Chimera Characters
Chimera is the working, maybe permanent, title for this year's NaNo. Oddly enough, there actually isn't (to my knowledge - who knows what will actually happen) actually a chimera in the story. No, we're using it the way it was used in Fullmetal Alchemist - a creature that is fused from two or more others.
Warning: The following won't make sense to anyone but me.
Now, chimeras are made by one of the five orders inhabiting this closed off little nation - we'll call their order the Blue order for now.
Yeah, look at them alchemical symbols that have nothing to do with the order other than looking awesome.
These folks are, to the common man, healers. A major ability they have to be taken for this order is that they can more or less shape flesh. They take a lot of biology, anatomy, etc classes as acolytes, but their magic makes a huuuuuge percentage of their actual success. They more or less can reform and adjust a body as they will - it's really an actually super powerful gift.
Now, on the side, they make monsters. I'm not going to go into the details on the whys and hows, but they do. And they do it by reshaping a human with certain traits to fit a model given by The Designer (shhh, it's a title) to be a monster.
Success varies depending on the innate magic of the human being converted - their will to survive has to be strong enough to force their natural magic to let them adapt and become what they are shaped into - that natural magic is the trait that the Blues look for to make their monsters.
Sometimes the Blue doing the shaping fucks up. That's how my NaNo starts this year starts. Naive little main character is assigned the duty of "fixing" a fuck up - a naga attempt. At first, the naga is a lot more along traditional lines - no arms, basically a human head on a snake body. But the MC thinks she's supposed to be really, actually fixing the naga back to human - and actually gets quite far.
And then someone checks on her progress and realizes she's got the wrong idea - so the truth is explained to her.
It's morally objectionable, even aside from the fact that she's slowly befriended the naga. Still, he work is considered good enough - stripping out the jaw thing, fixing a lot of organs, giving her back a torso and making her NOT cold-blooded, for example. So the naga is deemed ready to be released into the wild anyway.
Now, the thing is, the monsters aren't just let loose to roam around. No, right before they're freed, the shaper who worked on them tweaks their brains just enough to trigger insane aggression, targeted against humans to make them do the monster thing. This is the MC's last job; she, however, can't bring herself to do it.
The others figure that she's taking the way out offered to moral objectors - suicide by creation. But no; when her superior steps over to flip the switch in the naga's brain, MC stabs the bastard in the armpit and opens the cage, buying time for the naga to escape.
But the naga makes sure she isn't left behind.
That's the start of thing, the first Arc of the story as it stands right now.
A little fun fact - all five orders; a rule of their abilities, and a rule that must be followed if you don't want to be turned into a monster, is that your powers can't affect you. Only others.
Though, you see, that's something introduced to their culture. It's mostly in their heads. As the MC finds out later when she has to use her powers to fix herself.
Warning: The following won't make sense to anyone but me.
Now, chimeras are made by one of the five orders inhabiting this closed off little nation - we'll call their order the Blue order for now.
These folks are, to the common man, healers. A major ability they have to be taken for this order is that they can more or less shape flesh. They take a lot of biology, anatomy, etc classes as acolytes, but their magic makes a huuuuuge percentage of their actual success. They more or less can reform and adjust a body as they will - it's really an actually super powerful gift.
Now, on the side, they make monsters. I'm not going to go into the details on the whys and hows, but they do. And they do it by reshaping a human with certain traits to fit a model given by The Designer (shhh, it's a title) to be a monster.
Success varies depending on the innate magic of the human being converted - their will to survive has to be strong enough to force their natural magic to let them adapt and become what they are shaped into - that natural magic is the trait that the Blues look for to make their monsters.
Sometimes the Blue doing the shaping fucks up. That's how my NaNo starts this year starts. Naive little main character is assigned the duty of "fixing" a fuck up - a naga attempt. At first, the naga is a lot more along traditional lines - no arms, basically a human head on a snake body. But the MC thinks she's supposed to be really, actually fixing the naga back to human - and actually gets quite far.
It's morally objectionable, even aside from the fact that she's slowly befriended the naga. Still, he work is considered good enough - stripping out the jaw thing, fixing a lot of organs, giving her back a torso and making her NOT cold-blooded, for example. So the naga is deemed ready to be released into the wild anyway.
Now, the thing is, the monsters aren't just let loose to roam around. No, right before they're freed, the shaper who worked on them tweaks their brains just enough to trigger insane aggression, targeted against humans to make them do the monster thing. This is the MC's last job; she, however, can't bring herself to do it.
The others figure that she's taking the way out offered to moral objectors - suicide by creation. But no; when her superior steps over to flip the switch in the naga's brain, MC stabs the bastard in the armpit and opens the cage, buying time for the naga to escape.
But the naga makes sure she isn't left behind.
That's the start of thing, the first Arc of the story as it stands right now.
A little fun fact - all five orders; a rule of their abilities, and a rule that must be followed if you don't want to be turned into a monster, is that your powers can't affect you. Only others.
Though, you see, that's something introduced to their culture. It's mostly in their heads. As the MC finds out later when she has to use her powers to fix herself.
Comments
Post a Comment