Hosted by @fresh citrus
#Rain World - Transcendence
honest lantern
fresh citrus
This thread will be divided between the four following parts, somewhat like seasons in some sense:
1 - Rise Of A Fall
2 - Self-Consuming World
3 - Death And Rebirth
4 - The Answer
Every Sunday a chapter will be released here.
I will add prologues for the following ones the moment i can as well.
Rise Of A Fall
Chapter 1 Prologue
… We’re here… This, all of us clearly know.
The people we grew up around, the unknown city, gradually feeling familiar as we step on, the civilization to uncover, around its social dilemmas.
They try to filter you, silently, quietly involving you in their situations to stimulate some sense of belonging in your heart, a purpose.
And so in an attempt to keep themselves thriving, surviving against something they know well… Fear.
It's not redundant… Literally everything they are uncertain about is involved, causing panic when a question is left without a solution, sometimes big, sometimes small.
By structuring themselves in the ways they can improvise their trials of coping between generations after generations, systems appear and perish.
Among all these societies and their rolling drama, certain aspects get out of their control, and its not everytime that these groups are ready to tame the new obstacle.
… Sadly, this might end with a complete restriction of the topic, either by physical repression…
Or turning it into a Taboo.
Far easier to put a censor than to deal with whatever is being concealed, hidden from public sight.
Yet… When do allow this aspect emerge into every single stumble into the road domain, over boiling the lives of your own countrymen…
That turns out to be far more than a simple inconvenience… Reaching the point of ending entire communities, or even species.
Here… It has achieved the degree of destroying our planet, more than once…
Who was here before us we probably will never know…
But the lesson they have taught us was more important than any title, prestige, commodity, pleasure and sense of power anyone could ever wish for.
… This is the Rain of our World.
upbeat musk
```
Rise Of A Fall
Chapter 1 Prologue
… We’re here… This, all of us clearly kn...
"The lesson they have taught us"? (This is a suggestion for a correction btw)
Also the last line. Cheesy. 
fresh citrus
Chapter 1 - Before Us
We have always spoken about the Ancients and their splendor… Structures taking sights everywhere they have set foot, orchestrating the world as they intended, in many ways, compared as entities.
Everything that came up with their technological prowess is a bliss for those that existed after them, at least for those that praise them for their achievements.
Although… How do these simple tribalistic groups manage to make such a jump this fast? As much as it sounded impossible, it was all but true and a wonder.
That is what was believed by the following generations at least… History often is told by the victorious side, while the ones that remain behind, vanish in the dust and mystery that the time between each gap forms.
As much as intriguing it is to chit-chat about their doings and formulate endless concepts and theories about their decisions… We are not here to speak of them, not yet at least.
As generations exist, so do past civilizations.
But where? Obviously, nothing remains or gives a clue of who was here before, that is if it even has one.
Fortunately, it actually does… Therefore, here I am, a remnant of one… Nightcat Anye.
I saw the peril of everything that I used to love be corroded by continuous misfortune, even after their demise it still does.
…Everything began about 50250 Years ago… When my people, Valstayans, were still thriving here.
A civilization that came way before this one I have stumbled into…I will start slow though, there is a lot I'm still not sure of how to say about…
And not that getting into much details matters anymore, they are gone… And as much as I miss them, things have to move on.
I originate from a species they genetically changed to save from a massive extinction… It may sound funny, but it was domestic cats.
This world here was very different back then… A place where there are sudden peaks of evolution and everything there was a potential menace.
Their gigantic cities were often attacked by wild animals trying to contest territory with them, despite having their zones well-preserved and cared for.
As much as we articialized many things and replaced a few forests with our constructions, everything was necessary to keep us alive, carefully planned without trying to make our situation even worse.
A lot of species were dying while trying to readapt, and this world began to show signs that it was becoming too unstable to sustain life, with all these abrupt transformations from both man and nature.
Despite this, there weren't any efforts to actually leave this planet, everyone was merely trying to survive it at this rate… But I was still going to unveil this myself.
