Failure Is Not An Option (Solo, Flashback)

[Serkaan]

Serkaan 2nd of Summer 504AV “Wake up boy you’ve got work to do, and you can’t do that work when you sleep all the petching morning away” was the charming wakeup call Serkaan received every morning from the slave driver that had purchased him in the market a few weeks earlier. The boy had quickly come to realize that his new master was not one to be trifled with. He was brutal in the extreme, he expected to be obeyed the exact moment a command was issued, and may the god’s help the soul who didn’t complete a task to his standards of perfection. The man had made his intentions clear the minute he purchased Serkaan. The boy was an investment, nothing more, nothing less. He was to be trained and taught the way of a warrior and then he would be thrown into a pit with others his age. Men would place bets on the likeliest candidate to triumph, and then the fighting would begin. There was to be no rules and there was no other conclusion than death. Death was to be the meaning of his insignificant life. It was the in the conclusion of the season of spring that he had been purchased, and it was on the same day that Serkaan was taken from the market that his training began. The moment they reached the man’s estate outside the walls of the city Serkaan had his position explained. It was his duty to learn as much as possible, because if he were to lose in a fight not only would his “patron” lose his bets and the boy would lose his life. And with that the pain began. His master would spend hours having the boy run around the countryside, only to have him lift logs and stones when he would return. He would take time throughout the day to strap his slave to a tree and beat him with his hardwood can, saying that if Serkaan were ever to be a fighter he would have to learn to completely ignore pain. And every single night without fail was a time for in depth training in unarmed combat. Serkaan would learn how to hold his hand, and how to shift his body weight into a punch. He learned how to time his attacks and how to anticipate his opponent’s blows. It was a hard life, but the boy quickly learned to revel in his successes and find fulfillment in his experience. This was a day like many others, in no way unordinary. He had woken to his masters calling and had run three miles before he was given the mornings meal. Then he was told that he was to begin punching a wooden board in order to give strength to his hands and thickness of his bones. ”If you are to win a single fight and keep your pitiful excuse for a life you must learn to fight through pain and you must have hands like iron. Now begin.”

[Serkaan]

Serkaan Serkaan stood before the oak plank and struck it time and time again. He fell into a rhythm of punching, his hips rotating to push his full body weight into each punch, his previous strike pulling back to his and chambering to aid his hips in turning into the next blow. He aimed at a small knot in the piece of wood, his master enforced this rule because he said that the way someone practiced was the way they performed. After ten minutes of hammering his fists into the hardwood, Serkaan’s hands screamed in agony. Blood from his broken skin and battered hands smeared over the small area of the wood he had been striking. His entire being longed to be released from the torture of the exercise, but his master forced him to continue for another two or three minutes. When the man finally called a halt to the practice, Serkaan collapsed in a heap from the pain and exertion. ”You will have to get much better before you will be any use in the petching pit boy. But I think it’s high time I showed you the next step in your training. Pay close attention, I don’t want to explain this twice.” his master then proceeded to step back and seemed to be closely focusing on his hands. Then he reached down and started to pull his skin and bones, as he did so their form changed subtly with each movement. After about five minutes of molding he came up with what seemed like a gauntlet made up of an exoskeleton of bone matter. ”I want you to do this now. It is an art of the arcane, and it will aid you in fighting against others in the games. I want you to build a bone protection over the back of your hands. It needs to follow the exact way your hand bends so as to not disable your ability to move your fingers. Now go and study your hands, and make your spirit quiet. I expect you to have something to show me by the end of the day.” Serkaan stared after his master in disbelief as he walked away, the man had just performed a seemingly impossible task and had now tasked him to do the same. However one thing that did not enter the mind of the boy was failure, he had long since learned that failure was simply not an option.

