[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

[lifeaftr_mods]

Something is wrong.

This may not very well be obvious, at first. The Storyteller is not present to put forth yet another diatribe, informative or apologetic, and the backdrop of guttering flame and sandy campfire is as present as ever...albeit briefly.



Those who tell their stories will start to notice something...odd taking place. Indeed, no matter how they intend to begin their tale, the land of Mu will immediately start to warp to accommodate it, or something utterly unlike it, until storytellers and listeners alike may find themselves in an exact recreation of a seemingly random memory, in the most stark and painstaking of detail. There is no altering the memory, nor is there any preventing it once it's begun to play - you will simply have to witness memories that are not your own this go around.

Furthermore, stories that take place in worlds other than LifeAftr will be, frankly, inevitable. Those memories, too, will be recreated, to be relived by the teller and lived by the listener.

---

It is time, once more, for you to tell a story...with a slight twist! This is, in fact, our first player plot, as provided by Dragon! The initial setting will be familiar for oldcomers, and newcomers will recognize it from the introduction they received in their dreams.

Yet for this Storytelling only, people can imagine whatever stories they wish, from both their homes and their time on LifeAftr, as long as they don't mind the fact that others will be reliving those stories in the form of an impromptu memory share.

Even those who prefer not to voice their stories aloud are not safe this time around. If the memory is recalled in essence, Mu will shift to accommodate it in full.

There is, however, a benefit to this: those who venture memories to be relived will receive both a befuddled apology from the Storyteller, who will assert that this was most definitely not meant to happen (they're the Storyteller, not the Rememberer!), as well as a tired promise that the relived memories will be worth two offerings each, as if in compensation.

Not that it counts for much, probably.

Comments

Keith | OTA

[thermalwind]

[All memories will have their own top levels. Respond to whatever you choose to.]

i. Knowledge or Death

[thermalwind]

The elevator descends into a square tunnel, lit by the familiar purple light so familiar with the aliens called Galra. Will he finally have his answers? It's difficult to say. He lets his mind blank as he stands next to a tall man clad in white and black armor, a mirror of his own red and white. They'll know soon enough.

Abruptly, the ride is over and the metal door hisses as it rises up and locks into place. People of various shapes, sizes, and forms wait in neat rows on either side of a long metal room. The symbol that had to give him so much turmoil glows at the center. Negotiations don't go well especially when they learn of his knife. They pin him down so quickly he only has time to defend himself against the accusations of theft.

The desperate need to know the answers burns him up from the inside and he ignores Shiro. The blade has been his all his life. The only clue to who he is. He never told anyone about it and that works against him.

"You seek knowledge? There is only one way to attain knowledge here."
"How? I'll do it!"
"The Trials of Marmora."

No matter what Shiro says or the risks, he accepts. The need to know who he is burning so brightly he sees nothing else. They give him back his blade and fit him special gear. The trials begin.

"Surrender the blade. You can not win." One fighter. Fights never last long. It's short and brutal. Yet they don't take his life. "Surrender the blade and the pain will cease." Each time he passes through the door they tell him he isn't meant to go through he is moving slower, the pain building up. He only sees the way forward. He won't quit no matter how many fighters they throw at him.

But when he notices the doors they are coming through he takes a chance and drops into the hole, escaping the endless cycle of blood and violence. The trials aren't over. Shiro comes to him as he collapses. Give up the knife, he says. He can't do that. He has to know who he was. Selfish. To hear those words from Shiro is enough he would have given up there and then. But the world shifts, pulling back the curtain on the years between him and a person he hadn't seen in ages.

"Keith."

His father. The ground shakes. The inside of the house is like he remembered it. The stack of machines. Radio sounds filtering in and out as his father messes with the dial. Machinery hums. Thud. He wants to catch up. But what is going on outside? Thud. He doesn't listen to his father assuring him things are fine. Thud. They're not. Outside ships use their cannons to carve through people. He can hear their screams.

Thud.

"Don't you want to know where you came from? Your mother gave it to me."

The world goes still for half a breath.

"...mom?"

It's tempting to stay. He wants to know everything. But he can't. Despite his father's warnings he turns away from him and walks into the blaze. Except it wasn't real. Shiro, the real one, pulls him up, his hands carefully keeping him upright. His head hurts. The Marmora don't want to let take the blade. He failed to awaken it. "What does that mean?" They don't answer. Shiro lets him go, dashing forward with purple swirls of light blazing from his metal hand.

No.