This was a very chaotic time I had to go through… A good part of it was me trying to survive, keep myself hidden and out of harm… I was a coward, I have to say.
What can I do though? I can die, unlike the ones here.
Let 's see… Although cats were modified to have better chances of survival… They didn’t necessarily make us smarter, wanting to keep the domestic side.
Also I think they didn’t want to see us struggling the same way they were, like, I was a stray cat between this… I got separated from my family in one of these raids, not that I was abandoned.
It was scary to not understand what was going on, nor get assured when it was safe to move or not… I wandered around the wilds for days, hesitant to take initiative anywhere before I found another city.
Faerge-Lurslai was the cosmopolis of this entire people, it's where most of them worked on technological advance, used to gather a lot of students and professors like it was a functional university.
Fortunately it wasn’t exclusive for these, there were sanctuaries that refugees could go to… As I was in their point of view a pet, I ended up in an exclusive house for adoption.
When I was 7 he finally brought me outside the house I was being kept in, the first time I had some freedom to see my surroundings without the stress of being lost.
It was strange to live so close to a research laboratory, the industrial architecture of the surroundings was very gothic, their facilities extended between some houses too… It's where Duradarf worked most of the time too.
These structures required a constant checkup to avoid any volatile substances or experiments in testing leaking to outside, probably was an exhaustive job for him.
… There weren't a lot of kids roaming around, the parents were quite protective knowing that at any time another raid could happen, they had to be cautious.
I wonder if they had a proper childhood despite the situation going on, but anyway…
Being a peeker, I used to stay in public areas where people shared knowledge, sometimes in libraries by depositing books or plazas where they did speeches.
It was lovely to see nobody didn’t judge anyone at all, nor tried to argue or trash-talk about any shit they ended disagreeing with.
Personally it was the best they could offer as an utopia, nobody there was an air-head at all, there was little inconvenience between, even the kids were smart.
Although most of the parts of their cities consisted of humans, I guess I have seen a few bioengineered species too?
I can’t remember well, I was too young and silly… I mean, cat mind?
Still, I could learn their language and what they were saying somehow… They were impressed too, although they were aware it was possibly a sudden mutation.
They tested me a bit upon it, I didn’t mind, security came at first, this I already knew by observing their somewhat strict routines.
Eventually I could blend up among their society as a new type of sapient species… Props for the guy that still kept me around his house too while I tried to organize myself as such.
About a decade around their stuff, I created interest with bioengineering, despite being far complex to me.
So I went to smaller steps, being a field researcher was one of them… Especially with me having a nocturnal habit and used to being a sneaky bastard.
For some reason most of the raids that the surrounding animals used to happen when it was daytime, never figured out why, neither the researchers managed to.
I went to that research laboratory around the district in an attempt to get a job, but had to pass through training first, and some trials to prove I could be useful.
On my first three trips I was accompanied by six other people… I don’t remember anymore what our training involved but I guess I still remember their names.
Sira, about 19 at the time, was a student from another city in Valstaya… I think it was from Varastoyo, they were formerly known to specialize bonatists as they were healthcare suppliers for at least 13 states.
Nastor, a 23 year old weirdo boy, didn't learn much of him as he died on the second trip, crushed by a Stone Lizard… He was a hunter trying to learn how to develop better trap systems against the raiding creatures.
Maybe he was trying to get support to approve personal projects… Anyone could collaborate but had to pass through these trials to be able to validate these.
Ernok… I would rather to not talk about this fucker yet.
Not that I didn’t like him when we first met, actually he seemed to be quite an enjoyable company, derpy too.
Sheluk, 20 years old, was agender and turned into one of the members of the research team I entered… Good companion, was quite dedicated in the team, assuming co-leadership in a few years.
Sometimes I do wonder if they had trust issues or trauma out of these raids, they seemed tense every time they heard sounds from the wilds that remembered animals.
After I passed through the basic training as a researcher by exploring the external areas, I could enter into the world where I felt comfortable to be…
Damn… Their underground facilities were beautiful… Every city of theirs had one, part of it was used as emergency shelters, at least half of it was for the main function of the city, and the rest was entertainment.
