Titus "blob boi" Alexius (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wearingguess) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
prismatica2020-10-08 11:27 am
wearingguess) wrote in prismatica2020-10-08 11:27 am
10/7 // video; un: laurea
[ titus's smiling face appears. it is very close to the camera. ]
Lunatia!! Amegahara, Lyestellus! Et cetera! Moonblessed and Moonheld! Hello!!
[ he makes a slight gesture, and the camera zooms out far enough to show a fuller view. anyone who knows him will notice right away that he's different! for one thing, his hair is so long that it's disappearing out of the bottom of the shot. for some others, he's wearing ceremonial silver armor and a heavy gold-trimmed cloak, and carrying an ornate golden staff taller than he is. his forearms, formerly badly cracked and set with stones, are perfectly smooth. and he looks more grown-up—though it might be hard to tell whether that's due to change in his features, or simply to his bearing. (also, subtitles to the video are appearing in real time.) ]
It is I! Titus Alexius! I have just now returned to this world! I gather that it's been three days here, just as it was three days the last time I left and then returned... Really, I wonder why it is three days?... but this time, for me, more than three years have gone by. So much has happened, and so much remains to be done, but what a gift it is to find myself once more in this place! My memories are returning all at once, and yet they are already years old... How strange and wonderful, to experience such instantaneous nostalgia...
[ abruptly, he leans forward and claps his hands together, letting the staff slip into the crook of his arm as he does so. ] In any case—honestly, I don't know how much of this is Cordis talking, but I am so, so excited to be back! I want to see and speak to you all again! I want to meet all the people I've never yet met! I want to eat, drink, and be merry! Of course, I want to moonlace—anything from handholding on up... Oh, speaking of which, I should update my profile on "the apps," shouldn't I?... ...Ah, but that can wait.
Everyone!! I will be permitted to drink them now, so please recommend your favorite alcoholic beverages! They have so many more varieties here than we do back home, and I am excited to try them, but I do know better than to sample too many at once.
Oh!! One more thing. I should like to retain the ongoing services of anyone with healing capabilities, for any compensation you deem appropriate. It's possible that I don't actually require it—perhaps the rejuvenating effect of moonlacing will be enough by itself—but I wish to err on the side of caution.
And... let's see. Please tell me the last thing that made you smile... or your favorite thing about the world of Prismatica. Or, perhaps, tell me an interesting fact! (And just so you know, my standards for what counts as interesting are extremely easy to meet.)
Lunatia!! Amegahara, Lyestellus! Et cetera! Moonblessed and Moonheld! Hello!!
[ he makes a slight gesture, and the camera zooms out far enough to show a fuller view. anyone who knows him will notice right away that he's different! for one thing, his hair is so long that it's disappearing out of the bottom of the shot. for some others, he's wearing ceremonial silver armor and a heavy gold-trimmed cloak, and carrying an ornate golden staff taller than he is. his forearms, formerly badly cracked and set with stones, are perfectly smooth. and he looks more grown-up—though it might be hard to tell whether that's due to change in his features, or simply to his bearing. (also, subtitles to the video are appearing in real time.) ]
It is I! Titus Alexius! I have just now returned to this world! I gather that it's been three days here, just as it was three days the last time I left and then returned... Really, I wonder why it is three days?... but this time, for me, more than three years have gone by. So much has happened, and so much remains to be done, but what a gift it is to find myself once more in this place! My memories are returning all at once, and yet they are already years old... How strange and wonderful, to experience such instantaneous nostalgia...
[ abruptly, he leans forward and claps his hands together, letting the staff slip into the crook of his arm as he does so. ] In any case—honestly, I don't know how much of this is Cordis talking, but I am so, so excited to be back! I want to see and speak to you all again! I want to meet all the people I've never yet met! I want to eat, drink, and be merry! Of course, I want to moonlace—anything from handholding on up... Oh, speaking of which, I should update my profile on "the apps," shouldn't I?... ...Ah, but that can wait.
Everyone!! I will be permitted to drink them now, so please recommend your favorite alcoholic beverages! They have so many more varieties here than we do back home, and I am excited to try them, but I do know better than to sample too many at once.
Oh!! One more thing. I should like to retain the ongoing services of anyone with healing capabilities, for any compensation you deem appropriate. It's possible that I don't actually require it—perhaps the rejuvenating effect of moonlacing will be enough by itself—but I wish to err on the side of caution.