He never wanted his answers to come at the cost of his friend's pain. "Wait! Just take the knife!" He holds the knife out, offering it hilt first. No more. His selfishness would only bring suffering. Even if it's forfeiting what he wants more than anything... " The blade awakes, growing longer in his hand, as the Galra rebel leader breathes in. "You have awoken the blade!" The blaze of light dies away leaving him holding the longer weapon as he learns something that cracks open the foundations of his world.

"The only way this is possible is if Galra blood runs in your veins."

[shineinside]

The details of Keith's memory don't mean much to Yuka - there's too much context she doesn't have to parse what's going on in this strange world. However, his emotions, she does understand. His desperation, his panic, his disbelief.

Whatever he discovered, the implications seemed to be far darker than a simple heritage.

"...You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, Keith, but... what is 'Galra' blood?"

[thermalwind]

He stares hard at the fire. He wouldn't have told that story if he'd known the memory would play out. "It means I'm only half human. The rest of the Blades you saw are Galra and I am too." Keith raises his head, thinking over what to say and adds,

"The Galra have been terrorizing the universe for over ten thousand years. The Blades are rebels against their own kind." He'd learned the Galra were the enemy and only just got to accept that some were on their side. "It was a bit of a shock at the time."

[shineinside]

Keith... isn't human?

He looks like anyone else, but that's no real indication of anything, is it? Paragon Diamond wasn't human, either. Looking like a human doesn't mean you're human... and not being human doesn't mean you're automatically an enemy, either.

"Finding out that you had so much in common with something so terrible... That must have been awful. But it also sounds like even among those who weren't half-human, there were good Galra, right? Hopefully that made it easier to take."

[thermalwind]

"Of course it did." It was how Allura had reacted that really made it harder. "I'm just mad that I didn't get the chance to tell that myself. I was just going to talk about the Blades and their mission." Not his father. Not his emotions that were on display for everyone around them. It's exposure he really didn't want. Keith rakes his hand through his hair.

"I thought we were just telling stories. Not...seeing what really happened."

[shineinside]

"I thought so, too. The way other people described it was nothing like this..." Does that mean that some of her own memories will end up on display in the same way? There's things buried in there that she doesn't even want to see again for herself, let alone show them to everyone else.

"Do you think something strange is going on? I mean, strange even by the standards of this place."

[thermalwind]

"Yeah. I guess not even this is unaffected by weirdness." He draws his knife and it melts, expanding and stretching into the familiar long blade. He holds it up to let the fire's light play across it. "I'd refuse to keep participating but I need the boons we can get from this."

He needs more equipment to help fend off the Night Creatures. "At least we can pick what memories we want people to see. We just have to think harder before we talk about them."

[attheclocktower]

The trials are... intense. Hard to watch, in some ways. Both physical and psychological, it well... it reminds her of the Tower, a bit, but it reminds her a lot more of something else.

"It's funny. We go looking for answers, and get... a lot more than we imagine," her voice is soft when she speaks, and carefully neutral. Answers about themselves, she thinks but keeps silent, because that's only a guess, based on the information revealed at the end, and because it was why Xion herself had gone looking.

She's also not sure if it was good or bad for him. Truthfully she isn't sure if her own discovery was ultimately good or bad.

[thermalwind]

“I sort of...suspected it since I first saw the symbol on their blades.” So many times he’d sat in his room and stared at the symbol and wondered what it meant. Keith stirs the fire up sending sparks rising towards the dark sky over their heads. “It changed things.” He wants to find out what happened to her but he has a war to fight.

The fire’s light plays over his face and the dark armor a mirror of the Blades of Marmora’a own. It makes him look younger until he moves and shatters the illusion. “Was it a good thing what you found?”

[attheclocktower]

"I... no. I don't think I can ever really think of it as good." Not if she's being really honest with herself. Someone like Sora could probably see the bright side in her situation, but... she wasn't Sora.

"But... after all this time, maybe I don't think of it as something bad, either," she adds, thoughtfully. Just... something. A fact about her, about her existence, that couldn't and didn't really change.

[thermalwind]

“It just is?” He echoes her thoughts and leans back. Being half Galra isn’t a bad thing but his time with the Blades exposed him to the world his mother must have lived in. It made things far more complicated than they had been. He has no idea who he is without a lion’s controls in his hands.

“We’re still us. Guess that’s all that matters.” Whatever they are.

[attheclocktower]

"Yeah..." She can't help but crack a bit of a smile. The words sounded like something like Sora would say, but the tone generally sounded a lot more like how she felt.

Bracing her hands on either side of her seat, she leans back, looking up towards the sky. It was still kind of unnerving at times, not having a roof over her head; knowing that there wasn't one there. "I'm not human, or... a normal person. I'm a puppet, a replica made to control a special weapon on my worlds. I haven't been there so long though, it's... almost weird to think about."

