Subj: [ffml] [HD] The collective works of impressive imagery Date: 01-01-04 05:56:41 EST From: darklord@compusmart.ab.ca (His Dark Lordship) Reply-to: ffml@egroups.com To: ffml@egroups.com (ffml), hilliondynasty@egroups.com (Hillion Dynasty) The town of Mysidia was quiet. Too quiet. Celeste looked out her window from the bedroom, having made sure that the tunic she was wearing covered her areas that she would prefer were not open to the public eye. Her long, silver locks stretched down her back. However, her face was focused still on Mysidia. Normally, the majick academy was bustling with activity. Young children that showed majickal promise would come from far and wide and often the younger ones were screaming in the streets when they really should be studying. Celeste knew it all too well, she was once one of the worst "majickal newbies." Focusing her eyes out to the far reaches of the town, she breathed a sigh of relief. Mysidia had a fairly violent history. An academy, Mysidia's population consisted mainly of youths learning to control their majickal powers. It was rare that any powerful mages would remain in the town. Then again, after about fourteen years of intense study, one could understand why one would be dying to leave the place. The unfortunate result of this was the town was poorly defended and was never capable of holding itself out in a fight. Time and time again less informed barbarians would take the town, demanding the Mysidians teach them majick, only to pillage the town in dissapointment. In the academy's three thousand years of existance, it had been under the control of almost two hundred different nationalities. So, when Celeste saw that there was no force outside the town, she was relieved. But that relief only served to trouble her more. Why was there no one out this morning? "Celeste, baby, come back to bed." muttered a voice from the bed behind her. Dan, a fairly close friend of Celeste's, turned rather violently and began snoring again. Celeste smiled. "Sorry, babe, but I'm going to see the elder." She recieved a grunt of acknowledgement. With a giggle, she slipped off her boyfriend's tunic and began to search erratically for her own clothes. Finally finding them all together, she went to the coat rack, placed on her long red coat and her red hat. Finally, she found her sword belt and strapped it on. Feeling fit to exist in the outside world, she strutted out of the dormatory and headed to the elder's house. Upon exiting the house, it quickly dawned on her why no one was out today. It was raining. She slapped herself mentally as she realized that her imagination had gotten out of control again. Drenched, she entered the elder's house. He was resting in a chair, but his eyes lit up when he saw her. "Ah, Celeste, I have been expecting you." "Have you now..." she said with a grin. "Yes. Now, what is your field of study?" Celeste looked at him fairly oddly, then smiled. "History, Mythology and Folklore." "As I thought." muttered the elder. "What can you tell me about the one known as Kefka?" "Kefka. Nobleman of Vector about eighteen hundred years ago. Initially was a just knight for the Emperor, Geshtalh. Later on, he somehow became a demented maniac who slew mystical monsters, otherwise known as espers or eidolons, for their majickal powers. It should be noted that prior to Kefka's actions, Vector had a force marching on Mysidia itself, however, a stunning discovery of extracting majickal power from these ei-" "Get to the point Celeste." Celeste blushed. Few people were interested in her knowledge about the ancient world, and she tended to babble on when she got the chance. "Kefka later aquired control of three very powerful espers who were considered goddesses. Around this time the world got a major facelift and almost died. Shortly after, Kefka was slain by a band of heroes. Kefka however ressurected himself about seven hundred years later and attempted to re-establish Magitek, that being the term coined for majick drained from espers, in Vector. However, Mog took control of Vector at the same time and Kefka re-attempted his prospects in South Figaro, to the North of Vector. Failing both of these, Kefka apparantly charged into the Moogle force south of Doma prior to the great final battle and was killed after really ticking the Moogles off, which caused the Domans to suffer considerably." Celeste took a deep breath. The elder nodded. "Would you believe that Kefka was a guest to the King of Baron's court recently?" Celeste blinked. "Kefka is alive?" "Yes. He is currently a guest to the court of a Baronian noble by the name of Aracalen. I've also been informed that they recently have departed Baron together." "If Kefka is involved, there is something wrong." muttered Celeste. "My thoughts exactly. Celeste, how long have you been practicing study?" Celeste gulped. "E..eleven years." The elder nodded. "Your instructors have informed me you are a fairly troublesome student, yet you seem to understand the schematics of your power. Am I correct?" "Y...yes." The elder nodded. "Consider yourself given a chance to do some field research then. Since you are the most well versed in the case of Kefka, I am sending you on a mission to find out what he is doing." Celeste stood aback. She, not even fully prepared to handle her majick properly, sent out to shadow one of the most dangerous people in the history of humankind? "Elder, I must pro-" "If