(babbling! babbling everywhere, like babies! zombie babies!)
Mm, Launchcast just played the Ryan Adams version of "Wonderwall." w00t, yo. It's learning. Now it just needs to play some Jason Mraz, and it'll be perfect. I've already got it playing Duncan Sheik...
I'm at the point in Stella Matin (Maeroris, whatever) where I could just skip five or so years into the future, or I could take the time to actually write out what Theron does when he leaves Radrezhaea and wanders around Rothcar.
Since most of it is just him meeting Silver and being taught arcane magic and getting weirded out by the Shrive, there isn't much point to writing it- but I adore Silver, and I may write it anyway. The seals keeping back Shanon's memories probably disintegrate while he's living with Silver, so that's potentially interesting and plot-worthy; by 'interesting and plot-worthy,' I actually just mean 'full of angst.'
Once he returns to Radrezhaea, he runs into Brenon in the Capital, in the middle of Festival season. He does stupid things that get him noticed and then Blacklisted; when Brenon and Mihonil try to help him, they get Blacklisted, too. And then the three of them are deemed to dangerous to let live, so they're all tortured and then thrown into a box; Theron chews off his fingers (not all of them, just a few), kills Bren and Mih, and creates Muse and Walker.
Then he raises an army of Corpses and takes over the city. He kills his father and starts slaughtering all of the Magicrafters; not much happens for the next few decades while Theron subjugates the entire country, expanding his army of mindless zombies. Once the killing dies down, he spends a few years getting more in touch with his powers, and figures out how to create Ghosts.
Theron can create three basic kinds of undead- Corpses, Revenants, and Ghosts. A Corpse is a soulless doll, a sort of very well preserved zombie. Only Blacklisted Magicrafters become Corpses when they die; the technique was developed by Drazhene after the Second Cataclysm to better control magic users and to increase the power well of the Voyancy. (A Magicrafter's power is absorbed by the Voyance when he or she becomes a Corpse, thus making every successive Voyance stronger than the last.) Corpses can be destroyed by fire or dismembered, and they don't require sustenance, though feeding them does prevent decay.
A Revenant is a Corpse with the ability to contain a consciousness, which is actually different from a soul, but not in any ways that are at all important. Most of the citizens of Radrezhaea in Stella's part of the story are Revenants; Stella herself is a Revenant. Anyone can become a Revenant if they're willing to pay for it, but Revenants have no memory of who they were before death. Their existence is also much more fragile than that of a Corpse; they require frequent sustenance to keep from disintegrating. Any sort of raw meat will do, though human flesh is the most "nutritious." Very poor Warm families will often sell unwanted children to feeding farms, since wealthy Revenants will pay quite well for babies- older humans usually just get ground up for hamburgers. The life span of a well fed Revenant is a few hundred years, though most are not well fed, and some decay completely after about fifty.
Ghosts are the incorporeal consciousnesses of the very wealthy, as only the very wealthy can afford to be made into Ghosts. This usually only applies to Revenants, since most of the Warm are incredibly poor. However, those few Warm who can afford to become Ghosts can choose to retain their memories; most don't, as being alive in Radrezhaea is a largely unpleasant experience.
Ghosts inhabit corporeal bodies, but when they grow tired of a body, or when the body they inhabit starts to decay excessively, they transfer to a new one. Warm families can also sell unwanted children to body farms for Ghosts to choose as new hosts. Being posessed kills the original inhabitant of the body and effectively turns the body into a Revenant, albeit a very hungry Revenant. Ghost bodies decay even faster than normal Revenants, but host bodies are cheap and plentiful. Body farms breed live humans specifically for the purpose of serving as hosts, but a Warm One doesn't have to live on a body farm to be vulnerable to Ghost possession. The living have very few rights in Radrezhaea; in fact, the only right they really have is the right to not be eaten before being sold to a feeding farm.
Walker and Muse are a whole category unto themselves; Theron gave them both a piece of his soul when he created them. This was monumentally stupid of him, but you've got to give the guy a break; he was a little bit preoccupied with being really fucking crazy at the time.
Stuff happens during Stella's story, though I'm not entirely sure what; possibly, when Stella became a Revenant, Muse screwed up with her memories, or Theron accidentaly gave her a piece of his soul. Either way, she becomes a seer and becomes the figurehead of a resistance movement of sorts. She finds Razhia and convinces her to help them fix things. This part of the story takes place in my stupid generic fantasy world's equivalent of the eighties or late seventies; Radrezhaea is technologically behind the rest of the world, but they've still got some fairly nasty weapons. Rothcar has nukes and an itchy trigger finger, particularly since Radrezhaea's hordes of hungry zombies have been sitting on its doorstep for several decades.
Anyway, more stuff happens, and Theron, Walker, and Mih regain their memories and their souls. Bren threatens to never speak to Theron again if he doesn't clean up the mess he made (Because dude, zombies? Not cool.) and Theron does, by breaking the power well of the Voyancy. (This relates back to the stupid, nonsensical history of the country, but the very first Voyance used the much smaller power well of his time to ascend to godhood; even though Theron has been drawing on it constantly for a few centuries, he's barely managed to scratch the surface of it. Fuck, the damn thing could be sentient for all I know; I don't really have this part plotted at all.) Releasing all of that power pretty much disintegrates every living thing except the people standing right next to Theron at the time, including Razhia, who sacrifices her own power base to keep the blast from spilling over into the neighboring countries. (Stupid gods. They screw up all of my storylines.)
Bren's kind of pissed at Theron, but he has to admit that everything is kind of squeaky clean. There's probably a few more deus ex moments to wrap everything up, and then we enter the Aftermath part, which is apparently the only part I'm even remotely interested in writing. *facepalm*
When Theron gives up the Voyancy and initiates the Fourth Cataclysm, he loses his abilities as an Unraveler. He regains his powers as an arcanist, though, so while he can't create Revenants anymore, he can animate dead bodies the way a normal Necromancer would. He doesn't, though; he's kind of leery of dead things at the end of everything.
He keeps all of his scars from before his ascension to the Voyancy, which means he only has seven fingers (missing the right pinky all the way down to the third knuckle and the left ring and middle fingers to the second knuckle) and he still has a Blackmark on his chest- it's an ugly burn scar, but the runes are completely illegible.
...Feh. Now if only I could be as productive when it came to actually writing things, instead of just writing about them...*sigh*
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