[Manaverse] Heaven's Duality ~ Serpent of Heaven

Sing the song of the land's disaster,
The wrath of heaven upon the earth.

Fear drives the people ever faster,
Cycling to the land's rebirth.

Grace and hatred in the sky entwining,
The beast awakens, its soul unbound.

A storm stirred by the serpent's crying,
Raging until no life is found.

​

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Hey all.

I decided now was a good time to give Heaven's Duality a test run and what better way then with the literal first roleplay plot of the canon?

Now, as you can tell from the title, this is a Manaverse roleplay and some prior knowledge of how the Manaverse works is recommended, but not required. It takes place on my planet Vindrgard, which you can read up on here: http://manaverse.zejroleplaying.org/index.php?title=Vindrgard (The page is a work in progress, but it gives the general gist of things).

The premise of Serpent of Heaven is that the first Nidhoggr, Kienaii, is instigating the Renewal Cycle and the end of the era. The roleplay mostly concentrates on survival, but there is an active plot and you're free to do as you wish otherwise. It's kind of sandbox-y while still having a storyline and goal.

This roleplay takes place in Vindrgard's first era, which means three things:

1. Humanity has been living on the surface of the planet alongside the Atchi'taii and has not reached the Crystal Network yet.
2. Technology is fairly primitive, but there is some magic use. It's not quite to the level of planets during SCT, but this is several thousand years before SCT anyway.
3. The Renewal Cycle has never happened before and nobody will see this coming.

I'm not sure if I will be using profiles in this roleplay; probably not, and if I do it'll be minimal. This is a bit more "casual" in nature than later Heaven's Duality plots are planned to be and thus I'm going to be fairly informal about the organization of it. On the other hand, I do want to keep actual character quality decent instead of having a bunch of cardboard cutouts running around in this kind of plot and I reserve the right to express my concerns if I feel that you're not fit for this setting. (This is limited to a couple of people in particular so it's unlikely that people expressing interest will run into this issue.)

It's 5:30am when I'm writing this and I probably missed something context-heavy so if you have any questions just ask. Overall there isn't much prior knowledge required aside from what's on the page I linked, but it's bet to be safe.

Also, only Vindrite humans in this please. Vindrgard has very minimal interplanetary contact even after technology advances and I haven't established the Taii enough to feel comfortable letting someone play one.

 

Vindrgard is based partly around mythology, hence some of the terms I've used in the creation of that page. The most important part of the article is the bit about the Renewal Cycle; the pantheon uses a particular dragon each era (dubbed the Nidhogg/Nidhoggr) to destroy civilization so the survivors can rebuilt it to be better. What they're trying to accomplish is to perfect humanity; as each era goes by, human civilization recovers faster and faster and their technology leaps ahead during the era itself. The majority of humanity is culled while the strongest survive, rebuild, and pass their favorable traits onto their offspring. Basically the gods are forcing evolution.

The Niddhogr- in the first era, Kienaii- itself is a Vindrite dragon (basically gigantic eastern dragons that live off large predators, Mana, and crystal) that absorbs the souls of those that it kills, before using its own soul as fuel to power a "superweapon" that Shadow came up with but won't give me details on (thankfully it is not relevant during the First Era due to the circumstances surrounding Kienaii anyway) that finishes the dragon's job. It is essentially a law of nature embodied as a mortal dragon, and is an inherent part of the cycle of the planet's rebirth.

Kienaii is canonically the most destructive of the Nidhoggrs, and her destruction of civilization is far more... harsh than even the pantheon expected (being their first attempt at it, this is to be expected, and they've gotten better tweaks to the system by the next era). Humanity could scatter to hide in the mountains and such until Kienaii is done, but this won't work for reasons that will be detailed in the roleplay itself.

Serpent of Heaven is intended to be a bit sandboxy at the beginning, and most of the details that haven't been covered here or on the article will be explained in the roleplay itself.