[ungrieved]

Call him curious. Call him morbid. Call him whatever you want. He preys on memory, gorges himself on it, feeds on it. And this - this is ripe for the taking, right here. This is a feast, is what it is. An arsenal of confused misery and physical agony and exhaustion and then...

The spurt of envy that colored his veins the first time they met - that frosts over, rime creeping up through to his heart and wrapping his throat in a ghastly claw. The gabble of formless radio chatter. The tramp of something oddly militant on the horizon. A chorus of rising screams.

Your mother gave it to me, says the man Gabe can recognize as his father, immediate and without question.

This - normal?

This isn't normal.

He didn't even know his mother. He didn't even know her.

Gabe tries for a laugh, hard and mocking. Something else curls up in his stomach instead, like the lump of pain that caught itself there in the tangled, snarled loop of his intestines and set him crying and crying and crying and crying. He's trying not to laugh, and he isn't laughing. Something else is happening instead.

Something
Something else.

Something that scrapes up against his throat like shards of glass.

"This was home."

[thermalwind]

Silence.

Keith watches him across the flames of the fire like a hawk sighting movement below them. He’d thought there would be scorn or mockery. It takes him a moment to realize what part might be referred to. “Never knew her. Dad I haven’t seen in years. Been on my own ever since.” Until Shiro. Until the rest of team Voltron.

He could reach out to them whenever he wanted while he sought who he is. He glances about the space around them. “Sorry a I hurt you when I dragged you to the other side of the island. Even if my head was being screwed with. Wasn’t right.”

[ungrieved]

The apology barely registers. That's not the important thing here. Does Keith really think that's important? That hardly matters, compared to this. Compared to this world, this life.

He turns his stare on Keith, his eyes flashing.

"You lied." He jabs one finger out to sweep at the fire, to indicate the memory that's since faded. "That wasn't normal."

[thermalwind]

Anger rises up so thick that he nearly chokes on it. His personal thoughts and worries exposed like this makes it too easy to want to snarl and dig his heels in. “No. I didn’t!” He snaps. “I only told you I gather intell! I didn’t tell you anything else and you didn’t ask!” Normal. What the hell about him came across as- his temper frays and he leans forward.

“Look at me! What about me says I’m ‘normal’?? I carry a sword. I scan for threats no matter where I go and I’m wearing combat armor. What did you think my life was like?” He has to hear this one.

[ungrieved]

“You got to live,” Gabe snarls, because god forbid he admit to making completely unfounded assumptions about other people’s lives so he can construct a justification for the utterly baseless envy he won’t acknowledge that he has.

“You had parents who could stand to look at you!”

This is all very rational.

ii. An Honor and a Privilege. [Character death]

[thermalwind]

The doors slid open, and he strode inside. Red light shone down on him from all sides, emitted by the delicate lines of circuitry on the spikes hanging down from the ceiling and from the gaping square hole in the floor. "Kolivan, I'm in. Now what?" His com crackled to life. He attempted to put in the missing operative's carefully acquired codes but it did nothing. He tried a second time.

Nothing.

Damn it! The plan was in motion! He couldn't fail. Someone was coming. He ducked behind the nearest piece of machinery as a tall Galra approached the central console. His fingers tapped in the exact same code, but it was denied. Keith noted he looked rather worse for wear just as two dark-robed figures stepped inside.

"And now we know it was you who shut down the system." The Galra spun to face them. He claimed they were too late but it was for a different reason. They'd changed the codes. Thace, that was the operative of the Blades, wasn't it? The robed figures surge forward. Keith bursts of hiding to assist.

They fend them off, taking them out and he introduces himself to Thace. A tiny spark of relief dances in his chest. They hadn't failed yet. He stands watch as his fellow Galra slashes open the terminal and plugs wires in. Wait. "What are you doing?"

"I have to overload the system."

"You're turning the room into a bomb?"

It was the only way. Sentry robots attacked and Thace told him to go instructing him on how to get out. He didn't want to leave but Thace was right. As a Paladin of Voltron he had a greater mission. "It was an honor to meet you."

He leapt into the hole below. It was the last he ever saw of him.

[greatcleavage]

"Noble sacrifices," Roy mused, a frown on his face that wasn't born of anger.

"Why was it the only way?"

[thermalwind]

"Because the plan was already in motion. If we failed there," Keith makes a cutting motion with one hand. "Everyone counting on us to disable the ship would be overrun by reinforcements." He leans forward, hands on his thighs as he considers what else could have been done. Nothing.

"Do you...want to see the rest?"

