Completed [Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

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A city floating in the center of a lake, Ravok is a place of dark beauty, romance and culture. Behind it all though is the presence of Rhysol, God of Evil and Betrayal. The city is controlled by The Black Sun, a religious organization devoted to Rhysol. [Lore]

[Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

Postby Evarista on September 28th, 2017, 1:34 pm

33rd of Autumn, 517 A.V.

The comfort of the night-time rooftop was like sinking into a hot, relaxing bath after a hard day's work. Not that Evarista knew what hard work felt like, but the forced stay at the temple was as close to that as she has gotten yet. Being allowed to return home and engage in her habits again was unbelievably cathartic. With the slight buzz of wine in her head, she watched the familiar night-time Ravokian scenery from her vantage point, her eyes half-closed in contentment. She could stay like this for a long time.

Turning around and sweeping a lazy gaze across her beloved rooftop, she noticed something out of place on the side of the chimney. A bulging splotch of some sort... did some animal make a nest here while she was gone?

A closer inspection showed that it was indeed an animal, but not a new one. The stillness of its aura showed that it has been dead for some time.

Ah, right. It was that one bat, half-mummified under the insulating layers of silky gloop she had trapped it in. Without even noticing it herself, she began peering deeper into the faded aural corona, attracted by the uncanny immobility of it. A picture of living aura congealed by death, faded and discolored in places by the partial decay of the body. She noticed that the aura was much easier to examine, now lacking the distracting turbulence of life.

She has already examined the bat's aura quite thoroughly, but was focusing more on the wings the last time. This time, she wanted to seize the opportunity and examine the bat's echolocation apparatus - something she already had rudimentary understanding of and a lot of utility for, but that violent night at the lakeshore wasn't conductive to learning the details.

She knew she had to look at two organs: the speaker of the sound, and the hearer of the sound. Already the first one showed her that everything was much more complicated than she originally thought. Her understanding was that you shoot some kind of sound, it bounces back into your ears, and depending on when and how you hear it, you can determine the approximate size and distance of surrounding objects.

Those were the basics of it, but it was not nearly the full potential. The larynx inside of the bat wasn't made to throw one big sound, as Evarista had misinterpreted on the lakeshore back then, but many small sounds in rapid succession. It was a small muscle made to contract... extremely fast. Hundreds of times per tick, maybe. The human body, or any other body she knew, had no equivalent to this.

Now came the slightly daunting task of replicating this super-muscle with her own throat.
Last edited by Evarista on May 3rd, 2018, 7:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Shapeless Voice

Postby Evarista on September 28th, 2017, 1:35 pm

Swallowing loudly and staring intently at her model, Evarista began reshaping her own larynx to match that of the bat in structure. As she saw it, the muscle tissue was very dense with "energy factories", small building blocks present in every muscle. Their role was to produce energy, or convert something into energy, which would then fuel the muscle's movement. Compared to other muscles, the bat larynx had a vast overabundance of these. It had to be part of its secret, so that would be the first thing to add.

The energy factories themselves were nothing foreign to Evarista, so it wasn't difficult to infuse her own plain old larynx with some additional ones. She immediately felt a tingle, a tickle of sorts, as if there was an adrenaline rush rising. Her throat became tense, as if anticipating action. The massive overproduction of this "muscle energy" still went unspent. It felt like if she tried to use her voice now, she'd probably wake up half of the Noble District... but maybe that's now how it worked. After all, bat sounds weren't loud, they were completely inaudible to humans.

Truly enough, as she tried to carefully give her voice by singing a note, she couldn't hear anything. The muscles in her throat felt as strained as if she was screaming at the top of her lungs, but no sound came. Not any sound she could hear, anyway. The ominous, mildly painful tingle in her ears and the mild headache made her shut up, however. It seemed that she could deafen herself with ultrasound even if she couldn't actually hear it.

It also meant she wasn't done. There was another thing that obviously set apart the bat larynx from other muscles she was familiar with, and that was its low strength. The muscle tissue was much thinner and weaker. That's how the bat got its voice down to a manageable power level. The principle was many small sounds in rapid succession.

Thinning the voice box muscles made it easier to breathe, and relieved some of the uncomfortable adrenaline-like tension in her throat. Without opening her mouth, Evarista tried to hum a note. The tickling vibration in her throat told her that her voice worked, but she couldn't hear anything, and her ears weren't in pain. The lack of audible sound was rather uncanny; normally you could hear yourself hum even if your ears were plugged. It felt supernatural, even though it wasn't.