I swear that every single one of these had a generator close to a particle accelerator room and fighting arenas on each side.
Now it's time to see if I recall a situation correctly…
About a year later I was officialized as a researcher, I was sent on a first expedition to study some minerals around a not so distant mine of our city, but frequently occupied by creatures.
The objective was to look for more resistant materials to fortificate their walls, so they wouldn’t have to worry about Trampling Boars.
These things were like 6 feet tall, easily made holes between houses… Yep, I saw it myself, and not in the most safe spot for it, rightfully being a target!
Anyway… I was sent with a group of three people, Sheluk and a guy named Belmont… Surely these people were getting names from Earth.
Yes we had telescopes and satellites that could explore other galaxies… Earth is the closest one with actual life here… I’m not entirely sure if we can rely on them but hey, they are trying to communicate around space.
We got some golden disco they threw, I know it is from their planet based on the languages we managed to learn from their side.
Returning to the expedition…
Pfft… Belmont was not so lucky and ended up being stung a lot, 32 times from what I counted… These bees weren’t poisonous but were a pain in the ass.
But it was funny to see his pouty face looking at us two and saying like, ‘Really? Did you all go ahead and left me behind to deal with this?’
I said it was his fault for clearly not identifying the tree and not paying attention to us signalizing it all the time! We just ran because he got their attention.
What did he expect? These bees don’t lose their stings! Only he could have done was to leave their territory.
Man gave quite a banter about it, but we moved on anyway… He gave a middle finger for both of us about the half of the trip, hilarious.
It was not the only thing we found around it, but we managed to avoid these things with no issues, all they had to do was to follow my steps.
What was most interesting about this was to find old glyphs from thousands of years ago.
None of them but me could translate the symbolic meaning of these, I got used to old languages I learned from the speeches so long ago.
As much as we was in a hurry before more creatures came up, I decided to camp around and let them go once we got what we wanted, fuck that, i wouldn’t lose a chance to not scamp more lost knowledge.
If I recall correctly, this was the following translation I got from the 6 languages I perceived…
‘Struggling in the ruins of another that soon enough will turn us into dust in this tormentous weather, here I am reflecting and thinking on what we could have done better’.
‘It has little to no use at this point for us, but maybe for the following ones it can be left as a message… Don’t let your people fall in the same mistakes mine did’.
‘Becoming desperate, we all started to create answers for our problem, no matter how absurd it did sound to be in practice, censoring what limited our choices’.
‘That, when we clearly had a chance to leave this place before our situation became unbearable and out of control, as if we were invincible at this point’.
‘We all abused our relentless power over nature and attempted to play as gods by overwriting every single thing that once used to be a home for us.’
‘But eventually worlds dry out, trying to restore their entropy by getting rid of whatever is at its surface to give space for the new, forcing change’.
There always is a before for every civilization's history, but seeing different languages sharing the same tale…
This might have happened to all of these, it was a big facade that woke me up, a warning from the past that we were running out of time to leave.
We wouldn’t be more or less than a rock for the next one, this was not so far to happen.
So a space era began to be a must for us, we couldn’t look back to what we were about to leave behind, this is already a dead land.
I brought this information to the research team I was assigned as an important matter to be considered…
Surprisingly, I was very well received despite still being a newbie, or at least I thought I still was… They gave me an entire facility and team to work around it.
As much as I was unsure about it, I could not disappoint them.
So I was giving everything I could do to help these people… I was just hoping that I was not going too far in the process.
Chapter 2 Prologue
Delving in the structured analytic side of life itself and creating it out of simple particles surely is one of the greatest wonders from these scientists uncovering these roots, including myself.
Bioengineering is quite an intriguing topic when it comes to readapt organisms or your own people to disabilities or problems you can’t solve just on regular conditions.
Although, I admit some experiments done in the process of learning something new between our frailty and limitations was ethically controverse, even if we supposedly could create organisms just for these ends.
Everyone deserves to have their will and freedom and yet this asks for sacrifices of your own well-being certain times, sometimes the life.