you think you are not up to it, I can always send someone more... specialized." Celeste blinked. Then she shook her doubt out of her. If she didn't go, she knew who the elder would send, and that was something she couldn't live down. "I'll do it." "Good." smiled the elder. "You leave tommorrow. That is all." Celeste turned and left. Back into the rain, back to her dorm. On her way back, she passed an old statue of a large reptilian figure draped in the finest of robery. She stopped and looked up at it. Zoltan, first and only king of Zeal, a majickal kingdom that sprouted up around 13,000 years before. He started the majick guild, which escaped from Zeal following his death when his wife took over, and the kingdom basically began to go to hell. The same majick guild later built Mysidia. Celeste smiled at her accumulated knowledge. Then she realized she was freezing from the rain. She ran back to the dorm. Once inside, she breathed a sigh of relief and basked in the warm majickal heat that radiated from the walls. She was so into her majickal massage that she didn't notice a rather prissy looking maiden stroll up behind her. She pulled back her white hood and snarled. "So, the elder decided to go with your inferior power, huh?" Celeste opened her eyes and looked over. "Oh hi, April. How is the bitchiest white mage the world has ever known today?" "Oh, save it." muttered April through clentched teeth. "You just HAD to convince the Elder that someone a bit more well rounded was better for this Kefka job, huh? Typical." Celeste smirked. "I'd hate to piss in your bubblebath, but the elder asked me specifically to go. I'm certain you were next on the list though, so you can be happy with that." "Oh, fuck you." grumbled April. "Look, some day you're going to acknowledge me as your superior. There's no room in the higher ranks of majick for red mages." "Yeah, well, I hope all your superior healing powers do you well when you're being gangbanged by some sweaty drunks in some far away tavern." muttered Celeste as she walked off. "I'm not done talking with you." yelled April. "The hell you aren't." muttered Celeste as she slammed her door. She layed back on her bed, kicking off her boots. She was glad April didn't get the job, as she would never hear the end of it. At the same time, a certain amount of anxiety filled her mind. Here she was about to set off on a mission, most likely barely prepared at best, in search of Kefka, destroyer of nations, and she had to find out what he was doing; which meant she had to get close to him; which meant that she was basically putting her life on the line. The other thing that dogged her mind was if she was even going to bother returning. She had little love for Mysidia, and the last eleven years she had spent studying the ancient world had given her a bit of an itching to go out and see them for herself. Which is why the mission bugged her. The elder was no idiot, he probably knew of her itching to get out of mysidia, and the fact that she probably wouldn't be able to sum up the willpower to return. So, what was his intention? She just go out and disapear? Or did he feel she had the potential to finish her training in the field? She had only been up for a few hours, but already she was tired. Slowly, she drifted off into slumber. -- The eternal lord of darkness... "And if our dreams sometimes come true, then what of our nightmares?" -The undisputed Master of Final Fantasy 2 -GM of FF2c -Lord of the FFML ICQ UIN# 23424269 IRC Nicks: TheDarkLord, GannondorfDragmire, occasionally Blackthorne System: Amiga 4000/040 Cybervision64 & Opalvision ---INTEL/MICROSOFT FREE--- The Final Fantasy Mailing List: Now available in Cherry, Strawberry or Tofu ----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from rly-yg05.mx.aol.com (rly-yg05.mail.aol.com [172.18.147.5]) by air-yg05.mail.aol.com (v77.31) with ESMTP; Thu, 04 Jan 2001 05:56:41 -0500 Received: from mu.egroups.com (238.yahoo.240.211.64.in-addr.arpa [64.211.240.238]) by rly-yg05.mx.aol.com (v77.27) with ESMTP; Thu, 04 Jan 2001 05:56:17 -0500 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-5708-69514-978605294-raumkatze2=aol.com@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.53] by mu.egroups.com with NNFMP; 04 Jan 2001 10:48:16 -0000 X-Sender: darklord@compusmart.ab.ca X-Apparently-To: ffml@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_3_1_3); 4 Jan 2001 10:48:13 -0000 Received: (qmail 81080 invoked from network); 4 Jan 2001 10:48:13 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 4 Jan 2001 10:48:13 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO bernie.compusmart.ab.ca) (199.185.130.12) by mta3 with SMTP; 4 Jan 2001 11:49:18 -0000 Received: from 081.209-115-205-0.interbaun.com ([209.115.205.81]:1027 "HELO compusmart.ab.ca" ident: "darklord") by mail.compusmart.ab.ca with SMTP id <24835-11093>; Thu, 4 Jan 2001 03:48:00 -0700 To: ffml , Hillion Dynasty Message-ID: X-Mailer: YAM 2.0 [040] AmigaOS E-Mail Client (c) 1995-1999 by Marcel Beck http://www.yam.ch From: His Dark Lordship MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list ffml@egroups.com; contact ffml-owner@egroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list ffml@egroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 03:48:00 -0700 Reply-To: ffml@egroups.com Subject: [ffml] [HD] The collective works of impressive imagery Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit