Fated Leviathan Battle and Aftermath - Player Plot

[terriblepurpose]

Who: Open; please reach out to me if interested in jumping in if you haven't had a chance yet, but want to be
What: Fated Leviathan Player Plot Conclusion
When: Forward dated to February 25th
Where: The Farther Shores

Content Warnings: Body horror, thalassophobia, violence, gore, death, prophecy



Welcome to the battle and aftermath log post for the Fated Leviathan player plot. This is the conclusion of the plot.

For the battle finale planning comment specifically, go here.

If you'd like to catch up on or reference the base camp post, head here.

For the in character group chat on DeerNet, head this way.


PLEASE READ GUIDELINES FOR THIS POST::

- For the enjoyable experience of all participants, please place content warnings in the comment titles or contents when called for.

- Please place your starters for threads under the appropriate phase of the battle they start in for organizational purposes. (Example: if you are posting a prompt where your character is fighting the Leviathan at sea, please post it under 2.2 At Sea | Frontlines. If you end up threading through to the Landfall segment in-game, there's no need to move it, but marking the transition in comment titles would be appreciated.)

- If you have any questions about the Leviathan, refer to either the plotting post above or contact me via my information below.

- Using the Battle Report comments to summarize your character's actions during each phase is not required, but is encouraged.


If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, Beth, via terriblepurpose or by DMing this journal!

Comments

0. Fated Leviathan Reference Sheet

[terriblepurpose]

[Content warnings: descriptions of marine life (throughout), links to images of marine life (third page of document).

Fated Leviathan Reference Sheet: Please refer to this document for descriptions of the Fated Leviathan's appearance, capabilities, and (non-exhaustive) possible forms. ]

1. Prelude

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1.1 Prelude | Preparation

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[Record the actions of your characters in the Prelude segment of the battle here.]

<b>Character Name:</b> <b>Actions in Prelude:</b> <b>Additional Notes:</b>

1.2 Prelude | The Siren

[terriblepurpose]

[Content warning: Loud siren sound in link

The arrival of the Fated Leviathan is felt by all even mildly sensitive to it as a towering wave of doom cresting at sea, a psychic foreboding followed swiftly by scout reports of a massive underwater disturbance approaching the designated engagement zone. Messages are sent at once to the camp and the city, initiating both the battle plans on the Farther Shores and evacuation readiness alerts in Trench. The winter sky above is a featureless grey in which a pale sun hangs veiled by the clouds, and the ocean is strangely calm, as if the world itself has stilled in anticipation.

The warning siren blares across the camp. This is not a drill. This is the moment of final preparation, of rallying the troops in words and action, of battening down the hatches and bracing for the storm. If there is anything you've left undone, now is the time to do it.]

2. At Sea

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2.1 At Sea | Battle Report

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[Record the actions of your characters in the At Sea segment of the battle here.]

<b>Character Name:</b> <b>Condition At Beginning of 'At Sea' segment:</b> <b>Actions During 'At Sea' segment:</b> <b>Condition At End of 'At Sea' segment:</b> <b>Additional Notes:</b>

2.2 At Sea | Frontlines

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[The distance from the edge of the coastal shelf to the shoreline is a matter of kilometers where the first wave of attackers will attempt to halt the advance of the Fated Leviathan before it makes landfall.

The Pthumerian Sea churns with the approach of the Leviathan, whose massive form digs into the seabed with immense suckers, fins, and claws as it speeds towards the shore. It is up to those who can make the journey to meet it to either stop it here, or failing that, direct it towards the engagement zone on the shore set a kilometer away from the central camp.]

2.3 At Sea | Strategic Command

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[The command and control center of the battle hums with smoothly synchronized activity as the first wave takes to the sea. The battle tables are made ready with their maps and their troop markers, communication systems are checked and cleared, and those who have placed themselves at the thinking center of the many-stranded web of war prepare themselves to see what fruit their plans will bear as the first phase of the fight begins.]

2.4 At Sea | Field Hospital

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[The field hospital and triage tents brace for the coming casualties. In the main camp, the central medical tent is readied for the more complex and challenging cases, while the smaller triage tents on the edge of the engagement zone set out their tools of the trade, hoping against hope that there will be no cause to deploy their tourniquets, bandages, and restorative draughts.]

Re: 2. At Sea

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Character Name: Korra
Condition At Beginning of 'At Sea' segment: Intact

Actions During 'At Sea' segment: She can perform the role of a field medic and also perform rescue missions - she can make air bubbles around herself and others, and dive to get anyone who is sinking.

Condition At End of 'At Sea' segment: Intact

Additional Notes: Feel free to handwave if needs me!

3. Landfall

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3.1 Landfall | Battle Report

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[Record the actions of your characters in the Landfall segment of the battle here.]

<b>Character Name:</b> <b>Condition At Beginning of 'Landfall' segment:</b> <b>Actions During 'Landfall' segment:</b> <b>Condition At End of 'Landfall' segment:</b> <b>Additional Notes:</b>

3.2 Landfall | Frontlines

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[When the Leviathan reaches the shore, against all odds and hopes, it brings the sea with it. The bulk of its body displaces the water ahead of it into a surging wave that sweeps up and over the sand before receding in abandonment of the shrieking, infuriated beast. The saltwater is mixed with great quantities of the beast's blood, and best avoided for the sake of mind and body - but at least this toxic contamination provides evidence that despite the seemingly relentless fury of the Leviathan, it has been weakened by the onslaught of the great war engines and mighty forces that composed the valiant, scattered first wave.