As much I was excited to be a scientist, the much I was worried to not cause any disturbance to anyone, I just want to help, not to be a butcher in a privileged cover.
This is probably how some of the biggest inventors might have felt when their doings ended up being more dangerous than what they first thought.
I wonder if this double-edged sword was worth all the time considering the risks we all came through.
Chapter 2 - Countdown
Damn, what I wouldn’t do to live again all these moments I had around them to repair what I've done.
The days as a leader of bioengineering research wasn’t really bad to be honest, it went quite well.
Every day was a stretch, but also never disappointed any of them.
Our campaigns in different regions to develop new specimens around this dangerous world was pretty entertaining, ironically.
As much we tried though, the main matter we had at hands was still a very, long-term task.
We would need to work in several steps before ever going to space in complete safety.
First, we required a combustible easily manufacturable there, normal gasoline, biodiesel, ethanol or any of the other reagents we had wouldn’t do.
Second, even if this sounded like a bad idea, we required a way to maintain a small ecosystem to grow our common supplies, such as food, water, oxygen.
Third, the vehicle or vehicles we would use to move around would have to be resistant against spatial hazards and be easy to repair if anything happened.
Electromagnetic radiation, debris, black holes, nebulae, vision, auditive and cognition alterations thus blood loss would be a lot to think on.
Fourth, we would also require a complementary gain of resources there, regardless of the manner we would have to do so, idle asteroids and planets being obvious enough, as comets would be too risky to approach.
Fifth, a route must exist before our departure, we can’t just go blind around and hope we find something, that would be foolish.
Sixth, before confirming where we would set, studying the planet would be a better idea, even if we were quite distant, we had ways to observe and gather data from other places, like, Valstayans observed Hefia, Earth.
These could have been potential spots, that if Hefia wasn’t being raided and Earth wasn’t already occupied and its people very obnoxious, fighting for a lot of stupidity, diplomacy would be unlikely there for now.
I don’t mean to offend them with it, but we are in a tight spot already, we won’t want to take the risk to be explored beyond the intelectual limits, being outsiders.
Seventh, since we potentially would stumble in other space travelers, no matter the reason we would need to guarantee we wouldn’t attract unwanted attention and be unseen the most as we would be.
At last, we needed a way to guarantee we would colonize planets, since we could be in places that don't favor our physical necessities or could be caught off-guard during the new beginning.
The problem is, at the same time we had to defend ourselves from the increasing amount of threats in our own world, as these sometimes paralyzed sectors, even entire cities and trading routes.
Our most emergent issue was to deal with these, as it was still possible to manage the defenses we had, just needed some gatherers to supply us.
For this, we had to be able to defend them from attacks during the way back, as ther would be slower in the extraction, so our first research began with bioengineering supersoldiers.
Faerge-Lurslai already had more than enough to start making these, just had to kickstart it myself, while this i kept the first step for space traveling as a minor, but secondary task for a small group.
So from there the countdown for our civilization began, one we didn’t know when it was going to end, this was unsettling, but we couldn’t just sit down and wait.
Humans were quite foolish a big part of the time, but very determined to seek their objectives, both from here and Earth, it was interesting how it could evolve.
Anyway… I think I still have a recording I made during the bioengineering of the supersoldiers, it was around the time we had to decide their base genetic composition of the species chosen on it.
[Video Record Serial Number 001 - 30928/10/18]
Nightcat is in the middle of a huge laboratory, sitting in a debriefing desk surrounded by 7 other bioengineers.
They seem to have been debating for quite a while as she decides to record it in the middle of the conversation.
The video tags the name of the persons that appear on it.
She flips the camera as they talk…
First she directs it to a red haired man with glasses and blue eyes, probably around 43 years old, he’s talking to a pink haired woman with tattoos of dragons in her arms and face, certainly in her early 30’s.
Surgutorth (Male): Nah i don’t think that a gorilla shape would aid on it, of course they’re tough, but agility around it seem to be most necessary.
Surgutorth: Although i can agree with your idea about adding aerial based creatures, the better they can survive the less we have to waste.
