Lord_Gareth
2009-05-31, 02:17 AM
Somewhere in the cosmos, always just around the corner and forever out of reach, there is a place where the redwoods grow tall and mighty, thicker and taller than skyscrapers. It is always fall there, but the trees never quite shed their leaves, always having just a few more bloody reds and firey golds to drop, and in that realm, the twilight never ends, smearing the sky with orange and gold, blood-red and violet, and sometimes, in the shadow of the ever-dusking sun, you can even see stars.
If you walk into this place, or ride, or drive, you might only find the woods. But you also might find a small house, barely even a studio apartment, with a quiet parking lot with just two spaces. One of the spaces has a deep purple motorcycle - you can't recognize the make, if you even know what a motorcycle is when you arrive - and the other is empty. Walking into the front door, you enter a shrine of chrome and fiber-optics, a veritable jungle of wires and keyboards, monitors and speakers and alarms, full of noise and a strange dissonant harmony; chaos, yes, but one which spawns order.
Somewhere in this room is an irritated young woman with shoulder length black hair and sharp, bright blue eyes. She dresses in denim and leather, always in black, and she is not likely to be smiling, which seems a damned shame because she probably has a very beautiful smile. She has a heart-shaped face and is slender but athletic, beautiful in the way a gothic cheerleader might be, and while no freckle or wrinkle touches her face, no blemish marks her skin, there is something unimagineably old about her - old, and worn down, and weary.
"Sit down and shut up," she snaps, irritably. "I'll get to you in a minute."
Welcome to the Nexus.
The Nexus - Cosmology
The Nexus is at once a force and a location. It binds reality - not the universe, not the multiverse, but reality - together. It is also a five-mile-radius circle of woods, as might be found on Earth, with a studio apartment at its center. Put quite frankly, the Nexus runs reality.
The basic function of the Nexus is as follows: Existence = 0. Prevent the equation from solving. As long as the Nexus has a master to control it, it can be used to unbalance the equation and keep existence from ceasing.
Kaylee Laythe
Kaylee Laythe is the mistress of the Nexus and, by extension, the owner of reality itself. Originally a techno-wizard from a plane she's named Earth-Tangent-One, Kaylee struck a crooked deal with a demon to gain the man she loved and ended up losing everything she ever wanted. When she tried leaving Earth in her grief, her magic fouled and she ended up in the Nexus, just in time to watch the former owner kill itself. Saddled with far more responsibility than she previously thought was possible, Kaylee got to work.
Though Kaylee was, at one point, human, such simple definitions no longer apply. Immortal, omnipotent, and with infinite learning potential, Kaylee has several thousand years of experience as well as a sharp, devious mind that can analyze and then destroy a pattern in mere fractions of a second. Where a normal human would go mad trying to assimilate all the information Kaylee processes on an hourly basis, her intellectual limitations have been lifted. Truly, in her home or out of it, the mistress of the Nexus is a frightening enemy.
However, Kaylee has recently been growing frustrated with the fact that she cannot leave. She never wanted this responsibility, and she is beginning to grow desperate to find a worthy replacement. Kaylee would gladly trade ultimate power for just an hour in her former home, and in her desperation, mistakes are being made.
Confronting Kaylee Laythe
Short version: You lose.
Long version: You have just angered the most powerful being in the multiverse, and she wasn't in a good mood to begin with. Kaylee will toy with you for awhile, allowing you to believe that your attacks and spells are having an effect, before blithely rendering you helpless and then shunting you into a personal hell which may, or may not, only exist in your mind, where you will spend all of eternity confronting your own flaws, insecurities, mistakes, and shames, in addition to being ruthlessly tormented and, occasionally, allowed glimpses of redemption and hope. She may, at some point, let you out, if you seem penitent enough. Chances are, she won't.
If you walk into this place, or ride, or drive, you might only find the woods. But you also might find a small house, barely even a studio apartment, with a quiet parking lot with just two spaces. One of the spaces has a deep purple motorcycle - you can't recognize the make, if you even know what a motorcycle is when you arrive - and the other is empty. Walking into the front door, you enter a shrine of chrome and fiber-optics, a veritable jungle of wires and keyboards, monitors and speakers and alarms, full of noise and a strange dissonant harmony; chaos, yes, but one which spawns order.
Somewhere in this room is an irritated young woman with shoulder length black hair and sharp, bright blue eyes. She dresses in denim and leather, always in black, and she is not likely to be smiling, which seems a damned shame because she probably has a very beautiful smile. She has a heart-shaped face and is slender but athletic, beautiful in the way a gothic cheerleader might be, and while no freckle or wrinkle touches her face, no blemish marks her skin, there is something unimagineably old about her - old, and worn down, and weary.
"Sit down and shut up," she snaps, irritably. "I'll get to you in a minute."
Welcome to the Nexus.
The Nexus - Cosmology
The Nexus is at once a force and a location. It binds reality - not the universe, not the multiverse, but reality - together. It is also a five-mile-radius circle of woods, as might be found on Earth, with a studio apartment at its center. Put quite frankly, the Nexus runs reality.
The basic function of the Nexus is as follows: Existence = 0. Prevent the equation from solving. As long as the Nexus has a master to control it, it can be used to unbalance the equation and keep existence from ceasing.
Kaylee Laythe
Kaylee Laythe is the mistress of the Nexus and, by extension, the owner of reality itself. Originally a techno-wizard from a plane she's named Earth-Tangent-One, Kaylee struck a crooked deal with a demon to gain the man she loved and ended up losing everything she ever wanted. When she tried leaving Earth in her grief, her magic fouled and she ended up in the Nexus, just in time to watch the former owner kill itself. Saddled with far more responsibility than she previously thought was possible, Kaylee got to work.
Though Kaylee was, at one point, human, such simple definitions no longer apply. Immortal, omnipotent, and with infinite learning potential, Kaylee has several thousand years of experience as well as a sharp, devious mind that can analyze and then destroy a pattern in mere fractions of a second. Where a normal human would go mad trying to assimilate all the information Kaylee processes on an hourly basis, her intellectual limitations have been lifted. Truly, in her home or out of it, the mistress of the Nexus is a frightening enemy.
However, Kaylee has recently been growing frustrated with the fact that she cannot leave. She never wanted this responsibility, and she is beginning to grow desperate to find a worthy replacement. Kaylee would gladly trade ultimate power for just an hour in her former home, and in her desperation, mistakes are being made.
Confronting Kaylee Laythe
Short version: You lose.
Long version: You have just angered the most powerful being in the multiverse, and she wasn't in a good mood to begin with. Kaylee will toy with you for awhile, allowing you to believe that your attacks and spells are having an effect, before blithely rendering you helpless and then shunting you into a personal hell which may, or may not, only exist in your mind, where you will spend all of eternity confronting your own flaws, insecurities, mistakes, and shames, in addition to being ruthlessly tormented and, occasionally, allowed glimpses of redemption and hope. She may, at some point, let you out, if you seem penitent enough. Chances are, she won't.