And... let's see. Please tell me the last thing that made you smile... or your favorite thing about the world of Prismatica. Or, perhaps, tell me an interesting fact! (And just so you know, my standards for what counts as interesting are extremely easy to meet.)
no subject
...Your Aladdin sounds a bit like my Aang, even if other parallels don't hold up. The Avatar is the only person who can control all four elements, who is reincarnated again and again. They're responsible to keep peace in the world. But Aang ended up in hiding for a hundred years. In that time, the war began. Our friends found him and released him a century later, but... it was too late for his people. He's the last of the Air Nomads. The only airbender left in the world. He also had to travel the world to learn all the other elements, being only twelve — he'd been frozen those hundred years, not training, he only knew airbending. But he needed to master the elements in a matter of months, whereas most Avatars take years to learn. So he searched all over for teachers, kind of on a time crunch cuz of— some astronomical solar stuff related to the Fire Nation... I-In any case, I, um— I also sought out the Avatar to capture him before I ended up joining his team... For three years... and then for like half a year after I found him, just chased him from one end of the globe to the other. It took me seeing the real face of the war in doing that to realize I was fighting for the wrong side. And it also took him him some time to accept that I'd changed inside before he agreed to let me join him and teach him firebending. After that we became friends... He was kind of my first real friend, too, I guess. And now that you say it like that, we both also felt alone... and burdened by secrets... It also sounds like me and Aang. In a weird way...
It's funny you say it sounds like me and Gokudera, too, though — which it does, I mean, you're right, but...! I have a working theory that Gokudera is the Avatar in his world. So this dynamic in common between him and me and him and Aang feels like it holds up. Lots of little parallels like that. Hm~
A-Anyway! Uh, yeah! You should get closer to Gokudera and Yamamoto, they're great guys.
im sorry
The Kou empire was dedicated to the ideal of uniting the world under a single banner—via conquest and expansion—since its founding a few dozen years ago. Ren Hakuryuu was the youngest son of the first emperor; he was six years old when the palace was attacked and set afire, and his father and older brothers were killed. Hakuryuu himself barely survived, and to this day he bears scars from the terrible burns he sustained—including, by the way, one over his left eye. Which makes him the third person I have met with a burn scar over his left eye!
In any case, due to Hakuryuu's youth and the initial uncertainty as to whether he would recover, the throne passed to his uncle and the line of succession to his cousins. His mother, Ren Gyokuen, remarried Hakuryuu's uncle and remained empress.
But now I must explain the organization Al-Thamen. We now know that this was the selfsame group responsible for Alma Torran's destruction, that they survived as pure will and hatred, and that they were dedicated to calling down their dark god to destroy the new world as well. Al-Thamen was founded and led by a woman named Arba, one of the three magi of Alma Torran, who betrayed and murdered Aladdin's parents in that other world. Like Lady Scheherazade, she was capable of transferring her consciousness into new vessels in order to survive for centuries—but instead of creating clones of herself, she simply took over the bodies of her blood descendants. Her latest incarnation was Ren Gyokuen.
Al-Thamen was responsible for the attack on the palace that took the lives of Hakuryuu's father and brothers, but their involvement was completely covered up, and the attack was attributed to political enemies; subsequently, Al-Thamen rose to power and prominence within Kou as the priesthood supporting the emperor.
As the attack's sole survivor, Hakuryuu was also the only one who knew that Al-Thamen had carried it out. And he knew as well, because his brothers told him with their dying breaths, that the one behind all of it was Gyokuen—though it was many years before he could truly understand or accept that part of the truth.
So the Kou empire's power and territories continued to expand, particularly under the leadership of the first prince and general of the Western Subjugation Army, Kouen Ren—Hakuryuu's eldest stepbrother and cousin. Hakuryuu's older sister and his other cousins likewise became generals in Kou's army, and they all gained the power of djinns by claiming them from within the dungeons summoned for them by Judar, the magi and high priest of Kou and Al-Thamen. Only Hakuryuu refused to accept this power, as it was still his hidden goal to find some way to defeat Al-Thamen and take back his homeland.
Before I myself ever met Aladdin, Hakuryuu became his ally and friend, and he gained the power of his own djinn with Aladdin's support. Many other things happened as well... Hakuryuu's uncle the emperor died, so the throne was expected to pass to Prince Kouen. However, Gyokuen instead crowned herself and took direct control of the empire for the first time. By this time Judar too had secretly turned on Al-Thamen after realizing they had manipulated him since birth. He and Hakuryuu joined forces to conquer another dungeon, and then to execute a coup and kill Gyokuen. Hakuryuu then declared himself emperor and took over Al-Thamen's remnant using his second djinn's power to control minds. He cut ties with Aladdin, and they fought a fierce battle in which both Judar and Aladdin's king vessel were lost.