Ermione (Female): I know, but have you seen these lizards and armadillos? You're gonna need brute strength to deal with that!
A blue haired man got involved in their speech, there is nothing much special besides a huge scar he got in the face from an accident in a research for medicinal herbs.
Azureth: Don't you all think we should also make them not look so menacing in appearance too? People are already startled around all of it, they might think these are a new threat from nature in their stress.
Nightcat: Hey guys I’ll have to leave for a while, can someone with my camera real quick?
Azureth: Did something happen?
Nightcat: I was called by the council about the Particle Accelerator room I wanted to have access to, but I will leave this recording, then I will check this later, once the brainstorm is done please turn it off, it will save.
Sheluk is in this reunion, and they approach Nightcat...She is in her late 50, and has a black robe, unlike the other bioengineers, she’s from a well known family line that have great bioengineers.
Sheluk: Okay lady… Go ahead, I'll pick it for ya.
Nightcat: Thanks friend… I'm gonna get some breakfast for everyone on my return, see you all soon.
Nightcat then proceeds to leave the laboratory as she hands over the camera to Sheluk.
While this, a black haired man take word, he seems rather new around this group, possibly in his late 20’s.
Oberos: I suppose she’ll take a while, considering what she said… They don’t grant that room to anyone out of the blue.
Sheluk: Oh? Why is it?
Oberos: Last time someone tried to make experiments there almost created a black hole, since then it created a discrepancy of who can access it or not.
Azureth: Well… SURELY this is an obvious motive to restrict that guy, but why even her? Aren't we supposed to be working on anything to save our people?
Oberos: Yes… But any precaution is needed considering the same question too.
Oberos: Although she clearly seems to know what she’s doing, they want to see it themselves.
He points to Sheluk.
Oberos: Your father was a good creator, but his methods were controversial.
Sheluk seems rather offended, but she shrugs it off.
Sheluk: Isn’t what we do here exactly what you said? I meannn…
Sheluk: We are trying to do something that is thought of as an impossible task, but also if we limit ourselves to what we have, we are getting nowhere.
Ermione: True…Slowly our people are creating a taboo around progress and we’re grounded to what? Being able to reach our moon?
Ermione: We have to try, cause we’re getting stuck.
Azureth: …Sadly, I have to agree with this.
Azureth: We can’t be conservative anymore, about time to discover what still remains to dig.
Surgutorth: Yeah, it makes sense to me.
Surgutorth: Honestly as much as we are already unified, some digma’s we still hold are preventing us to
move on.
Surgutorth: Like Anye showed us way before, the people that existed before us died when they clearly could go away.
A yellow long haired female speaks, she sounds like she is 37, but is currently 40.
Ier’Mevern: But weren't they trying to do too much too? That’s the true issue we are dealing with.
Oberos: That’s my reason to not go further as well, greediness.
Ier’Mevern: We are not in the position to try to be bold.
The last person, a female about 28 Years old with red hair and a glass eye, decided to talk.
Noktol: …Are we all going to decide something here or keep spitting venom?
Noktol: We have to decide something anyway, and I don't give a damn, we’re just debating and getting stressed.
Oberos: … Alright… Are we going to focus on the efficiency side of things to speed up our efforts or keep cautious and balance things gradually?
The voting ended in 4 against two in favor to keep cautious.
Oberos: So be it… We will give the focus to the objective of bioengineering, considering the increasing amount of attacks.
Oberos: I know it sounds like a bad decision, but we can’t just allow this to kill more people and compromise any of our research sectors, that will be our doom.
Oberos: The city must survive… Let’s go back to work.
Sheluk: Ah… Guess that 's it Anye.
[End Of Video]
…I think they made some oopsies in the moral aspects of the things here when they decided to prioritize the functional side of the soldiers.
How are we going to keep in touch and give orders to something that might not listen to us when the edge of these situations come at them?
But I couldn’t argue back against it, we needed to push these threats off in a hurry, as much it could sacrifice the social side and make it difficult later.