Well, presumably she how had an ultravoice, but she wouldn't know if the speaker worked right until she made the hearer: the bat ears.
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[Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

Postby Evarista on September 28th, 2017, 8:52 pm

While the dead bat's throat was mostly intact, the ears were damaged and somewhat decayed. Evarista was afraid she wouldn't be able to make out anything of use in the tattered aura at first, but then realized that the secret wasn't in the big skin flaps on the outside, but the squishy parts on the inside. The perceives of sound were a number of cords of different thickness, but she couldn't determine what exactly she needed to morph in her own ears to match. The entire system was too complex to understand, so she needed to single out the essentials. Maybe the ears would react somehow if she gave a sound, even though the owner was dead?

Tucking her hair behind her ears and leaning in close, Evarista began to hum again, with the sounds still beyond her hearing, while watching the color-coded auristic wires intently for any reaction.

She got a more exciting reaction than she expected: all the coils and cords began vibrating vividly, just like the wall of a thin wine glass after being struck by an utensil. The thin tubes vibrated much faster than the thicker ones, she noticed. As soon as she stopped straining her vocal chords, the lively apparatus ceased moving - mostly. Distant sounds from the night streets below made the thinnest cords quiver ever so slightly, but still noticeably. Such a sensitive thing... and Evarista's own ears had to be working the same way.

What she had to do was to create some of these tubes - in addition to, or instead of, her already existing ones. That would allow hear what the bat could hear.

Evarista absent-mindedly stuck her pinky finger into one of her ears, feeling around as if hoping to find the ear-wires in there. She couldn't intrinsically feel them in her ears the way she could feel the larynx in her throat, so it was difficult to pinpoint where in there she was supposed to morph. Ah, well. She would just have to make the new ones in some empty space and leave the old ones intact.

It would probably be wise to start making the ear-tubes on the thick side, since the thin ones seemed to be more sensitive, and making them right away was probably inviting a pain shock.

Closing her eyes, began generating one tiny arc in each ear, just the sort that the bad had, but perhaps a bit thicker. Since nature hadn't given her ear canals enough space for this, her ears begin feeling crowded, as if full of water. She had to resist the urge to shove in her her fingers and try to get rid of the "water". An uncomfortable sensation, but something to fine-tune later. Now she had to make sure that she got her new ear drum right.

That didn't stay a mystery for long. When the sensitive fleshy wires began taking shape, a heavy static noise gradually rose in her mind, eventually overlapped by a sort of uneven rumble. She felt like her entire skull was vibrating; it wasn't unpleasant at first because it was subtle, but she also couldn't make sense of it. She was never meant to experience this... voice?
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[Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

Postby Evarista on September 28th, 2017, 8:53 pm

Suddenly feeling light-headed, Evarista had to lean on the chimney in front of her to keep balance. What was this unearthly noise? It almost seemed like an unending growl of some gigantic monster somewhere below. Maybe it was the water of the lake. She told herself that, not wanting to think too hard about the other alternatives yet.

Did she make the wire too thick? It allowed her to hear sounds lower than she usually could, so thinner wire should put her on the other side of the spectrum.

Progressive thinning of the extra eardrum gradually made the otherworldly rumble fade out completely. That had to mean her new wire was about the thickness of her normal human ones. She got the principle now, she thought.

Thinning it even more began introducing annoying squeaks, screeches and whistles coming in from all around her, also unlike anything she'd ever heard before. Insects? Some of these were a bit too rhythmical to be made by animals... maybe someone was sending secret signals that she managed to overhear?

Whatever the case, she was how on the other side of whatever spectrum governed the world of sound. So, her normal human ears could only pick up a small amount of the blasting concert that actually went on around her all the time. An unsettling thought, but strangely enlightening.

The moment of truth came when she had to test her new voice with her new hearing. To try out whether an invisible key would fit into an equally invisible lock. Still leaning on the chimney, she waited for a chime to get used to the new, and arguably unwanted, dimension of sound that had opened for her. Once the mild dizziness mostly passed, she swallowed to clear her throat and cautiously began humming.

The resonation in her skull made her dizzy again. It was the ringing of a million tiny metal bells, but the sound didn't come from outside like all of the others, but from within her. It occurred to her that she wasn't actually "humming" in the normal sense, because the sound wasn't constant. The super-rapidly contracting muscle in her larynx turned the hum into a succession of short calls. Thankfully, she had only made one sound-receiving wire, as more would likely overwhelm her senses.

This was enough. This was better than enough. Turning away from the chimney, Evarista hummed again. The treble that she thought was coming from herself sounded just a bit different. There was another chimney on the roof across, just like this one. She couldn't see it with her eyes due to the darkness, but the echo told her.