Meanwhile, after receiving news of Hakuryuu's coup, Kouen also declared himself emperor and led the massive force of Kou's subjugation armies, which were loyal to him, in a campaign to retake the capital. All the other dungeon conquerors of Kou sided with him as well, and it seemed impossible that Hakuryuu could triumph; he commanded a much smaller army and no longer had the support of a magi. However, by marshaling all the strength of his djinns, the remains of Al-Thamen, and the strategic alliances he formed in secret... he claimed victory.
Of course, Hakuryuu had no interest in continuing to expand and conquer the entire world. The alliance he had joined became the basis for the International Alliance, and as its power increased, Kou's diminished. Hidden threats rose at the heart of the alliance, and Hakuryuu and Aladdin joined hands once more and went into hiding... Many further things happened... Judar and Aladdin's king vessel returned... nearly everyone in the world had our wills rewritten when the Singularity seized control of the Sacred Palace... and then the ultimate threat was finally defeated through the destruction of the magi system and departure from the world of all 72 djinn, who were, of course, originally the leaders of the peoples of Alma Torran.
Now the world is in complete disarray, and we are all doing very well, Hakuryuu included! He even has all his limbs back. I wish you could meet him!
If Gokudera is an analog to the Avatar, perhaps he is something like a magi as well! Please tell me what makes you think so.
1/2 omg thank you for your time and effort, im honored lol. one of my own kind— so many words lol.
[ He sighs. This is the official point of confirmation of their friendship, that he listened to all this at all. Zuko's practice in patience in Lunatia is... always being challenged by good people, it seemed... ]
You know I had to replay that, like... three times? I took notes, okay, so I wouldn't forget some points! Just to make sense of it! I think you just said more in one message than I have all day! At least!
[ Ayyy, kid's got (always half-true) jokes, he's opening up, clearly. ]
I feel like a little kid listening to a fairy tale. I have so many questions about your world, you say so many words I don't know... like djinns and Singularity... I don't know about the "dungeons," either... But it's fine, it's fine. We'll gloss over it for now.
Okay, then. So let me get this straight— I probably got a lot of these details wrong, but whatever, that's your fault.
[ what how. welcome to friendship with Zuko. very nice. ]
Alma Torran was destroyed by Al-Thamen, an insurgent group led by a magi named Arba. A nation called the Kou Empire sought to “unite” the world by military force, expanding its reach by occupation of all the other nations. So Al-Thamen sought to gain control of the Kou Empire next, and destroy it. Arba then reincarnated herself as a woman named Gyokuen, who married the Kou Emperor, and plotted with Al-Thamen to assassinate the emperor and all their sons. However, by some twist of fate, the youngest prince Hakuryuu survived, although he sustained serious burns... and a scar over his left eye... His brothers told him their mother was secretly responsible for arranging their murders. After Gyokuen’s plot succeeded, Al-Theman created positions of power for themselves as priests in the Kou Empire, led by another magi, the high priest Judar, more relevant later... Gyokuen continued her reach for power by marrying the late Emperor's brother. All his children, Prince Hakuryuu's cousins and now stepsiblings — that's royal family trees for you, ha — they were all great military leaders. Regardless, Gyokuen usurped the eldest's rightful place on the throne once the second Emperor died — I assume Gyokuen had him assassinated, as well — and she crowned herself Empress. Only Hakuryuu knew the truth behind Gyokuen's actions, and vowed to defeat his mother and Al-Thamen to reclaim his homeland. The high priest, Judar, realized that he'd been disillusioned by Al-Thamen, and joined forces with Hakuryuu. Once he killed his mother, Prince Hakuryuu gained control of Al-Thamen, and declared himself the Kou emperor. His eldest cousin, though, General Kouen, was also the rightful heir to the throne. Once he heard his stepbrother had dethroned his stepmother, he sought to usurp him in turn. Hakuryuu commanded a small coup against Kouen's armies, but against all odds, Hakuryuu's revolution won out. As emperor, he ended the Kou Empire’s military expansion, and formed the International Alliance to work toward peace, I take it... But it, too, became corrupted — that also checks out, heh. So once they were aware of the internal threats, Hakuryuu rejoined with Aladdin... But why did they go into hiding? Had the traitors within the Alliance hired a hit on them both? What were the threats? Did Hakuryuu stay in power? You said the world is in disarray, though, but that he's well... How's that? And he lost all his limbs — how?! And how did he regain them?