[Serkaan]

Serkaan However even the non-option of failure was looking suspiciously like an option today. Serkaan hadn’t the slightest idea how to go about this, so he began by taking his masters suggestion. He stared at his hands. He look at the lines, the wrinkles in the skin, where the veins were visible, the dirt and blood that stained his knuckles, and the shape of each finger etched into his memory. He then began to move his hands around, noticing the way his fingers moved, and watching the little bones on the back of his hand wiggle under the skin. He looked at the way his skin scrunched up when his fingers or thumb changed position. Serkaan had never looked so closely at anything before in his life, and was amazed at the intricacies he found in his own hand. And he laughed at the new found meaning to the saying of something like the back of his hand. But pure knowledge wasn’t going to get the boy anywhere. His master had told him to clear his spirit, which made absolutely no sense whatsoever to Serkaan. But he figured that an attempt was better than nothing, even if his attempt was quite the opposite of what needed to be done. So he sat down in a secluded wood near the home of his master and closed his eyes. In the attempt to clear his mind it seemed like an internal magnet kept drawing things into his mind for him to think about. But with a dogged stubbornness Serkaan banished the thoughts, only to realize he was still thinking, if only about not thinking. This process went on for almost an hour before the boy fell asleep, he had successfully emptied his mind into sleep. When Serkaan woke he frantically began “meditating” again. He tried to empty his mind for another two hours, but it was when he heard his master thrashing through the woods and calling his name that he actually began to attempt any transformation.

[Serkaan]

Serkaan With the fear of his master displeasure working itself out on his back in the form of a whip, Serkaan began frantically pulling at his flesh like he had seen his master do. And much to his surprise it moved slightly, so he began to pull harder. When he had rearranged a bump over each knuckle Serkaan started to drag the flesh over his fingers, and he then hardened it, to make a passable impression of what his master had shown earlier. When the man came into the clearing a look of surprise crossed his face at the sight of the morphed hands. But it was quickly replaced by a short cough of laughter. ”Boy… how are you going to punch with a hand that can’t close? Fix it.” Serkaan looked down at his hands and sure enough, he had overlooked this important detail he had failed to make joints. So he started to focus on his hands once again, and began to form simple joints in the bone that covered the back of his hands and fingers, he took each knuckle and formed a simple hinge on each point, allowing his fingers to move into different positions. Then he looked to his master for input. ”That’s better, now go punch the board”

[Serkaan]

Serkaan Now that he was punching again Serkaan immediately saw (or rather felt) the advantage to the transformation. He could hardly feel the blows he threw, it gave him a sense of power and took away any metal barrier that had prevented his throwing full force punches. His blows rained both harder and faster upon the wooden board, the hardwood even began to have signs of the beating as the toughened hands battered it surface time and time again. Until finally his master called a halt for the day, and told him to go to sleep. "Good, from now on I want you to transform your hands at least once a day until you have masters what this form looks like. I want you to be able to do this in less than a minute, it isn't difficult. It only takes practice, and you have a lot of that. Remember... your life depends upon it. Now get some sleep, we'll do this again in the morning."

[Archelon]

Thread Award "It's Uncle almost getting ready for the ring. It's Gameraaaaaaaaa!!!!!" And the Results!!!!: Serkaan : SkillName 1-5 How/why? Unarmed Combat 4 You get what you use Morphing 3 *See usage note Bodybuilding 3 Meditation 1 To start you off very useful in morphing or any arcana discipline Observation 1 to start you off. Lores: Morphing Model: Carapace skin (poor) Usage Note: It's going to be pretty difficult for you to have a character with both morphing and flux in general (they don't tend to go well together. But more specifically it's how your morphing the novice level here that is what caused me to dock a point. transformation is undone after a while unless he keeps fueling it, and the body returns to normal, much like an elastic material. Morphing, when properly executed, is painless even though it can be accompanied by tactile sensations. Transformations do not happen instantly; rather, they are continuous and both fascinating and terrible to behold. The user's flesh is pulled, twisted and shifted until it reached the desired layout. Beginners sometimes manipulate their bodies with their own hands, aiding the transformation by physically pulling and pushing their limbs and bones. I didn't actually see an instance where this occurred, thinking of pulling layers of skin from the arms and hands and stretching them down to form the base material of an exoskeleton. You just used the general 'molding' term in places where it would be best to go into a little more detail. Good for a first thread But it needs a little meat to show your character is truly mastering this single attempt to form a technique . As is, the lore is for the ability to harden skin like a carapace, something that is the base of a hardened fist with an exoskeleton. Do another thread and send it my way and I'll be happy to bounce ideas around for your to conceptualize your pc's ability to morph better at your current level:). ^-^. Would you like some extra turtle sauce ? : A very nice start to working into the mindset of your character, I hope to see more as he develops.