[greatcleavage]

"Lives on the line, and no other way," Roy mused. At least, no other way they had perceived. Roy didn't know enough about the situation to judge. Though here was an offer... "I would, if you don't mind. I'd like to know how it played out."

True Paladins

[thermalwind]

He had no idea how long it would take the bomb to go off. He had to trust Thace knew what he was doing. Everything hinged on it. It felt like time stretched out, moving sluggishly like the universe was submerged in water. The ship lurched with a large explosive blast and he kept going. To slow down was to die. The blast rapidly caught up with him the light of it signaling its approach. A little further, he was almost out.

He wasn't going to make it. Keith turned in mid-air, activating his shield and putting it between himself and the blast. He shot out of the tunnel like a pebble from a sling. The massive ship shaped like an hourglass glowed with purple light for a few more moments and went dark. "Thace did it." It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. A dark shadow passes over him and he turns, meeting glowing yellow eyes. The Red Lion. It had come for him again. He slips inside and takes a breath. Above the large ship a blazing blue light shines, opening into the static sparking expanse of a wormhole. It grows closer and closer as he guides the Red Lion to join up with the rest of the team.

The ship is swallowed and their base of operations the Castle of Lions detached from the massive ring generating the portal. Together they slip into the hole in space, the lions pulling ahead. The rest is up to them.

According to the plan, they would pull together and form Voltron, a massive weapon of mass destruction to take out key systems on the ship. United in purpose, the five paladins followed their leader, their friend Shiro's commands. they tore into the ship, cutting and carving through their targets as if the metal of the craft were made of paper.
A vast cold energy that swallowed light with its coming hit them in the chest. It felt like his very existence were being ripped apart. They were making for the bridge when the prongs on the lower half of the vessel formed a strange energy that seemed to pull at them, an absence of light.

They had time to turn just before it hit them with force like a blow to the stomach. His mind whited out. It felt like his very existence were being ripped apart and pulled down into some vast hungry mouth. Everything went black.

He came to feeling like several miles of bad road. They had been hit with a device called a Komar that sucked life force out of its targets. Fun. None of the Lions responded to their pilots, and Coran urged them to go. On the inert ship a single door slid open, sickly purple light issued from it like a dark miasma. Keith stared at it, eyes gone wide. He heard Shiro's tightly drawn hiss of pain as a tall-red figure, clearly visible, even from where Voltron hung helplessly in space, rose up from the hole.

The machine spun to face them slowly, like a fighter preparing for battle. It shot towards them like a meteor, growing rapidly larger and larger, seemingly impossible to stop. Allura's voice cut through his shock like a heated sword. "Listen to me! You are true Paladins now! Connect with your lions! Reach out to each other!"

The Castle of Lions streaked past them a wash of pale blue gathering in at the front of the ship and shining like a beacon. "Fight! This cannot end now!" Light blazed punching through space and Zarkon's fighter turned its wings to a shield taking it dead on. The wings angled redirecting the beam back on its own ship. Keith's heart clenched at the answering scream. Allura went silent.

They all fell silent, unable to comprehend it. He didn't know what to say. Shiro's voice, quieter than usual but quickly growing in strength urged them to put all their energy into getting back into the fight. One by one they put their all into it, and Voltron blazed with life and energy once more. They had enough time to summon their blade again before Zarkon hit them. Keith let himself be lost in the dance of swords, keeping his ear out for commands or call outs. He belonged here on this team. A curling black energy shot out of the vast ship and they sought to dodge only to be hit again by Zarkon.

For every strike they inflicted, Zarkon had a counter. Like leaves turning in the wind they spun in space and Keith spotted an opening in the defenses and went for it. Their sword punched through the shoulder and out the back. Shiro hissed, warning them Zarkon had begun to assault his mind right before Zarkon countered with a glowing chain. It burst the lions apart. Keith brought his lion back online and noted the positions of the others. The Black Lion remained floating in space, lifeless.

"Shiro?" Silence. "Shiro!" Still no response. "Something's wrong with Shiro." He turned his gaze towards Zarkon's machine and gritted his teeth. "Guys, we can't let Zarkon get the Black Lion." No matter what they couldn't let Zarkon claim the strongest weapon in the known universe. He put his lion between Black and Zarkon, falling into command without registering he was doing it.

True Paladins 2/2

[thermalwind]

Minutes stretched by, Keith and the other Paladins threw themselves at Zarkon's machine, keeping it away from the Black Lion. He encouraged his fellow Paladins, urging them to keep fighting. It gave Shiro time to recover. The Black Lion began to move, cutting a clear path through space on a collision course with Zarkon.

Keith left Shiro to whatever he'd planned and focused on his fight. The Black Lion's wings glow, and burst into a new shape, each feather of the new wings a glowing blade. Wow.