There's a lot else you said that didn't make sense — but I think I got the gist otherwise? Right?
2/3 jk i lied, they're bonding, quintessential "talk on the phone 5eva" teenage friendship, aww~ \o/
A century ago, Fire Lord Sozin began the Fire Nation's expansion. The Avatar opposed him, so he killed him, and ordered for the extermination of the Air Nomads, knowing the Avatar would be reborn as an airbender. But Aang had run away before this order was made, and survived, hidden in an iceberg in the South Pole, unbeknownst to anyone. The world thought the Avatar had died forever. Meantime, Fire Lord Azulon carried on his father's violent tradition. Azulon had two sons, and Ozai was the younger. The Crown Prince had been an esteemed general, but he abandoned a siege he'd led on the capital of the Earth Kingdom for 600 days, in mourning after his only son died in battle... So Ozai went to their father begging to be made Crown Prince in his brother's stead, since he'd been disgraced for his surrender and no longer had a bloodline. Azulon punished his son for such a cruel suggestion by ordering him to pay the same price his brother had, by killing his own only son, but Ozai's wife convinced him to spare their child's life. That same night, she mysteriously disappeared, Azulon suddenly died, and Ozai was crowned Fire Lord instead of his older brother, by their father's "dying wish..." All at once. This was only five years ago. But now that the Avatar has miraculously returned, there is hope in the world again that the Fire Nation may finally be overthrown, after a century of corruption and pain. The Avatar's army is small, almost nothing compared to the power of the Fire Nation's army and navy and advanced weapons technology, but hopefully like Prince Hakuryuu's coup, I think against all odds, we'll win. And I know I'm fighting for the real greater good by joining them now.
As to my theory that Gokudera's an Avatar: honestly, I'd love to tell you about it, but it's not my place to tell his story. I can't really share enough details without betraying his trust. But believe me, I have a strong case. Besides, I'd probably talk for even longer than you if I tried! There are lots of weird little parallels and fine details that can't be attributed to anything but destiny.
also i just like the image of zuko lying in bed kicking his legs as he talks into his phone, lol qt~
Except Uncle, he doesn't count, because he counts so much.Clearly, it takes too much explanation... But hey, they've gotten this far. And Titus already knows Gokudera, after all... Even though he's already been talking so long, himself, Titus should feel lucky for this rarest of occasions that Zuko wants to open up about his own thoughts and feelings; this isn't just talking about politics and war. He can't resist talking about his ideas surrounding Gokudera, that's the bottom line. ]So... I told you how I searched for the Avatar for so long, even though he hadn't been seen for a hundred years, but I knew it was my destiny to find him. Destiny never turns out how you think it will, though... and like you and Aladdin, once I finally found him, Aang became my first true friend.
[ Pause for feelings. His voice is a little tentative, but again, sounds gradually more excited, a lot more than he's sounded in any other moment he's talked to Titus or... anyone else, probably. With the exception of the bomber in question, perhaps. He's clearly not just excited to be talking about Avatar stuff. ]
What are the chances, then, that I get spirited away to some alien planet — talk about destiny surprising us, first of all! And the first friend I make here ends up being this amazing guy, who I just click with immediately like no one I've ever met before, and he also has all these crazy cool powers that just so happen to give me reason to suspect he's an Avatar from another alien planet?! I mean, it's not like I just go around accusing people of being Avatars all the time! I wish I could tell you more, I swear it makes so much sense if you knew the fine details... But we'd have to have a whole separate conversation about Gokudera's world then, and how his firebending works — I mean, it's not firebending exactly, it's much different in effect, maybe like bending in the future or something, but it sounds like the same basic principle...
And what are the chances he fights with flames, anyway?! And bombs?! He's some kind of alien firebender, but he's the only one who can do what he does, and no one knows why... My theory is that his world just doesn't know about the Avatar. Maybe they've lost touch with the natural world too much, or who knows, maybe Gokudera is the first Avatar in his world! Cycle has to start somewhere, right? Anyway, there's only one Avatar at a time, so it's no wonder no one's told him! How should he know on his own? He's taught himself all the different kinds of flames he knows, just on instinct! Isn't that incredible?! Ugh, I wish I could explain it in full, but I don't wanna reveal anything more than just my hypothetical ideas... Sorry I'm rambling. It's so fascinating, though, I swear it makes sense. I know it's my destiny to find the Avatar, and that our destinies are linked as true friends — because it's happened twice, even in an alternate universe!