Return From Perdition

[GholaNamedHayt]

((This isn't exactly an RP thread, but this seemed like the most appropriate place to post it. This is sort of my interpretation of some of the lore told from the perspective of a certain Tenno.))

 

I had a name, once, and a face, and a life, and yes, even a soul. I do not remember much about them, save that I once had them and that they were taken from me. I was a soldier in the Great War, a losing battle on all fronts. The enemy were like beasts, wild and savage. Though I cannot recall my battles in that war nor the faces of my foe, I still awake screaming, the dark wraith of my memories hovering overhead.

 

We were doomed and we knew it. Our great civilization, beyond the ken of any who came before or would come after, was being drowned and torn asunder by strife. No show of strength, no warrior code, no amount of great deeds, nor superior weaponry could hold our doom at bay, and so our great and wise masters devised a new form of war.

 

A pestilence was forged in their great towers, a plague so virulent and ingenious it was as though it were of divine making, the wrath of dying gods given microbial form. I was a soldier, and what is a soldier but a weapon to be used. The blade does not choose in what way it is wielded, and if need be it can easily be cast aside. Thus I was chosen to deliver the wrath of our sundered empire unto our enemy, myself and many like me.

 

We were infected, whether knowingly or willingly or not I cannot say, and told to go and fight and die among those who would see our civilization razed to the ground, our towers toppled, our icons crushed. We were soldiers, and we did as we were told.

 

Yet, for all their foresight and wisdom, our great masters could not foresee that they had underestimated us, and in doing so sown the seeds of their own demise. Our code of honor, foolish as it may have been, prevented us from simply laying down our lives, and so we fought, each of us seeking a warrior’s death.

 

It is true that many of us found what we sought, and it is my greatest woe that I was not among them, but a precious few of us could not be slain it seemed, and so after what seemed an eternity of bloody handed slaughter, we returned to our people and our masters, seeking forgiveness for our failure.

 

Raging from on high and fearful of that greatest weapon we carried in our flesh, however, our great and mighty and benevolent masters cast us out. We were banished to the Void, beyond the light of the sun, that empty blackness, that sea of nothingness, of blind night, that fearful hellspace.

 

In that place that even our masters had been unable to bring the light of their great civilization we were sent to die, for the pestilence was within us and our blood boiled, our flesh withered, and our bones warped. It was not long before many of us perished, or worse, yet still some of us seemed yet unable to die. The wrath and fury of our foes had not laid us low, and the plague crafted by our people, who had exiled us, could not either.

 

We became twisted, wretched things, in that great blackness. Perhaps the greatest kindness and mercy granted to us accursed few was that in our blindness we could not see what had become of us, hunched and malformed, crippled and bestial.

 

Time seemed to have no meaning in the Void. All was nothingness, a drifting hell of emptiness, devoid of meaning, reason, or existence. Were it not for the faint flicker of stars in the firmament and the hateful aching and crippling illness of my body, I would have believed all the universe had been extinguished.

 

In that place without time or form or meaning, we each eventually separated, drifting alone, unspeakable horrors wishing only for the merciful embrace of death’s silent grasp. Wrath consumed me and madness drew me into its soft bosom where I dwelt for an eternity, alone with only myself and my own thoughts, my hate, my grief, my suffering, and the Void.

 

And then light. Blinding, burning, searing, accursed and hateful light. It burned out my eyes, scorched my naked flesh, boiled my blood and set fire to my mind. A trillion supernovae engulfed me, and in my anguish and madness I screamed and laughed, I howled and spat. Figures, like deathly shades, strode out of the damning light and they took my twisted and ruined flesh and reshaped it.

 

I shrieked in both horror and delight, calling them both monsters and gods, speaking in tongues I had learned from listening to the deafeningly loud roar of the Void. They encased me in a mantle of battle, a frame of war. In that dread carapace I found that what had made me twisted and afflicted, that which had driven me mad, that hate for those who betrayed me and banished me, had made me mighty.

 

My new form had power, power that I used to protect myself from that ever prevalent piercing light. The fools, oh the fools! They spoke then of honor, of warrior codes long abandoned and into my once feeble hands, hands that they had made gruesome and grotesque, they placed instruments of war.

 

The masters had thought to reclaim us from our exile in the Void and forge of our ruined remains new weapons of war, but again their wisdom, their logic, their precious reason failed them. Tenno, they called us, for we were unlike anything that had come before or would come again. New names they gave us, for we had forgotten our own. Excalibur was the first, and he would be our leader, but me, I was the second, and for my fear of their light, and my madness, they gave me the name Loki.

 

When all the survivors of the many horrors were again reborn and assembled, those they called Tenno, we struck back. Betrayers they called us, and some still do, for instead of fighting their enemy, protecting their precious empire, we toppled it. Our revenge was swift, precise, and total. Thus ended the Orokin Era.

 

And so we slept. Spread across the solar system, we slept, waiting for the day great war might come again, that others might seek to reclaim the glory of our damned masters, of those who we betrayed, sworn to never again let the power of the Orokin live.

 

We are Tenno, and we are Hate.

[Kestral9999]

That was beautiful man. Love what people come up with in the absence of directly given lore. It's always so much more creative.

[Kestral9999]

Our great civilization, beyond the ken of any who came before or would come after, was being drowned and torn asunder by strife. 

Was that a reference to the band Trivium? If so, bravo... bravo. If not, I'm almost surprised lol.

[GholaNamedHayt]

Was that a reference to the band Trivium? If so, bravo... bravo. If not, I'm almost surprised lol.

Indeed it was.

[Kestral9999]

Hah, that's awesome. I'm actually from their hometown, been a fan since they were still considered a local band. They're in my top 5 favorite bands.

[qwurty566]

And your name is a reference to Dune Messiah, Right? (OP's name)

Edited July 9, 2014 by qwurty566

[GholaNamedHayt]

And your name is a reference to Dune Messiah, Right? (OP's name)

Yup. One of my all time favorite books.