A Tale of Two Paths
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Current Chapter: #11. "Close Enemies"
A Tale of Two Paths is the story of a Ga-Matoran from the Water Fragment of Shattered, who through the Olmak Effect anomaly is stranded far from Clysmax with almost no hope of ever returning. Along with her, as a Ga-Toa from Tribal, who forms a bond with the Ga-Matoran after the crash. Soon afterwards, they are separated.
Constructive criticism and mountains of praise are welcome. (Preferably the latter) Also, if you have some suggestions to improve my writing style, tell me.
This story was originally posted on the old boards, unfinished. Recently, I decided to pick it up again and (hopefully) finish it. I will gradually repost the chapters until I hit the new stuff, in order to avoid having the boards automerge the chapters.
Mini-Guide:
To those unfamiliar with the Expanded Multiverse, much of this may be confusing. To remedy that predicament, I'll place information relevant to the story here, so you don't have to dig through the EM guides to find the information you seek.
The Expanded Multiverse (or Aethion) is a project created by bonesiii and Swert, for BZPower members to participate it. You might call it BZP and BS01's official fanon. In-story, Aethion was created when that Kanohi Olmak that Toa Empress Tuyet lost in Dark Mirror was shattered while in dimensional space. The result was the creation of a highly unstable alternate universe containing eight worlds seperated by a dangerous field of dimesional energy called "Bluespace". The universe is endangered by the growing instability of the "Olmak Effect" which is essentially the manifestation of dimensional warping. This causes unstable portals between worlds to be created, altered history, appearances, and other stuff that would make Dr. Emelius Brown throw a fit. Time-space continu-whatever and 88 mph. and all that. The governments of some of the worlds have started projects to try to combat this entropy, like Team Cipher, the subject of The Cipher Chronicles. But that doesn't matter all that much in A Tale of Two Paths.
The only safe method of travel between the planets of Aethion are Olmak Totems: little wooden objects containing the fragments of the shattered Olmak. By touching one, a person is teleported from that totem to its corresponding totem on the destination world. Many beings are teleported unwillingly by Olmak anomalies: turbulent portals that are created when the Olmak Effect is particularly unstable. These anomalies are extremely dangerous, and can cause great potential physical and mental injuries. New beings are created by the olmak effect in Aethion, and like the rest of the expanded multiverse, they are usually combined from beings from the various other dimensions, and some characters, like Akla, in this story, bear an almost exact resemblance to other beings, although they always are differentiated from the source material in several ways.
A few other miscellaneous facts about the Olmak Effect taken from the Official EM Reference Topic: When the Olmak Totems of a planet are brought closer together, the Olmak Effect on that planet gets worse and for this reason they are usually kept apart. Some believe that if the six totems of a planet were brought together, the resulting distorsions would teleport a person to Enigma. The Olmak Effect doesn't occur near the Izumal power source, though the reason, like the power source itself, is unknown. The only beings who don't know about, or don't accept, these findings are the Atohune natives, who believe the Olmak Effect is caused by the boredom of the spirits.
Atohune is the Tribal world. Heavily forested, it is populated by inumerable primitive tribes that worship 'spirits' living in gigantic towers that contain the Olmak totems of this world. These towers are carried by tribes from one location to the other for the purpose of entertaining the spirits. Since they believe that the spirits cause the Olmak effect when they are displeased, they give the towers priority over everything, and no tribe ever gets in the way if they can help it.
In this story, however, one of the tribes is in a bit of a tight spot. A tiny tribe of nomads is trapped between all of the tribes bearing totems, and one of the tribes want to move their tower to the location of the nomads, and unless they scram, the agressors will take them out of the picture. Their turaga will have to buy time in order to survive, but how long can they hold out?
Izumal is the Enlightened world. Izumal is entirely separate from the other planets, both for their extreme technological advancement and for its culture of enlightenment and purity. This planet is unique in that it is made primarily out of protodermic silver and gold.
Its main citizens live in a single city made mostly of powerful silver nanites with protodermic powers and a highly secret unlimited power source (or so they claim). Virtually anything you can imagine is made possible by the nanites there, and its citizens are totally at peace with each other; crime is almost unheard of, and few ever desire to leave. They do not allow travel to here from other worlds; visitors are told to immediately go home, or be imprisoned, lest the harmony of this world be unbalanced.
They have become able to control the weather, so that clouds from the oceans move directly into receptables in the city that feed water to canals. They can also use controlled tornadoes for security purposes.
There are outlying criminal camps in the wilderness, and criminals enter the city sometimes. There are thus police and investigators. Most crimes involve hacking, so the camps are also called hacker camps, though not every camp has hackers in it.
Agents wearing powerful nanite suits war against these camps, and from time to time, they show up on mysterious missions on the other planets, bullying their way to whatever it is they want. When they go on these offworld missions, they are unstoppable and spark terror in the hearts of all, but they do not kill, and their goals don't even seem to make tactical sense. They claim to be good, but most Aethion inhabitants see them as the real evil of this universe. (Taken from the Expanded Multiverse Reference Topic)
The other worlds are the Central planet, Alarist; the Shattered planet, Clysmax; the Industrial planet, Promathus; the Tyrant planet, Tanuuk; the Warzone planet, Barrawahi; and Enigma. Information on all these (except Enigma, obviously) can be found here, but none of the story takes place on any of those planets, so it shouldn't be too important.
Main Characters:
Laro is a toa of water from Atohune, who was sent by the turaga of her nomad tribe to retreive help from Alarist for one of their villagers. She wears a Noble Mask of Concealment, and looks basically like a Toa Mata. You'll learn more about her as you read.
Kiasu is a Ga-Matoran from Clysmax, and serves in the air force of the Allied Fragments of Clysmax. In the midst of a firefight, she was brought to Atohune by an Olmak anomaly caused by the convergence of various Tribal Olmak Totem towers. She looks like a smaller version of the Av-Matoran/Shadow Matoran from '08, and wears a kanohi shaped like a Great Hau. She has extra armor on her torso and shoulders issued by the Clysmax military, and bears the insignia of her unit and rank on her shoulders. Like Laro, you'll learn about her as you read.
The rest of the mini-guide information will be placed in spoiler tags corresponding with each chapter. Some of the work is still in progress, so you may not find what you're looking for yet.
Credit to:
bonesiii and Swert for designing the Expanded Multiverse.
The winners of EM Contest 2: Name the Expanded Multiverse, for the names of the planets/multiverse/etc. More specifically, Lloyd: The White Wolf, for the name "Aethion"; Advant, for the name "Alarist"; ~~Zarkan~~, for the name "Promathus"; Xander004, for the name "Atohune"; Uzumakikunai, for the name "Barrawahi"; makuta of xhini nui, for the name "Tanuuk"; TRINUMA NUVA: One Traveler, for the name "Izumal"; and finally, Good Omens for the name "Clysmax".
Credit to Axinian for the character of Statorak Furax, featured in Chapter 3.
Credit to BCii for the original idea of the Judgement Cannon.
And all the other Expanded Multiverse contributors.
Special Thanks to:
GaliGee, for if she hadn't written her stories, I might not have attempted to write mine.
Exo-Fat for creating the Abyss and Abyssal Plain RPG's, in which I created the original character of Akla, and otherwise, Akla would not be in this story.
Charles Dickens for writing A Tale of Two Cities, which gave me the idea for the title.
Edited by LewaLew, Oct 23 2012 - 02:30 PM.