The sounds she made were the same, but after each super-short call came its echo. She already knew approximately how to read her own bouncing voice, but now her mechanisms were a lot more precise and true to the model than the haphazard emergency measure she threw out at the lakeshore that night. Her voice now could tell her even that there were small insects around her, and even what direction and at what speed they were going in. At this point she wouldn't be able to pin down their location exactly enough to hunt them as if she were a real bat, but tracking human-sized things would be easy. All she needed was some practice...
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[Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

Postby Prophet on October 8th, 2017, 11:37 am

Image
The night was peaceful as were most in Ravok. The black steel grip of the orders who called Rhysol their savior was not only tight but veiled as a comforting hug. This brought a smirk to the face of the man who sat against a chimney near the Noble District. He sat huddled up with his knees drawn close to his chest and shoulders rounded down to conceal an act of some kind. A billowing cloak and scarf fought for supremacy in the mild wind while the scribble of charcoal on paper entered into the soft fray of sounds.

The eyes partially hidden with wayward strands of golden hair darted back forth between subject and page. The careful strokes were more intense that the artist’s normal feathery hand but the intensity he witnessed was bleeding through into the rendering. Afterall, art imitates life…or was it the other way around? His bleached out parchment was the perfect shade to match the woman’s skin and his charcoal filled out her inky hair though it lacked the almost bluish glow being cast by the veiled light of Leth. It was no small detail but the lack of it on his page kept the contrast sharp on the female’s blank expression. The girl’s head was cocked to one side in the image as it had been while she studied the chimney the next roof over. This left her hair to fall down over a thin shoulder that the artist drew as being exposed to help emphasize the porcelain skin. He smirked- artistic licensing was such a blessing.

As a man, he found many things to like in the city that floats; women, finery, food and architecture. However, the creator in him –the artist- was tired and bored with typical frou frou and hoopla. It was for this reason that he had taken to the rooftops. Soot from chimneys blackened and marred highly mounted statues in the noble district. Signs of businesses showed wear when seen from above and the beautiful dark water that was taken for granted on a daily basis made a wonderfully morbid backdrop to a city asleep to the mailed fist which held it captive.

All of this angst and unspoken darkness was being scratched across the parchment and added into the drawing which showed the power of an emotionless beauty who held enough intensity in her gaze to paralyze most men. The artist stopped to smile at his work and it was then when he noticed something change. The woman had turned to his direction but she didn’t seem to notice him…not at first. Slightly anxious, his hand jarred into a reflex of muscle memory which landed his mark at the corner of the page. Aside from this, the artists simply frozen with his feet under his rump and his knees bent with supplies and sketch in hand.




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[Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

Postby Evarista on December 21st, 2017, 9:00 pm

Humming idly, Evarista closed her eyes and absorbed the acoustics flowing back into her ears, every vibration more dimensioned than it should be, its aura revealing what everyone would hear if sound had color. She enjoyed the sensation, until the colors and vibrations began forming an unexpected image in her mind. A shape with arms and legs and warmth, the pulse of blood and the heaving of air.

The puzzle pieces of sensation suddenly coalescing into a very human figure made her freeze in place, open her eyes and stare into the darkness intently, seeking a visual aura the old-fashioned way. Was her seeking and echoing already playing tricks on her, or was she simply paranoid? She hoped it was either or both, but soon the flicker of sapient aura in the blackness ahead of her confirmed her fears. There was someone there.

She stood in place, not daring to move a finger, and not daring to take her eyes of the tense and anxious aura. How long has it been there, observing her every movement? Having long been the only notable purveyor of Ravok's topmost layer, she never even considered the possibility of such intrusion. while the aura appeared decidedly human, no normal human would do what that one was doing. Considering the implications quickly pushed her towards panic, but from the other corner of her mind rushed a wave of anger.

The split-second decision of whether to flee or fight was somehow made in favor of the latter. Before she knew it, she was already on the other side of the street. The long striped legs that sprouted from under her skirt had ferried her over the gap between the roofs and were now lunging towards the loathsome mind-light. It was so close that she could make out the cloaked figure with her bare eyes. She stared at it with unblinking intensity for only a moment before making her violent advance; her grotesquely augmented figure still wrapped in cryptic silence.