It is time for the second wave of attackers to join those left of the first in taking the Leviathan apart, piece by shifting piece.]

3.3 Landfall | Strategic Command

[terriblepurpose]

[The possibility of the first wave being insufficient to halt the Leviathan was accounted for, but the mood of the strategy tents is still shifted by the beast reaching the shore. The increasingly unpredictable behavior of the Leviathan and the growing chaos of the frontlines, along with the initial casualty reports, infects all but the most steel-nerved of those present here with a new urgency.]

3.4 Landfall | Field Hospital

[terriblepurpose]

[The arrival of the Leviathan coincides almost exactly with the first wave's casualties, ferried back by those who can still do such work. The most severe injuries are taken to the central camp when they can be, but in the frenzied clash on the shore, confusion is inevitable. The triage tents begin to flood, a revolving stream of wounded either patched up and sent back to the fight, or pulled from it entirely and sent back to the camp.]

3.5 End of Landfall | Interlude | Heart of Entropy | Closed

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[Content warnings: Death

The Leviathan is a calamity of sound as much as a horror of sight, its terrible cries an assault of their own - and yet the howl it emits in this moment is a thousand times more terrible again, an all-too-human-sounding furious despair that floods from every mouth on its body, whether those mouths are capable of producing such a sound or not.

From the midst of a profusion of reaching tentacles, a light rises. It is not the first flickering light to travel across the surface of the Leviathan, whose flashes of bioluminescence have been used as both distraction and bait, but the organic multi-colored hues of those lights are nothing like the obliterating blue-white stellar sear of this one. It throbs in flickering pulses from the open eyes of a blood-soaked boy almost impossible to perceive through its glare, a boy who climbs the Leviathan's roiling protrusions as if running up a flight of stairs. He weaves over jagged coral shelves and twists past lashing tentacles towards some unknown goal, the weapons in his hands precisely dissecting any threat that looms too close.

It's a doomed effort from the start. It ends the only way it could, as a darting black tentacle winds itself around his ankles and drags him inverted into the air, the beast opening a newly carved and vast maw of a hundred different kinds of teeth beneath him. He hangs there with his arms outstretched above the mouth, a brief mimicry of a deep-sea lure, or the spinning beacon of a lighthouse, or the dead heart of a star - and then he falls in an arc that bends as if according to other laws than gravity, but not far enough.

The light disappears past the lip of the maw. It extinguishes. The Leviathan howls once more, but there is nothing human in the sound this time. It is future-blinded and shape-stilled, a mass of writhing contradictions beached in a singular reality.]

4. Death Throes

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4.1 Death Throes | Battle Report

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[Record the actions of your characters in the Death Throes segment of the battle here.]

<b>Character Name:</b> <b>Condition At Beginning of 'Death Throes' segment:</b> <b>Actions During 'Death Throes' segment:</b> <b>Condition At End of 'Death Throes' segment:</b> <b>Additional Notes:</b>

4.2 Death Throes | Frontlines

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[The Leviathan screams in a hundred thousand animal cries. It screams, and it screams, and it screams, all while its now-fixed form thrashes on the shore and churns the shallow bloodied waters. Whatever aspects it had when the blow to its heart came, it retains, static and stranded in a single reality, its foresight and shapeshifting wrenched from it to leave behind only this beached monstrosity of merely mortal flesh.

Now is the final butchery. End it.]

4.3 Death Throes | Strategic Command

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[Things fall apart. This has always been the rule of war. Thus were contingencies made in advance to accommodate a range of possible failure points and losses. They help staunch the chaos that might otherwise descend as the battle reaches its final gruesome pitch, but there are no contingencies fit to staunch some of these losses.

Still. The burden of command is not one easily laid aside. They press on.]

4.4 Death Throes | Field Hospital

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[The death-frenzy of the Leviathan soaks the medical tents in blood, both that cast off by the beast's thrashing and that which pours in a grim cascade of colors from the wounded and the dead. As supplies run low and the bodies rise high, the medical corps is pushed to the edge of their endurance and skill.

A healer's work is never done. Such is its tragedy.]

5. Aftermath

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5.1 Aftermath | After Action Report

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[Record the actions of your characters in the Aftermath segment of the battle here.]

<b>Character Name:</b> <b>Actions in Aftermath:</b> <b>Condition in the Aftermath:</b> <b>Additional Notes:</b>

5.2 Aftermath | Leviathanfall

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[The slaughtered Leviathan falls apart over the course of a week, its body collapsing inwards as the blood magic that bound it together fades and fails. It leaves behind a ruination of blood-soaked sand and great, reeking folds of flesh, bone, corals, cartilage, blubber, sea-plants, and more. Those who wish to may, with caution, join the other scavengers of the sea in picking through this vast corpse for whatever they see fit to harvest from it.]

5.3 Aftermath | The Camp

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[In the wake of the battle, those who survived begin the unsung labor of taking stock of what is left, and what is left to be done. The wounded must be tended, the camp must be struck down, and the cost of this dearly won victory must be accounted.

Across the once thriving camp lies a stunned hush. May there be solace in it.]