow was an eruption of power that threatened to break Aruna's very foundation.  And yet, ironically, though each strike was certainly a fatal one, Aruna didn't die.

And as their blows came to touch, they came to speak to each other. Even as his blade started to crack and break, and even as her body began to split and bleed.


I told you not to misunderstand. As far as I am concerned, both [ WHITE ] and [ BLACK ] are equally shit, none of them go beyond being hopeless farces. They kill hopelessly, fight pointlessly, lie hopelessly, love hopelessly, all to feed a cycle that never ends.

Angel and Demon, Light and Darkness, and so on... what the hell is such wordplay supposed to be? Worthless, it disgusts me to no end. Do not dare to speak of me in such a shallow perspective, which fickly, frivolously changes positions!


BOOM!

The final strike should have split her in half from the bottom up, but miraculously she evaded it. Miraculously... what a spew of vomit. He understood now, wielding a cracked sword that'd break at any moment. Part of him still wanted to see what she had to say. But his rage, the fact that she had to die... it wouldn't change.

Dragging the crying sword on the ground, he let a stream of sparks as his face twisted in rage and indignation. A convulsing monstrous face that was more terrifying than anything at all. Because it was just a plain expression.

"Everything, all of heaven and hell is equally shit to me. I will slaughter it all. I will annihilate it all. This sickening balance, this system of control that we're playing by, I'll cut it without exception. And for the sake of this, I must go beyond duality. I have neither the duty nor the need to be dyed to your tastes. Aaah, shall I say it just one more time? I am me, do not dare to judge me the same as you, you worthless sham!"

Teeth clenched murderously, he reversed his grip and took a low stance, his sword arm swung to his back. With a glare that burned like the sun itself, he hurled the breaking sword at Aruna like a curveball, letting its arc swing down at her hungrily. But that was was a feint.

His other hand  raised two fingers up between his eyes, and the whole area was enveloped with an absolute light and darkness for an instant - before a sky-shattering beam of light came shooting out of his crimson eye. The light was a heavenly perversion, but it was also an insult to anything demonic. It was both less and more. Almost human, or divine. And it soared the sky and split off into seven before bouncing all over their surroundings, hitting every surface available with impossible angles and precision. Until it all converged to swallow Aruna whole.

Dodge the sword and be pierced by the light, or avoid the light and be cleaved by the sword. She had run away for long enough.

Now was the time to answer.

yinsukin:
Aruna

A miscalculation.

Aruna didn't consider the fact that Mael would simply hurl something at her.  Aruna held the blade in front of herself, blocking the strike, but sending her flying into the pole.  With a thud and a clap, she bounced from the pole to the sand.

"To be honest, I thought you'd have died by now, it's already far too advanced for an ordinary demon."  That was what Asmeal said to her during their earlier clash.  He was correct.  There was no denying this weight.

Sham?  Is that what you think of me?  After all i've done?  A sham?  I guess its silly of me to cling to it, a friendship that never was.  In that moment, it finally truly dawned on her.  They never really knew each other.  The burden she carried may have been his, but she never truly understood it.  Maybe she would have ripped apart the system that tormented him, but would her solution mean anything if she never knew a perspective outside of her own?  She wanted to build a world on the foundation of their relationship, but that relationship only existed in her own mind.  In that moment, she realized that she really was doing this only for herself.

Aruna flinched when she saw the divine light.  Remembering that angel who once tried to kill her for merely being a demon, she cried in pure helpless fear.  Tears rolled down her face, yet for some strange reason, she gathered to her feet, her dainty toes rubbing into the rough sand covered boardwalk.  That familiar feeling of wood against her toes reminded her of something in that moment, that she was still alive.

"NO!  I won't die, not for you, not for ANYONE!"

Spikes emerged from every surface of Aruna's body, each one that struck the light was broken upon contact.  Aruna marched forward, the spikes falling from her body.  Wings emerged from her back.  Those simple bat like demonic wings began to glow with an unmistakable light.  The grace spread from her arm to her back then wings and shone so bright they eclipsed the blinding light of the sun.

"I am Aruna, darkangel and proud guardian.  The light of the grace is no curse, nor a blessing, but a burden we must all carry as angels.  I'll show you what that means."

The silent chant began.

Kotomine_Rin:
Mael

"So that's your answer...?" For a moment, Mael sounded genuinely shocked. He stared at the apparition before him, utterly incredulous. He could only think of one thing, as his back trembled with an unknowable feeling.

The wounds from before opened up further, letting his blood spew for a second. Was he... in pain? How long... just how many had he fought? Between that black pit and that Piece, that man had done nothing but fighting. It's all he had. It's all he ever knew.

He didn't deserve anything else.

But Aruna?

You... you...


"You poor souls."

The ashes of light smoldered an entire city, its verdant hills and livestock plunged into holy light and turned into salt by divine commandments. Among the hordes of descending angels, one soldier of God soared supreme among the carnage. Asmael, the Archangel of Death, was raining down rays of pure light down the populace, annihilating everything below him. He didn't look at them, he didn't see. As a tool of blind justice, he had no will to resist the path he was pointed at.

Even as demons and humans cried and burned eternally, clutching children and loved ones, Asmael hunted down every life, every single thing that could hold a treacherous thought, and executed it with divine justice.

The humans had housed demon refugees amidst their midst.

The demons were enemies of God's will.

The traitor Lucifer was one among the demons.

Thus he's kill them. Kill them all.

Because this was his role.

And so, the angels and demons kept killing each other, like a sick play between broken puppets. The one holding the strings looked down at its new toy, and clutched its reins tighter. Even as he cried, even as he wanted to look away, he could not move or act freely. The grace itself was like a prison.

Like a waking nightmare that would never end.

"I am sorry, little ones."


Pools of gore splashed from his body. But that wasn't why his glare was so murderous.

"You... you'd be a slave to that thing... !? You'd willingly chain yourself in bondage to Him!? You utter cretin!! That is a false choice! This system full of lies and contradictions, it's all made for the sake of control! And you'd accept to be His eyes and ears regardless!? To use his sword and keep living, even if it means spreading His disease!?"

His body twisted and contorted with killing intent, a deep black shadow erupting from him and twisting its features - until what was cursing Aruna was neither an angel or a devil, but death itself.

"Your life anchors his powers. If you will cherish that power regardless, then you are worse than a sham. You're a slave, worse than cattle." His rage was unspeakable, about to burst any moment. It was decided. The two were irreconcilable now.

"I'm sorry, friend."

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