There was no way to explain the sudden thirst for confrontation besides a desire to defend her territory. Not the manor, but the rooftops. It was a startlingly animalistic impulse, but after her many twisted ordeals, perhaps Evarista had already shed more of her humanity than she realized. Her mind was stripped of all thought and analysis except the cold calculation to pin and subdue her newfound enemy under a cross-lock of dangerous talons and jets of liquid luminescent glue.
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[Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

Postby Prophet on December 28th, 2017, 2:26 am

Image
As the creature charged towards him, the artist pushed djed into his leg muscles. Building like waves against a levy, the hands claimed all of his belongings except for the rendering of his muse. The sheet was tucked under a tile by one corner- not much but enough to keep it in place for a time. The girl-beast was closing fast and the man felt a burning sensation in his balls of his feet. With a wink that would likely go unseen, he released the pressure from his legs and leapt up at a perpendicular angle from the room’s angled surface. The speed and height was unnatural as the average-looking human sailed in a tall arc through the city’s skyline.

Backdropped against the moon, his cloak and scarf trailed behind him like a smear of blood being wiped away. Moments later, his boots landed heavily upon another roof several buildings over. There were a few moments of pause as he seemed to gather himself from such a feat as the massive jump. Slowly, the figure rose to an upright stance then seemed to wave at the inspiration as it closed in on the place where he once stood. He hoped she liked the rendering; a nightmarish creature given a sentient expression of cold beauty. The man kissed his fingers and tossed them into the night sky then turned and ran down the opposite rise and into the shadows with a knot in his stomach. After all, an artist craved praise for his work.




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[Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

Postby Evarista on December 28th, 2017, 12:00 pm

Only after her talons struck the cold slate did Evarista realize that her target was gone, seemingly vaporized into thin air. Her head immediately turned to follow his sound and scent, her eyes widening as she saw him sail through the moonlit sky with his cloak billowing behind him.

The figure landed far out of reach without losing footing, apparently not a stranger to such breakneck maneuvers. His waving hand seemed like a mockery, but the distinct lack of malice in his aura gave the gesture ambiguity. Before long, he was out of sight, but the image of his aura was clearly impressed on all her senses.

With the "trespasser's" retreat, the encounter clearly over, and Evarista's aggression went as quickly as it came. She exhaled, idly brushing stray hair from her face while one of her talons was hooked around the chimney to steady herself on the sloped roof. It was so strange and it happened so fast that it might have been an illusion. She might have tried too hard to expand her five pitifully limited human senses.

Something at her feet caught her attention. Right next to the chimney was a pair of clear, luminescent shoe prints; an aura left by fresh magic usage. So at least he was merely a mage, and not some kind of fiend in disguise, or a figment of her own unstable imagination. Perhaps she was fortunate that he didn't use his well-concealed talent to reciprocate her violence. At the same time, she asked herself, why would she assume that he would? The time spent at that baleful temple might have skewed her perceptions of people for the worse.

Having had enough excitement and unanswered questions for the night, Evarista was about to turn back to get some sleep, when something large suddenly smacked against her face, obscuring her vision and almost making her lose balance. Waiting out the rush of adrenaline that had already started preparing her body for a bath in the canals, she got a better grip on the chimney and carefully dislodged the thing wrapped around her face. It was a sheet of expensive paper.

Puzzled, she straightened the rustling page and lit a small bioluminescent lamp on her forehead. In its dim white light, she saw... herself. The breathtaking elegance of the woman on the picture was not something she would recognize in herself, but somehow she still immediately knew that it was a rendering of her.

"Nhm..."

The soft hum that escaped Evarista's lips was not in proportion to the piercing shock struck through her mind. She stared at the paper wide-eyed, as if looking at something surreal. Her senses could recognize traces of that mysterious aura all over the page; the touch of his fingers, the stroke of his brush.

Finally tearing her eyes away and lowering the painting, Evarista cast an ambiguous glance in the direction of the cloaked figure's disappearance. All he left behind was the rustling of paper in the rooftop breeze. What his motives were, she didn't know. But the she knew that, by design or by accident, he left her the means and the desire to find him again.
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[Rooftops] Shapeless Voice

Postby Rook on April 10th, 2018, 5:37 pm

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Your grades are here!


Evarista

Skills
*+4 Observation
*+2 Auristics
*+5 Morphing
*+3 Biology
*+1 Climbing


Lores
*Morphing: Bat’s Ears
*Morphing: Bat’s Vocal Chords
*Echovision


Rewards & Penalties
*A Priceless Charcoal Sketch of High Quality




I had a fantastic time reading this thread. You do an amazing job writing morphing, and I love Evarista as a character. I’ll be looking forward to reading more of your threads! Don't forget to edit/delete your grading request in the queue, and PM me if you have any questions or concerns!
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