It punched through Zarkon, turning to energy and appearing on the other side. Lance's voice low and awed inquired, Shiro's answer made Keith smile. "You mean you got your bayard." Shiro's commands eased a faint knot of tension in their group and they flowed back together into Voltron. The battle felt different, more desperate on Zarkon's side and more set on theirs. They charged towards Zarkon and he stabbed the sword of Voltron into the chest and out the back. Zarkon's metal hands clamped onto the robot's head a burst of power ripped through the head. He heard Shiro's pained growl.

He heard his snarl and the blade burst into flame. He pulled the sword back and drove it back in all the way to the hilt. He ripped it up and out, aimming to do the most damage he could on the way out. Zarkon's machine exploded, the wash of energy ripping the lions out of their changed state. Again the Black Lion floated in space, "Shiro!"

"We'll have to tow him back to the ship!" Pidge peeled off beside him, and clamped down on the largest of the lions, activating their boosts as they came back around. Once it was safely in the hangar and they'd landed their own lions, Keith sprinted back to the Black Lion's hangar. He ran up the ramp in the open mouth uncaring of the others following on his heels. The cockpit doors slid open. Shiro was gone. "Shiro?"

It felt like the universe had leaped up and kicked him in the face.

iii. The Rise and Fall [cw: character deaths, genocide, possession,]

[thermalwind]

Before the memory begins Keith leans forward. He's calmed down now and feels a lot less like stabbing something. "This isn't my memory. It might not show the actual events as they happened. If it does...that's why I'm doing this. I want to see it."

He drops his hands away from the flames, his eyes fixed on them. "In my universe over ten thousand years ago, there was a group of leaders, who spoke together for the sake of their common interests. The more they dealt with each other, the more an unspoken bond grew. Until they became friends. My universe knows this to be the beginning of a legend and the history of why things are the way they are today. Most only know the legend or half of it.”

---

A group of bandits had holed up in the wastes. The group that would become Paladins of Voltron hit the encampment, driving them back into a cave. One of the leaders surged ahead, dramatically flaring his cloak and paused when he realized he'd cut himself off from the rest. "Oh dear."

The rest came in, saving him from his foolishness. They were all different, but their leader swept all before him with a heavy mace. As they stood among the fallen bandits he was reminded don’t break formation and rush ahead. They returned to Planet Daibazaal a dark red planet with a misty haze surrounding it and dined. Laughter floated on the air as they enjoyed their friendship. The fun was broken up by a ball of fire dropping out of the sky and smashing into the ground some distance from the castle. They sought to investigate and discovered not only had a vast rock hit the planet but beneath it, reality had split.

King Alfor a tall, tanned sharp-earred man with white hair and a genius in alchemical sciences called in an expert, Honerva. Zarkon, the head of their group had reacted oddly to her but assured the both of them that he would give them all the support he could. Time passed as Alfor studied the ore on Altea and Honerva married to Zarkon studies the rift. She had sent signals to the neighboring reality and trapped what had responded. It proved to be a terrible mistake. Creatures burst out of the rift and had to be contained. Alfor was forced to take the group down into his lab. The ships he had been making for years were massive robotic lions that chose who would fly them.

They headed to Daibazaal to take on the creatures. The barrier contesting the creatures burst and the newly christened Paladins fell upon them. Yet they still couldn’t beat them until they came together and became a giant robot of all five combined. Alfor urged the rift be closed but Zarkon refused and cracks formed in their friendship. Despite their differences, the five continued to work together bringing in a new age of peace. Years passed and Alfor came to warn them one more time. It fell on deaf ears. Zarkon and Honerva both spoke only of power and living forever. Honerva fell ill and Zarkon hatched a plan that lured all his former friends into Voltron. He used them to open the rift wider.

Inside the rift, he stepped outside with Honerva and they both were flooded with the creatures. It was the close of the Black Paladin and the beginning of the end. Both Zarkon and Honerva died of overexposure. The rift had been widened too far and the unstable planet could no longer sustain itself. Alfor did the only thing he could think to do to close the rift. He evacuated the people and destroyed planet Daibazaal. A funeral was held and after...Zarkon rose from the dead. He proclaimed war on Alfor and lead his people to an assault on Altea. His goal? Voltron. Obsessed with the energy of the rift he needed Voltron to open a new rift. To prevent this Alfor sent the lions to the four corners of the universe. Zarkon enraged, killed Alfor and destroyed the Altean homeworld.

It was the rise of the Galra Empire that would rule for ten thousand years until new Paladins would begin the next stage of the history of Voltron.