In the time being, the first objective of our quota to set colonies was fluxing quite well after I got the room for testing with Antimatter.
We always messed up with it, but never for practical uses besides healthcare, since it was a struggle to keep it active besides a few minutes before poofing.
That is, until i fucked up the room entirely and worked.
I was trying to analyze the effects Antimatter had in different combustibles and ores, but i brought many at once that had a wild reaction in the room, causing it to explode.
I managed to get out of course, or I wouldn’t be here.
My first thought was, ‘Fuck sake, i’m in trouble’, then i checked the room to see how much damage was done.
There was something floating around it, a weird glowing golden and dark liquid.
Reminding myself of the Antimatter, I decided to study its properties, first throwing a ball of paper on it… It melted away immediately.
Surely this was Antimatter but it never faded away, it just stayed there… Although I got scolded for this, I caught their curiosity and left me to explore it.
Let 's see, I have a note of it around my diary…
“I have used a particle accelerator room again, but now that one is near the planet core.
Should have brought more water, ew.
Anyway, something gooey and goldish came out of the materials I left in another one, then brought its sample to another sector in a city.
What the fuck is this? It's like I am touching air, but also behaving like a liquid…
That thing melted away the glove I used to touch it very quickly, and it generates surprising amounts of energy.
I substituted a factory generator propane for this, and it is still working for weeks with no refilling.
…I should take notes of what it contains…
35% of it is Sulfur, 13% Silicon, 8% Hydrocarbons, 4% Phosphates… 40% Antimatter…
None of it is what I left here before, except this last thing…
Odd alteration… But I finally made it… I transformed antimatter into something stable for use.
While I can't quite figure out what it has turned into now… I have always been wondering what all these weird acid pools would be able to give us but now…
This, some substance that behaves very differently than the former physics…
… For now I'll placehold a name as Void Fluid, not official, just a slang… I can only wonder what this will allow us to build.”
From that day… Building stuff was no longer a problem.
I have officialized it as Stable Antimatter, but well, when I managed to finally give it some state we could manipulate, everything became easy to do.
Every form of it had a different reaction to the things around, the liquid seemed to do the same as usual, but limited to its space.
The gaseous was very toxic to even be close to it, so we avoided this form since it was too volatile.
Now… The solid shape worked perfectly for defense, it was extremely useful to create durable structures and effective weapons based on it.
Around a few months, we substituted entire cities with Solid Antimatter, which gave us a long time of peace to work on the long-term task right away.
This was our golden era.
fair otter
Joining :3
carmine yacht
Whoa. This is a big chapter! Are you ever gonna put this on AO3?
fresh citrus
¤Not sure, i actually wanted to make it a DLC or some mod and don't know what would happen there.¤
timber island
Gonna make my stand here and will wait for updates
fresh citrus
Chapter 3 Prologue
Hard times create opportunities, opportunities create strong people, strong people create good times, good times create weak people, weak people create hard times.
How many others have seen it and said that it's a generic phrase? Many for sure, but how many have taken the words seriously? Not much.
When you get familiar with something that now is part of your days it becomes shallow and open for carelessness, eventually stopping paying attention to changes when comfort firmly reaches you.
I guess this is why a constant flux exists, we’ll always be unable to preserve peace as things come and go, people, environmental threats, technologies…But it's something needed to keep things interesting.
Sometimes we find a rock in our way that is troublesome but can manage with what we have with no problems, working around it before it becomes a huge snowball.
Other times, we barely notice the challenge it is to get through some, either because we know something has to be done about an issue or it's out of our control.
Sacrifices are made to keep the most things we need or satisfy our civilizations, not letting them become hopeless or too discontent.
Unfortunately, we are doomed to fail in our survival one day, only never knowing when, all we can do is prosperate, until we no longer can.
This is the beginning of our end.
¤ Transfered the stuff from here @carmine yacht .¤
carmine yacht
saw ya do it!
you can still use this thread if you like, by the way... the hope is that forums will be more visible, though!
fresh citrus
¤ https://discord.com/channels/291184728944410624/1268785274637516810 chapter 3 released. ¤